From Camden, New Jersey, to Los Angeles, funding for charter schools continues to lag behind that of traditional public schools in many cities by an average of $5,721 per student, according to a new report from researchers at the University of Arkansas.

The university’s Department of Education Reform on Wednesday released “Charter School Funding: Inequity in the City,” which compares revenue for charter and traditional public schools from federal, state, local, and non-public sources during the 2013–14 academic year. The research focuses on 14 cities with a high concentration of charter school enrollment.

“[Charter schools] can’t even get close to equity because they have gotten less funding from all forms of government,” said Patrick Wolf, an education professor at the university and one of the study’s authors.

The metropolitan regions with the greatest per-pupil funding disparities were Camden, New Jersey, where the gap was $14,771 per pupil, followed by Washington, D.C., which had a $13,874 disparity. Charter schools received $7,173 less money per student in Oakland, California, and $6,665 less in Los Angeles.

Memphis was the only city, the researchers found, where charters received more money than their district counterparts. There, traditional public schools were awarded $9,720 for every student, while charter schools garnered $10,624 — a $904 difference. Researchers attributed the difference to the ability of those charter schools to attract philanthropic contributions.

Building on previous research by the university, the report’s authors also found that between 2011 and 2014, district-charter funding gaps narrowed in four out of eight cities where there were available data, including a 63 percent decrease in Atlanta, 27 percent in Indianapolis, 25 percent in Houston, and 3 percent in New York City.

Meanwhile, the funding disparity widened by 48 percent in Los Angeles, 42 percent in Denver, 34 percent in Washington, D.C., and 5 percent in Boston.

The authors have faced criticism in the past from other researchers who say their comparisons are inappropriate because, for example, their figures don’t include expenses such as building maintenance, transportation, or new construction that districts face while charter schools might not.

In response, the University of Arkansas researchers acknowledged that school districts may have additional financial constraints, but they maintained that they should remain part of the comparison and not be “obscured.”

The report’s authors also addressed the contention that differences in student populations are the reason district schools receive more money: While it’s true that traditional public schools are more likely to educate special-needs students, they wrote, the data show those funding differences are clear only in Atlanta and Boston.

The researchers also found that local funding streams — property and sales taxes — are the biggest contributors to the disparity between district schools and charters. About half of cities, including Boston, Houston, and Indianapolis, contributed no local funds to charter schools while appropriating money for traditional public schools.

Camden was a notable exception: That city allocates $298 more in local funding to each charter school student, the report said.

Disclosure: The report was funded by the Walton Family Foundation, which also funds The 74.

These days, homeschool parents are more likely to cite a negative school environment than a desire to provide religious instruction, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And though white families still represent the majority of homeschoolers, the ranks of parents of color choosing home education are swelling.

University of Georgia professor Cheryl Fields-Smith has been studying the motivations, habits, and characteristics of black families who elect to educate their children at home since 2006, when she conducted a study of 46 African-American parents who homeschooled their kids. She is the author of multiple studies on the topic and is a founding board member of the International Center for Home Education Research, a nonprofit clearinghouse for academic scholarship on homeschooling.

In an extensive interview with The 74, Fields-Smith discussed the reasons some black families have turned away from public schools, the sacrifices they have made, and what the future might hold for the homeschooling movement. The conversation has been lightly edited for space and clarity.

The 74: How did you get interested in this topic?

Fields-Smith: I did my dissertation on African-American schooling … I had about 20 parents, all representing different families, but they were in their 40s and 50s. I wondered what would happen if I went to the same schools and did a study with the younger parents, but I couldn’t find them because the older parents didn’t know the younger parents. So I started branching out. Somebody said, “Well, I know a woman who is 32, but she homeschools.” And I was like, “Whoa, I didn’t know black people homeschooled.” I did a four-hour interview with her. I had no idea! At the end, I said, “Do you know anybody else who is homeschooling that is African-American?” She said, “Oh, yeah.” I was looking into something else and stumbled across this.

How many African-American families are doing this?

It’s really hard [to figure out] nationwide and even within a state. Some states aren’t even really tracking it. There are several regional and nationally focused organizations on black homeschooling. … Leaders of those organizations are reporting increases in their membership. That’s one thing I would use as a measure.

When was this idea introduced in the African-American community?

