N.J. black activist to NAACP: Stop denying families education options | Opinion

Newark Kids Code

Students from North Star Academy Middle School work on coding program sponsored by the Urban League of Essex County. (2015 Star-Ledger file photo)

By Charles Love

I come from a long line of black activists.

My grandfather Charles "Big Apple" Scott, stood behind Martin Luther King Jr. at the podium on the National Mall when he made the "I Have a Dream" speech in 1963.  Today I advocate for children in New Jersey -- my own children and that of thousands of other families I meet every day in my work.

After having spoken with all of these families, having heard their frustration with their children's schools, having seen what a good school (which happens to be a charter school) has done for my own children -- I have a warning for the NAACP: You are a dinosaur, and if you continue to go down the road of doing the teachers' union's bidding and denying millions of black families viable education options, you will bring about your own demise.

The most important issue that those leading the NAACP are missing here is that parents don't care about distinctions like charter or traditional public school. Why would they? What they care about is whether their child can read and do math and potentially go to college and graduate from college so that they can then become the masters of their own destinies.

And so what you really should be doing, as an organization that advocates for the advancement of black people, is yelling at the top of your lungs for America to put a moratorium on failing schools -- whether they are charter or traditional public schools. If you really cared about the advancement of black children, you'd be demanding that there be more opportunities for children to be educated -- not fewer.

Right here in Newark, at Uncommon School's North Star Academy, 57 percent of the class of 2016 passed at least one Advance Placement exam, nearly three times the national average of 20 percent. They are proving every day that low-income black and brown children can learn at the highest levels.

But it's not just North Star in Newark. The city has some of the best charter schools in the country. More than 90 percent of Newark KIPP high school graduates enrolled at colleges in 2015. At People's Prep, an independent charter high school in Newark, 90 percent of graduating seniors enrolled in college, 95 percent of whom are first-generation college students.

That is the kind of opportunity we should be doing everything we can to make available for more kids.

Where's the data on district schools? It's all around us. Over 100 years of failing black kids -- decades and decades before charter schools were even invented.

We've been failing generations.

According to one study, 98 percent of Newark Public School students who enrolled in Essex County College required remediation in math and nearly 90 percent required it in reading. If our students can't get it figured out at Essex County, how in the hell are they going to get it right at Harvard or Howard? Why isn't the NAACP voting to place a moratorium on that?

I once read an African Proverb that went a little something like this:

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running.

In a city with an annual murder total that has averaged 100 for the past 20 or so years we can't afford to wait, we need options now.

In my humble opinion, the only way it makes sense for the NAACP to take this position against black kids is because the influence of the teacher's union is too profitable to ignore. Nothing else makes sense.

It's not a secret that black people have been marginalized and exploited by many groups throughout the ages. It's always worse when the people taking advantage are the same people who are supposed to be advancing us.

If the NAACP votes on Saturday for a moratorium on charters, it will be voting to secure black people remain a permanent underclass. That's the opposite of what it's supposed to do -- and millions of black families will know it.

Charles Love is a community activist and the parent of three children who attend charter schools in Newark.

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