Families rally outside the NAACP board meeting in Cincinnati on Saturday. (Courtesy: publiccharters.org Twitter)

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People reiterated its opposition to charter schools Saturday when its board of directors ratified a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion until more oversight is established.

The board’s vote followed months of intense pressure to reject the proposal from other black education advocates, who argued that charter schools give children in poor neighborhoods better school options. Demonstrators from a group called Memphis Lift protested and at one point disrupted the board meeting.

The NAACP’s wariness is rooted in its decades-long support for making traditional public schools more equitable for black children, said board chairperson Roslyn Brock.

“The NAACP has been in the forefront of the struggle for and a staunch advocate of free, high-quality, fully and equitably-funded public education for all children,” she said in a statement. “We are dedicated to eliminating the severe racial inequities that continue to plague the education system.”

The resolution was first proposed by the NAACP branch in California and Hawaii and was unanimously supported by 2,200 delegates at the organization’s 2016 annual convention in July, according to Hilary Shelton, senior vice president for advocacy and policy.

The 64-member board ratified the resolution by a voice vote during a meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, said Shelton.

“It was clearly unanimous,” he said. “It was unquestionable.”

He added that the board also agreed to start a task force that will take comments from charter school families and experts to develop more specific goals for the moratorium.

The NAACP has already outlined conditions for the moratorium, including holding charter schools to the same transparency and accountability standards as those that govern district schools.

It also called into question the way charters are funded, saying a moratorium should continue until “public funds are not diverted to charter schools at the expense of the public school system.”

Charters were also faulted for expelling students “that public schools have a duty to educate” and separating “high-performing children from those whose aspirations may be high but whose talents are not yet as obvious” as their peers’.

“The NAACP stood by its position,” said board member Amos Brown, who supported the resolution. “We made it very clear that our position was an affirmation for public education, which is where the least of these (are educated). We must make public education work for all. So that is where we still stand on that.”

At least one board member disagreed. Phil Murphy, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany and current Democratic candidate for governor in New Jersey, said the resolution went too far.

“I remain committed to bringing both sides of this issue together in New Jersey to figure out what works, what hasn’t, and how district schools and charter schools can best coexist in our communities,” he said in a statement.  “Communities may disagree as a matter of opinion, but leadership requires a careful examination of all facts and a shared goal of arriving at a consensus, when possible. I could not support today’s resolution without having such clarity.”

Education advocates pressured the board to reject the resolution until just before the vote this weekend.

The Black Alliance for Education Options and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools co-hosted a “meet and greet” breakfast with board members earlier to discuss the potential impact of the resolution on black children. Only one board member attended, according to the Alliance.

Advocates also presented a petition with more than 3,000 signatures opposing the moratorium. Last month, the two groups launched a “Charters Work” campaign, when more than 160 black education and faith leaders sent a letter to the NAACP urging the group to rethink the resolution.

In a separate demonstration, more than 100 pro-charter African-American parents and grandparents from Memphis piled into buses on Friday in advance of the vote. The protesters, part of the Memphis Lift advocacy group, gathered in the square across from the hotel, chanting, “I won’t stop. I can’t stop,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

“We have charter schools that are good,” Sarah Carpenter, a grandmother of 13, told the newspaper during the protest. “We are not against public schools. We want good schools of any type. Where was the NAACP when so many public schools were failing our children?

In a video that surfaced on social media over the weekend, a man who appeared to be a representative from the NAACP can be seen arguing and fielding questions from a group of protesters. The man says “in some cities (charter schools) are not getting what they are supposed to get,” referring to their performance.

“But that’s in public schools too,” one woman yells in response.

Later, some of those demonstrators marched into the hotel and disrupted the board meeting with chanting until police were called. There were no arrests and it was likely the hotel who called the police, according to Shelton.

“They shared what they wanted to share,” said Shelton, who talked with some of the protesters on Saturday. “Hopefully it’s just a down payment on what we will hear from these parents and many other charter school parents.”

The vote quickly attracted response from education groups across the country.

“On behalf of the membership of the United Federation of Teachers, we support the NAACP resolution calling for a moratorium on the expansion of charter schools,” Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said in a statement.  “Charter schools claim to be public institutions, but in too many communities, charters take public funds yet are not accountable to parents, lawmakers or taxpayers.”