Some of the people that responded to my study were what I call veteran homeschoolers. They were still tapped into the network, but they had already homeschooled their children through high school … I find out they were homeschooling in the 1990s, and they shared with me that they had African-American women who mentored them who had been homeschooling before that. That tells me these people might have been homeschooling in the ’80s. Part of it, probably, was because of integration. There seems to be this myth that every African-American wanted to integrate the schools, but we have already documented that people did different things. African-Americans who did not want to put their children in harm’s way or to integrate the schools, they sometimes went to the black Catholic schools. I suspect they also homeschooled.

Were their reasons just about resisting integration, or have they evolved over the years?

In my study, it was resegregation that was an issue. A lot of these families that I interviewed lived in communities where schools had become predominantly black. Their question was, how does my child get a diverse perspective on the world if everything is black? That was some of the rationale, but there were a lot of reasons. Focus on the test. A certain part of my population tried kindergarten and realized there was too much pencil and paper, not enough learning through play and letting the children be children. About 11 of the 46 chose to homeschool from birth. They knew the minute they got pregnant that that was what they wanted to do because they felt that they should be their child’s first teacher. Also, some of them were assigned to schools that had reports of violence, so [they had] safety concerns. One of the predominant themes was a sense of wanting to protect their children from being labeled a troublemaker, or suggestions that they should be in special ed, or even [schools not] acknowledging the intellect of their child because they are so focused on the behavior. Every single one of my families knew people who were homeschooling before they decided to do it. If you have people in your social network that are homeschooling and you get to interact with those children and you see how well they are doing, that could be a motivating factor as well.

Have you seen any other patterns among African-American families who homeschool?

If you look at the broad literature, there is a suggestion that highly religious people homeschool. There is a suggestion that people who are anti-government will homeschool. There is a suggestion that affluent people homeschool. In my study, it completely shows the opposite. Out of 46 families, only four of them had advanced degrees. I had families who had no postsecondary education. I had some that had some college. A lot of them had bachelor’s degrees. For some of them, I got the sense that they were really sacrificing that second income. That meant [they had] to hang on to a car a lot longer than they normally would, or furniture a lot longer. … Instead of being a solid middle-class family with two incomes … they were more of working class or working middle class.

Do you have a sense of the quality of education these parents are giving their children?

The people I talked to definitely go beyond the basic education, which is what the state guarantees every child. The reason I say that is because they tailor the instruction to match their children’s interest. I asked them if they looked at the state standards; I usually got a response that said, “Yes, I’ve seen them, but we teach beyond that.” So whatever the standards are for a particular grade level, they find that that’s lower than where their children are. They also sometimes cross-teach … a fourth-grader, a sixth-grader, and a seventh-grader together on their own individual levels.

Is there anything in the traditional brick-and-mortar schools that their kids are missing out on, or that parents regret wasn’t part of their child’s experience?

Some people might say socialization, but I don’t think that that’s an issue for most of these parents. They are so close-knit in their support groups, churches, community-based organizations, or in sports. So the kids have many outlets for socialization. I do have quotes from the families saying things like [their children] are missing out on learning about drugs and sex and those kind of things, but they will find out about that later. The other thing I would think might be problematic was learning only from your mom or your dad. I think there is something to be said about having multiple teachers and learning different ways of being taught, but many of these families go to an organization that offers a menu of courses.

Is there a pattern, age-wise?

I would say the majority of my parents homeschooled during [their child’s] elementary years. When I asked them [about their] plan for the future, most of them wanted to avoid middle school. They thought maybe by high school they would put them back in. I do remember one or two families that started in middle school or high school. … My families expressed empathy for the public schools; they want the public schools to succeed. It’s just that their particular children weren’t thriving in that environment.

How is homeschooling changing among African-Americans families since the 1970s and ’80s?

I’d say it’s becoming more acceptable among African-American families. Nationally, I know that there are some school districts that are beginning to try to partner with their homeschool community. In North Carolina, for example, the schools are offering homeschooled children [the opportunity] to come in for part of the day to take those types of courses so that those kids can get that quality of education. I think you are going to see more of different kinds of blends so it’s not mom at the kitchen table teaching.

Have you come across anything surprising in your research?

The diversity within the group surprised me. It’s not all [married couples], wealthy people, well-educated families, well-to-do. It’s everyday kinds of folks that are able to homeschool here in Georgia. African-American identity is really critical. If you send your child to public school and do not do anything at home with them to teach them the contributions of African-Americans and what it means to be African-American, then your child’s identity can suffer. I know I had to supplement that with my kids, had to make sure that they knew their black history, because it’s not really being taught in public school. We get one month, and usually it harps on the same people. We have a very rich legacy of contributing to this country, and more than just in entertainment and sports.

This article was published in partnership with The 74.

