November 2, 2017

The NAACP’s new president recently issued a renewed call for a moratorium on charter schools. This stance keeps the Association at odds with thousands of parents and community leaders of color who know, firsthand, the critical role charters play in providing quality education to those in desperate need.

In light of this unfortunate action, the following statement, which originally appeared on July 31, 2017, is being reissued today.

African-American Education Leaders Speak Out Against NAACP Actions

The following statement was issued by CER directors David Hardy, founder and chair of Boys’ Latin Philadelphia Charter School, and Donald Hense, founder and chair of Washington, D.C.’s Friendship Public Charter Schools.

The NAACP’s campaign against charter schools is detrimental and disrespectful to all parents who struggle to ensure a quality education for their children.

Rather than embrace, and work to expand, the opportunities that charter schools represent to America’s disadvantaged, and to families of color across the nation, the NAACP has chosen to stand as an obstacle, and work to stifle, a movement that, for thousands of children, is the greatest — and only – hope for achieving a quality education.

The association’s recently released report is intentionally skewed to further a union-driven, anti-charter school agenda, and its “model legislation” effort is an outrageous political scheme to further support the union’s agenda by undermining the voice and will of parents who are fighting for options for their children’s education and for the right and freedom to choose.

The NAACP has a long history of fighting for justice and for individual rights that further opportunities, hopes and human dignity.

These efforts are the antithesis of that long fight, putting the association sadly, and uncharacteristically, on the wrong side of history.