But Democrats for Education Reform President Shavar Jeffries argued that the NAACP was acting counter to its mission.

“W.E.B. DuBois is rolling in his grave,” he said in a statement. “The NAACP, a proud organization with a historic legacy of expanding opportunity for communities of color, now itself stands in the schoolhouse door, seeking to deny life-changing educational opportunities to millions of children whose parents and families desperately seek alternatives to schools that have failed them for too long.”

The debate among minorities over charter schools dates to their inception in the 1990s. Even the NAACP was divided in 1997 about whether supporting charter schools undermined their long-held demand for a better and fairer public education for all children.

The next year, the civil rights group passed a resolution against charter schools arguing they are not subject to the same accountability standards that public schools are.

More resolutions against charter schools followed. In 2010, the NAACP argued that too much emphasis was placed on charter schools. In 2014, the group passed another saying it opposed the “privatization of public schools.”

Given the NAACP’s long history of advocating for equal resources for all traditionally public schools, it was no surprise the board voted in favor a moratorium, said Brown.

“All these schools should be working,” he said. “There should not be inequality in school districts.”

This article was published in partnership with The 74. 

The NAACP may soon have one message for state governments and others looking to expand charter schools in urban communities: don’t.

During its 2016 National Convention last month, the group’s delegates passed a resolution that reaffirmed the association’s opposition to spending public money on charter schools but went a step further by calling for a full moratorium on their “rapid proliferation,”  NAACP interim education director Victor Goode confirmed for our partner site The74Million.org Tuesday.

Before becoming official policy, the NAACP’s resolution must first be ratified by its national board, scheduled to meet in the fall. Julian Vasquez Heilig, a professor of education leadership at California State University, Sacramento and education chair of the NAACP’s California State Conference, says he’s in favor of hitting the pause button.

“I think what the NAACP is saying is: ‘We need to stop and take stock,’” he said.  “It doesn’t say we need to abolish charter schools but we need to reevaluate where we are with charter schools right now.”

The proposed resolution came out of the NAACP’s California-Hawaii State Conference, Heilig said.

As news of the NAACP’s shifting stance on public charter schools circulated on progressive blogs, Twitter and other outlets, the disparate reactions revealed deep divisions among civil rights groups and education leaders over the role charter schools should play in serving kids of color.

“They couldn’t be more out of touch if they ran full speed in the other direction,” Steve Perry, founder of Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut told Roland Martin Tuesday on Martin’s show, NewsOne Now..  “Americans are deciding with their feet that they want to go to better schools.”

But Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau, said on Martin’s show that charter schools are not up to par because they have become tools of segregation and hire teachers who don’t have degrees.

“We have charter schools that were carpetbaggers,” he said. “They come in and before they can figure out the charter school was not prepared to provide the services, the charter school was gone.”

In 2010, the NAACP passed a resolution that rejected “the emphasis” on charter schools and in 2014 the group passed another saying  it opposed the “privatization of public schools.”

The newest resolution, a copy of which was first posted on the Cloaking Inequity blog, calls for legislation that would put parents on the advisory boards of charter schools and strengthen the investigative powers of government agencies that oversee them.

In the proposed resolution, the NAACP delegates cited concerns that charter schools  deepen the segregation of public schools, disproportionately use highly punitive or exclusionary discipline practices and deprive public schools of resources. The resolution even refers to warnings from researchers who argue that charter school expansion in low-income communities mirrors the predatory lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis.

“Weak oversight of charter schools puts students and communities at risk of harm, public funds at risk of being wasted and further erodes local control of public education, the resolution reads.

Research suggests that charter schools are unlikely to harm student achievement in traditional public schools but do affect  traditional public schools’ finances. Meanwhile, a recent report by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project shows that charter schools are more likely to suspend kids of color but at similar rates to traditional public schools.  A series of studies from CREDO at Stanford University have found that in the aggregate charter schools don’t perform better than traditional public schools but often outperform them in urban areas.

“The thing is the evidence is mixed. If you are going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars you would think you would want it be on something that knocks it out of the park,” said Heilig, the California education chair who said he was not speaking as a representative of the NAACP.  “Pre-K knocks it out of the park.”