Sen. Jeff Sessions is sworn in Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearing. (Photo: Getty Images)

Attorney General-designate Jeff Sessions maintained his opposition Tuesday to a federal program that grants temporary legal status to undocumented youth, but he repeatedly dodged questions about what to do with the hundreds of thousands of young people already enrolled in the program.

Responding a question from Sen. Lindsey Graham during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions said he believes that as president, Donald Trump would have the authority to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

“It’s an executive order, really, a memorandum of the Department of Homeland Security. It would certainly be constitutional, I believe, to end that order,” said Sessions, currently a Republican senator from Alabama.

President Barack Obama created DACA by executive order in 2012, giving legal status to so-called DREAMers — youth who arrived in the United States before age 16, attend school or have graduated from high school, and have no criminal convictions. The program also provides work permits and relief from deportation.

• Read more: 

Bracing for Trump, LA school officials continue to pass resolutions opposing feared policies

Los Angeles DACA students fear deportation but remain hopeful they can pursue their college dreams

During the presidential campaign, Trump vowed to end the program and ramp up deportation of undocumented immigrants, prompting concerns from some activist groups and lawmakers that the DACA list, which is maintained by Homeland Security, could be used to provide names for expulsions.

In an interview with 60 Minutes after the election, Trump appeared to soften his approach, saying his administration would focus on undocumented immigrants with criminal records and make a determination about others later.

As attorney general, Sessions would be instrumental in any administration decisions about DACA’s future.

Sessions sidestepped a follow-up question from Graham about what he would do with DREAMers who already have temporary legal status. Lawmakers, he responded, need to fix the country’s immigration system.

Perhaps the most heated exchange was with Sen. Richard Durbin, who accused Sessions of offering no evidence that he would handle the issue of immigration fairly and humanely. “Tell me I’m wrong,” Durbin said.

“You are wrong, Senator Durbin. I’m going to follow the laws passed by Congress,” Sessions said. “I do believe, if you continually go through a cycle of amnesty, that you undermine the respect for the law.”

Asked again later what would happen to youth already in the program, Sessions said, “we are not able financially or any other way to seek out and remove everybody that’s in the country illegally. President Trump has indicated that criminal aliens—like President Obama has indicated—certainly are the top group of people.”

Sessions added: “Let’s fix this system. Then we can work together after this lawfulness has been ended. Then we can ask the American people and enter into a dialogue about how to compassionately treat people who have been here a long time.”

“That does not answer the question about 800,000 who would be left in the lurch, whose lives would be ruined,” Durbin responded.

As a senator, Sessions has led the charge in Congress to resist efforts to reform the nation’s immigration system. In 2013, he was one of the most vocal opponents of a comprehensive immigration bill from a bipartisan group of senators including Republican Marco Rubio of Florida and Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey.

Six years earlier, he had spearheaded Senate opposition to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and supported by then-President George W. Bush. Lawmakers decided not to vote on the bill.  

Since Trump announced his decision to tap Sessions to be attorney general, civil rights groups, pundits, and liberal organizations have urged Congress to reject his nomination, in part because of his record on immigration.

“During his time in public service, Sen. Sessions has been unwilling to protect the laws that serve to safeguard and enhance the well-being of vulnerable communities, and his confirmation as attorney general would be detrimental to the advancement of our nation,” Maria Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino, said Tuesday. “Sessions was unfit to serve as a federal judge in 1986 and is unfit to serve as attorney general today.”

This article was published in partnership with The 74. 

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

If there was any question whether President-elect Donald Trump would make a U-turn on his immigration agenda after the election, it was quickly answered with this month’s announcement that he was tapping Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) to be attorney general.

For years, Sessions has led the charge in Congress to curb, repeal, and resist efforts to reform the nation’s immigration system, including repeated criticisms of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which grants undocumented youth temporary legal status and freedom from deportation.

While DACA falls under the Department of Homeland Security, Sessions, as a member of Trump’s Cabinet, would have the president’s ear as he decides whether to maintain the program, cancel it, or even use personal information on DACA applications to ramp up deportations of participants and their families.

• Read more: Los Angeles DACA students fear deportation but remain hopeful they can pursue their college dreams

“The incoming administration has promised to end DACA, and based on the individuals who President-elect Trump is nominating or hoping to appoint, such as Jeff Sessions and his immigration adviser Kris Kobach, we have no belief that President-elect Trump is walking back on that promise,” said Jose Magaña-Salgado, managing policy attorney for the Immigrant Legal Resources Center. “We expect, though we don’t know for sure, that DACA in some way or another will be ended.”

Thanu Yakupitiyage, senior communications manager for the New York Immigration Coalition, echoed those sentiments.

“Given his track record, obviously we are concerned,” she said. “Whether DACA gets canceled as a program is on President-elect Trump, but obviously it’s his cabinet that will inform his opinion.”

A career battling immigration

Sessions — who was once denied confirmation for a judgeship by former colleagues concerned about a string of racist comments — boasts proudly of his Senate record on quashing increased immigration. He argues on his website that it is “the unprecedented flow of immigration that is sapping the wages and job prospects of those living and working here today.”

In 2007, he led Senate opposition to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and supported by then-President George W. Bush. The bill, which aimed to pair increased border security with a pathway to citizenship, attracted criticism from both sides of the political aisle. In the end, lawmakers decided not to vote on it.

“The Congressional Budget Office found that this legislation would have allowed 8.7 million more illegal aliens in the United States over the next 20 years,” Sessions said in a statement at the time. “We would be squandering a historic opportunity to reform our immigration system if we accepted policies that reduced illegality by only 13 percent. We can and must do better.”

Sessions waged a similar fight in 2013, when the so-called Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group of senators including Republican Marco Rubio of Florida and Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey, put forth a comprehensive immigration-reform bill. Sessions became one of the bill’s most vocal opponents, arguing that it would grant legal status to some 11 million undocumented immigrants and hurt U.S. workers.

“Our duty is to represent the people that are here, the people whose parents fought the wars and made America great first,” Sessions told the Los Angeles Times. “And even though we have sympathy for the people who want to come here — and even those who’ve been here a long time illegally … we need to be sure that what we do does not place our workers, our people who need jobs, at an adverse advantage.”

After the Senate passed the measure, Sessions distributed to House members a book brimming with data and talking points against the bill; House Republicans decided not to vote on it.

In 2014, when Congress was debating how to respond to the swelling numbers of unaccompanied Central American children swarming the border, Sessions argued that any legislation addressing the crisis should also prevent Obama from expanding DACA.

Earlier this year, Sessions praised a Supreme Court decision opposing an Obama program that would have given deportation relief and work permits to undocumented parents of American children or permanent residents. He also introduced legislation that would return unaccompanied undocumented children attempting to cross the Mexican border back to their home country.

Sessions’ rhetoric on immigration persisted right through the election. In his speech at the Republican National Convention, he accused Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton of embracing “amnesty” for undocumented immigrants while praising Trump for his willingness to build a wall along the Mexican border.

‘We’re going to make a determination’

Shortly after the election, Trump gave an interview to 60 Minutes that some took as an indication that he might be softening his approach to DACA-eligible immigrants.

“What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably 2 million, it could be even 3 million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate,” he said. “After the border is secured and after everything gets normalized, we’re going to make a determination on the people that you’re talking about, who are terrific people, they’re terrific people, but we are going to make a determination at that.”

But DACA supporters such as Magaña-Salgado fear that Sessions’ appointment signals that Trump not only will make good on his promise to end the program but also could target DACA participants, as well as relatives listed on their applications, for deportation.

They also worry that Sessions could change the deportation process. As attorney general, he would control the makeup of the Board of Immigration Appeals, the nation’s highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws. The board can determine the scope of due process for immigrants, their eligibility for benefits and the circumstances under which they can contest their removal from the country, Magaña-Salgado said.

Finally, Sessions would be less likely to step in and prevent states from passing anti-immigration laws, advocates said.

“My reaction … has been an extreme amount of dismay, disappointment,” Magaña-Salgado said of Sessions’ nomination. “And furious fear that our nation’s top law-enforcement official, who has a history of essentially advocating for the trampling of civil rights across every spectrum, is going to be in a position to effectuate those philosophies.”

This article was published in partnership with The 74. 

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.

Chelsea Clinton at her 1997 graduation from Sidwell Friends Academy in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Getty Images)

The year was 1993.

President Bill Clinton had just beat Republican incumbent George H. Bush and the first family was facing an early political test: Where would they send Chelsea Clinton, their 12-year-old daughter and only child, to school?

On the campaign trail, Bill Clinton had portrayed himself as an ardent supporter of public education. He even sent his daughter to Horace Mann Magnet Middle School, a public school in Little Rock, Arkansas where 59 percent of the students were black and 41 percent white.  (Today, out of some 760 students, 58 percent are black, 26.5 percent are white, 11.7 are Hispanic and 1.7 percent are Asian.)