While civil rights groups and leaders often agree that poor and minority children are more likely to receive a substandard education, they diverge on whether charter schools provide a sound alternative. Some say the schools give poor children and kids of color who would otherwise be trapped in a failing school a better option.

“I have the upmost respect for the NAACP. The NAACP has produced historic change for folks of color,” said Shavar Jeffries, president of Democrats for Education Reform. “ We have tens of thousands of families of color flocking to charter schools and voting with their feet … This moratorium would take choices away from parents.”

Jeffries argued that while there might be some charter schools that are not successfully serving students, the answer is to shut down the bad ones, not put forth a blanket ban on their expansion. If anything, there should be a moratorium on failing traditional public schools, he said.

Even some groups that have teamed up with the NAACP to advocate for stronger accountability measures in the rewrite of the No Child Left Behind Act, depart from the group on the charter school  issue.  The National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group, continues to support the expansion of charters schools and even supported a bill in 2014 that would have steered an additional $50 million towards them.

But the NAACP noted in its resolution that it joins Journey 4 Justice, a national coalition of community organizations that has been particularly active in Chicago, and other groups  in calling for a freeze on charter schools. And on Monday, a handful of organizations affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement released an agenda which among many things also called for a moratorium on charter schools and school closures.

The debate among civil rights groups is far from over. Goode, the NAACP education director, said the group’s position on charters may continue to affect its advocacy in local policy debates. Those could include continuing to fight efforts to lift the charter school cap in Massachusetts or opposing the tax credit scholarship program in Florida, which gives tax breaks to companies that contribute money to send needy kids to private schools.

“The NAACP has historically taken a position in support of public schools,” Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida State Conference of the NAACP,  told The 74 last year. “We don’t support any effort to drain money from public schools. And while it (the scholarship program) in fact, does try to support the best form of education for students, research has not proven that.”

• This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

L.A. mayoral candidates discuss housing, education, city services
The four candidates competing to replace outgoing Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa squared off in South Los Angeles on Friday, debating the respective roles that housing, education, city services and budget cuts play in the lives of area residents. LA Times

LAUSD Collaborates With Parents to Improve New Nutritious Breakfast Program
Euclid is one of 147 Los Angeles Unified School District schools where the new Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) program was implemented earlier this year. By the end of November they will launch the program in 161 more schools. Boyle Heights Beat

State Defunds Program to Fix ‘Slum’ Schools
Eight years after California settled a landmark lawsuit promising hundreds of millions of dollars to repair shoddy school facilities, more than 700 schools still are waiting for their share of funds as students take classes on dilapidated campuses with health and safety hazards. California Watch

NAACP Volunteers to Push for Biggest Education Overhaul Since Brown v. Board of Education
The NAACP is going on the offensive on education, deploying volunteers across the country in its biggest push for a public education overhaul since the nation’s classrooms were ordered desegregated in 1954, the civil rights group said Thursday. Huff Post

State Appointed Administrator of Inglewood School District Steps Down
Kent Taylor, the state administrator in charge of the financially troubled Inglewood School District, resigned from the position Friday after the Department of Education learned of a tentative agreement he made with the local teachers union without approval from the state. LA Times

Credentialing Commission Imposes Tougher Test to Become School Administrator
Alone among states, California has permitted passing a primarily multiple-choice exam as one path to become a school or district administrator. That will change. EdSource

After Generations of Failure, a School and Its Students Head for Success
Jordan High has made big strides in academic performance. There is more to achieve, but its progress is plain to see. LA Times Column (Sandy Banks)

Does Creationism Have a Place at a Public School?
The Christian Club on an L.A. Unified campus has heard presentations from a nationally prominent creationist. A biology teacher believes such events undermine science education. LA Times Column (Steve Lopez)

School Lunches to Be Allowed Unlimited Meats, Grains, USDA Announces
The Agriculture Department is responding to criticism over new school lunch rules by allowing more grains and meat in kids’ meals. Huff Post

2012 National Board Certified Teachers Celebrated
UTLA honored the Class of 2012 National Board Certified Teachers last night in a ceremony at UTLA headquarters. National Board Certification is a voluntary program of teacher assessment that is rigorous and requires 200-400 hours of extra work on top of a teacher’s full teaching load.  UTLA