Local Washington, D.C. officials invited the first family to choose a city school as a show of good faith. But days before Clinton’s inauguration, the family announced that Chelsea would be attending one of the region’s most exclusive private institutions: Sidwell Friends School.

“It’s an academically challenging school,” Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos said at the time. “And it’s a school that Chelsea and her parents feel that she’ll be challenged and productive and happy in.”

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Chelsea Clinton would join an elite group of students that included the children of  Washington Post publisher Donald E. Graham, former New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, and New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley.

Criticism of the Clintons’ school choice was swift and broad.

Michael Casserly, the executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of city public school systems, called the Clintons’ decision an “unfortunate vote of no confidence in urban education.”

Enrolling Chelsea in a public school “would have been an excellent opportunity to spur greater parental involvement in urban public schools and to work hand in glove with the public schools from both a political and personal standpoint” he said.

Former D.C. school board member Sandra Butler-Truesdale told The Washington Post that if Clinton had picked a public school, “it would have boosted the morale of educators in this city. It would have made such a big difference in the way education is delivered.”

Rebuke also came from national political figures. Then-Secretary of Education and now U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander told CBS Morning News that the first family made a wise choice for their daughter — Alexander’s son had just graduated from Sidwell Friends — but were being hypocritical because Clinton opposed Republican calls for school vouchers that would have helped needy parents make a similar choice.

Bill Clinton had argued that vouchers would drain money from public schools; Hillary Clinton also opposes the policy.

With tuition at Sidwell Friends back then more than $10,000 a year, some 27 percent of its 1,030 students were minorities when Chelsea Clinton was admitted. Sidwell Friends remains  popular among Washington’s powerful families, most famously President Barack Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha. The school’s tuition has risen to $39,360, with only 23 percent of students receiving any kind of financial aid, according to the its website. The school was founded in 1883 by Thomas W. Sidwell to uphold the Quaker principles of peace and justice.

Even former president Jimmy Carter, who was the first president in 71 years to send a child to a D.C. public school while in office, said he was “disappointed.” His daughter, Amy, attended public schools throughout her four years in Washington, including Stevens Elementary School and Hardy Middle School, a predominantly black school. Amy Carter went onto Brown University but was asked to leave her sophomore year. She finished at Memphis College of Art and then got her master’s at Tulane University.

Chelsea went onto Stanford University (and Columbia and Oxford); Malia will enter Harvard in fall 2017 after taking a gap year. The Bush daughters, Jenna and Barbara, had both graduated from Austin High School in 2000, the spring before their father took office. Jenna went onto the University of Texas and Barbara became the fourth-generation Bush to attend Yale.

Amid the Sidwell storm, the Clinton family defended the choice saying, “we believe this decision is best for our daughter at this time in her life based on our changing circumstances.” Hillary Clinton added later that a private school would allow the family to better maintain Chelsea’s privacy—a sentiment she reiterated in her 2003 memoir, “Living History.”

“Our decision about where to send Chelsea to school had inspired passionate debate inside and outside the Beltway, largely because of its symbolic significance. I understood the disappointment felt by advocates of public education when we chose Sidwell Friends, a private Quaker school, particularly when Chelsea attended public schools in Arkansas. But the decision for Bill and me rested on one simple fact: private schools were private property, hence off limits to news media. Public schools were not. The last thing we wanted was television cameras and news reporters following our daughter throughout the school day as they had when President Carter’s daughter, Amy, attended public school.”

The press during Bill Clinton’s administration would, in fact, develop a general no-coverage rule when it came to the First Family’s children.

On Chelsea’s graduation day from Sidwell, though the Clintons did not seem to mind the public attention. During a two-hour outdoor ceremony, President Clinton gave a short, bittersweet talk in which he instructed the high school graduates to “indulge your folks” if they seem sad as they remember all the milestones their children have reached. Obama actually declined an invitation to speak at Malia’s graduation, saying he would be wearing dark glasses and crying.

Hillary Clinton also waxed nostalgic in her syndicated newspaper column that week: “Like parents across the country,” she wrote. “We find ourselves fighting back tears as we contemplate what our days will be like when our daughter leaves the nest to embark on a new stage of life.”

Tonight, it will be Hillary embarking on a new stage of life — and history — when Chelsea introduces her mother, who will make her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

(Photo: Getty Images)

When school district administrators call parents at home it can often lead to tension-filled conversations. But in the case of Laura and Michael McIntyre, it led to criminal charges and a lawsuit.

In 2004, the McIntyres decided to take their nine children out of private school and homeschool them in an empty space inside a motorcycle dealership owned by Michael’s twin brother.

The twin brother would later tell authorities that while he saw the kids sing and play instruments he never saw them reading books, doing math or using school equipment. He overheard one child say that there was no need to study because they were “going to be raptured,” according to court documents.

The McIntyres’ local school district ordered the family to provide evidence that they were educating their children; the couple refused, prompting authorities to file truancy charges against the youth. Those charges were later dropped but the McIntyres filed a subsequent lawsuit against the school district, claiming their “constitutional educational liberty interests” were violated.

Welcome to the Wild West of education regulation.

In recent years, the share of parents choosing to educate their kids at home has exploded, fueled by their dissatisfaction with public schools, dislike for the Common Core standards, and a desire to impart moral values on their children. Even former presidential hopeful Ben Carson jumped on the homeschooling bandwagon last year when he told The 74’s Editor-in-Chief Campbell Brown in a November interview that, “the best education is home school:”

This new generation of homeschooling parents is a mobilized political force that has successfully advocated for curtailing what they see as onerous state requirements and too much government oversight over what is ultimately, they say, a family affair. But some child welfare advocates say the declining regulation of homeschooling may mean more abused or poorly educated children will slip through the cracks.

“I’m very sympathetic to the idea that part of the value of homeschooling is the flexibility it gives parents. There needs to be substantial modesty on the part of the state on imposing requirements and regulations,” said Robert Kunzman, a professor at Indiana University and managing director of the International Center for Home Education Research.

“At the same time, children have their own interests at stake. A lot of times it goes in line with the parents, but not always. Children have a profound interest in gaining basic skills in literacy and numeracy.”

The modern homeschooling movement was born four decades ago out of the frustration of two groups of parents: conservative Christians who wanted to give their kids a morally instructive education and progressives who held anti-establishment views and thought that kids learn best outside the confines of traditional schools.

“They both emerged in the 1970s, really gained steamed in the 80s, and the 90s is where we started to see growth,” said Kunzman.

The number of students between the ages of 5 and 17 who were homeschooled increased to 1.77 million in 2012 up by about 677,000 from 2003, according to recently released data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

Nowadays, religious conviction is a declining but still significant influence in parents’ decision to educate their children at home. In 2007, 36 percent of parents said their top reason for choosing to homeschool was to provide their children religious and moral instruction while only 21 percent gave either of those reasons as their top choice in 2011. The primary reason parents gave was a concern about the environment at schools outside their home, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

The recent passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act preserves any regulation of homeschooling with the states, which impose vastly different requirements on parents teaching their kids at home.

About 14 states only require parents to notify a school district or state office of their decision to teach their kids at home including Delaware, California and Wisconsin. Ten states don’t require any parent notification including Texas, Illinois and New Jersey.

Other states have more stringent requirements for homeschooling parents. In Oregon parents are required to notify their local school district and have their kids tested at the end of grades 3, 5, 8, and 10.

Pennsylvania parents must tell their local superintendent they are homeschooling their kids, have obtained a high school degree themselves, provide at least 180 days of instruction in a set range of subjects and maintain a portfolio of their child’s test results and academic records. Homeschooled students must also be tested in grades 3, 5, and 8 and the local superintendent can intervene if progress isn’t being made.

The Coalition of Responsible Home Education, founded in 2013 by homeschooled alumni, argues that such oversight can help authorities identify a student who is being abused or underserved by their parents.

The group started “Homeschooling’s Invisible Children,” a database of horrifying cases of abused homeschooled children. Their goal was to shine “a light on the dark side of homeschooling,” according to its website. Among the examples the database cites. is the case of 17-year-old Simonne Say, who died late last year as part of what authorities suspect to be a joint suicide with her mother. Say’s mother, Elizabeth Genthner, had a history of mental illness, alcohol abuse and drug-related arrests and contact with the Florida Department of Children and Families but was permitted to homeschool Say.

When there are few regulations, “it is easier for (parents) to hide abuse. It is easier for them to escalate abuse,” said the coalition’s executive director, Rachel Coleman.

But the group faces an uphill battle convincing more states to increase their oversight of homeschooling parents. Over the years, groups such as the Home School Legal Defense Association and other like-minded state organizations have successfully lobbied state lawmakers to walk back some requirements.

Earlier this year, South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed a law that eliminated a requirement for homeschooled kids to be tested after the second grade. Now, tests are only required as students finish the 4th, 8th and 11th grades.

In New York, one of the most heavily regulated homeschool sectors in the country, lawmakers have proposed a bill that would eliminate the requirement for homeschooling parents to allow them enough wiggle room to administer their own standardized tests.

“From our standpoint, we are just trying to help kids achieve their high school diploma,” said Tim Ragazzo, the legislative director for state Senator Joseph Robach, R-Rochester, one of the bill’s sponsors.

Coleman is skeptical.

“That’s a terrible idea to let the parents administer the test,” she said. “There is no accountability there at all.”

Ragazzo said the impetus for the proposed legislation came from concerns expressed by LEAH, a Christian-based homeschooling parent organization, that the requirements imposed by the state were too onerous and outdated. He added that state representatives are still open to making changes to the proposed legislation.

“The senator wants to help kids move towards their future in whatever way they need,” said Regazzo.

Despite the controversies brought up by the McIntyre case, which is still pending Texas lawmakers have yet to propose any changes to the state’s homeschooling laws. There, homeschooling parents are required to give their children an education in reading, arithmetic and citizenship but do not have to notify any local authorities of their decision to homeschool—a fact that keeps some of the state’s mobilized parent base happy.

“Texas is one of the more freer states when it comes to homeschooling in general,” said Stephen Howsley, public policy analyst at The Texas Homeschool Coalition. “In Texas, if you want to homeschool you literally pull your kid out of public school.”

This article was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

Two and a half years ago, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa left his office steering the nation’s second-largest city with a legacy of pushing the kind of changes in the school system that education reformers relish.

Trying to make good on a campaign promise to fix the city’s schools, he fought the teachers union in court to limit seniority-protected layoff policies (he won) and supported another court challenge that sought to incorporate student test scores into teacher evaluations (no clear victory yet on that one).

He successfully lobbied lawmakers to wrest control of the school district from its elected school board (the courts turned him down), aggressively expanded choices for parents, including charter schools, founded the non-profit Partnership for Los Angeles Schools to take over the city’s lowest-performing schools and raised a boatload of money to help elect reform-oriented school board members.

Since leaving office Villaraigosa, 63, who drew national attention as the city’s first modern-day Hispanic mayor, has been stumping for Hillary Clinton, teaching at USC and traveling the country giving corporate speeches. Most recently, the man who tried to remake the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District while in office has been singled out as a likely gubernatorial candidate.

In an extensive interview last week, we spoke with the former mayor about the political challenges he faced, what he told Eli Broad about his foundation’s $490 million proposal to dramatically expand charter schools (he’s for it with some caveats) and national education controversies. Take, for example, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case before the Supreme Court in which justices are weighing whether charging mandatory union dues to cover costs for activities like collective bargaining violates teachers’ free speech rights. The justices heard oral arguments in January and will have to issue a decision by the end of their term in June. If the Supreme Court sides with the plaintiffs, their ruling could severely hamper a major fundraising vehicle for teachers unions across the country but also support educators who feel union leaders use their money on political causes they don’t agree with.

Here’s what Villaraigosa had to say about Friedrichs: 

I do not support the appellants in this matter. … In a democratic society, it’s critical that workers have an opportunity to organize and collectively bargain their wages, their hours, their working conditions. … I believe the agency fee issue that is particularly in question is one that is very important. Unions have a duty (to provide) fair representation. I worked for them for eight years. They are, by law, required to represent people, even if they are not union members. I think it’s important that those non-union members pay their dues so that they can be represented fairly. I do not support the plaintiffs in that matter at all. … In fact, I am vehemently against it. … At the same time I am vehemently against the status quo where African-American children and English language learners are relegated to the bottom. … We have to stand up for these kids too. You can be pro-union while at the same time stand up for the civil rights of these kids.

On the Great Public Schools Now initiative, a $490 million proposal by the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and other advocates to increase charter schools, a plan Villaraigosa said he is heavily involved with.

Well, I’ve already said I’m open to providing parents and particularly parents of failing and low-performing schools with better options. I support charters, successful charters. But I have also said that I believe that we should include a broader range of schools including traditional public schools that want to set a higher standard. … So what I said to Eli and them is I could support expanding charters, even dramatically. But that effort should be open to a much broader cross section of models (such as) traditional public schools (and) hybrids like my own, not just charter. … I think initially there were some who thought it should just be charters, but I think they have been convinced that in order to be successful we have to work together. We have to collaborate with the union, with parents, with charters (and) traditional public schools to improve the quality of education now in (Los Angeles) Unified. And we can only do that together.

On the perception that education reform is often implemented top-down and engineered by an elite group:

As a general proposition there is no question that most of what’s put forth as public policy priorities and the changes that emanate from them … come from the top down. Historically, that’s true. Actually, I think, with respect to the (education reform) effort, what distinguishes it is that it is more focused on parent empowerment and involvement. They have often been, particularly poor parents, missing in the equation. They have not been given their due as stakeholder. They are the ultimate consumer. … This notion that we drop off our kids and aren’t responsible for their education is misguided and a recipe for failure. We have got to include parents. We have got to engage them.

On what would need to happen politically and policy-wise to improve Los Angeles schools:

I think the Partnership Schools is the model. I think we’ve got to set higher standards. We’ve got to focus on teacher training and (select) principals, who as a first priority are instructional leaders, who are collaborative with parents and teachers. … I think at some point we are going to need more resources, but as I said to many people, “Before the public will give you more resources … they’ve got to see that you are doing more with the money you got.”

On his nonprofit, the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools:

If we were a school district we would be as large as Santa Monica-Malibu (Unified School District). It’s the largest turnaround effort in the country (and) these are traditional public schools. I think some of the elements of success we have (are) we hire educational leaders with a track record of turning failing schools into successful ones. (We hire) people who set high standards for the kids and people who understand that it’s important to collaborate with both parents and teachers while at the same time putting the interest of kids first. …When we started out there was a 44 percent graduation rate (at Los Angeles Unified). By the time I left there was a 72 percent graduation rate. … I’m very proud of what we did. We set a higher bar. … We’ve got to continue. We can’t rest on our laurels. … We should have (a) 100 percent graduation rate for virtually every one of those kids.

Does he have any regrets about the way he handled education issues in the city: 

I initially felt that we needed someone (to be held) accountable for success in our schools. And I do not believe that seven people, a (school) board and less than 10 percent of the (city’s) voters is the best mechanism for accountability and responsibility. I thought that as mayor, the buck should stop with me. I was willing to partner with the school district to improve our schools. Obviously, I was successful in getting the legislature to approve that … and give the mayor a role in LA. But in the end the courts … overturned that legislation so I had to go to a Plan B. Plan B was to help elect a group of school board members that would be more cooperative and set higher standards and give parents more choices. … That was such a radical paradigm shift that it created a furor and a level of conflict that was never my intention to create.

Was he surprised by the pushback he received in response to part of his education agenda:

Yeah, remember I worked for the teachers union. I believe in unions. I am unabashedly a progressive. I didn’t understand why there would be so much pushback. My schools were union, but I also believed in parental choice and, particularly for kids who were in low-performing to failing schools, I believe their parents had a right to a choice and that they had a right to go to a school where their kids could succeed. I was surprised at the pushback.

Why he was willing to engage in political fights over education issues: 

My only motivation was fighting for the civil rights of poor kids. I tell people it’s really simple. I recognize the historical nature of our election, the first (Hispanic to become mayor) in 133 years. I felt that the role of the first is not to bang on your chest and say how great I am. The role of the first is to acknowledge that you are here on the shoulders of others and to open up the door for the rest. I thought the only way you could do that is through education. I don’t think anyone was looking to engage in the kind of … conflict we had for eight years. … I moved ahead (be)cause I believe this issue is the most important issue facing the state and the nation. When you look at the Black Lives Matter movement, and you look at the growing poverty in California and America, you got to ask yourself why. The answer is simple: Too many of our kids aren’t going to graduate from high school and go to college. Communities of color, oftentimes, more of them are going to penal institutes than institutions of higher learning. I just don’t believe that that’s a paradigm that can work for us.

On whether the union was his biggest obstacle to bringing about more change in Los Angeles schools:

I always tell people, it was a city and a state that refused to invest in these kids. … Money does matter. We have failed as a society to make investments in these people, to create a safety net for them, and we wonder why there are so many disaffected people, angry with their circumstances. They have lost hope. I think it’s incumbent on all of us. It wasn’t just the unions. We all say we want better schools, but we haven’t wanted to invest in them in the way that we should.

Who do you listen to on education issues: 

Well, historically it was Ramon Cortines, John Deasy, Marshall Tuck (and) Joan Sullivan … but also parents (and) teachers. I don’t think we can listen to one stakeholder group to the detriment of the rest. Teachers and the unions are important, so are parents. I think the community overall is important.

When will you decide on running for governor:

I would just say that sooner rather than later…I don’t want to talk too much about (the race for) governor.

What advice would you give students about their education: 

I’d give it to the parents. I’d say, “Put your children in the best school you can.”

This article was produced in partnership with The74Million.org.