DeVos, charters, & ‘school choice’ hurt African American children

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and charter school operators have denounced the NAACP’s opposition to charter school expansion, arguing that charters provide the best path to improve educational opportunities for African Americans. Charter operators cite what they claim are charters’ higher test scores, graduation rates, and college admissions.

But charters (a.k.a. “school choice”) hurt African American children by draining critical funds from public education. Charters’ “success," limited and questionable though it is, is due to two factors.

First, they enjoy a self-selected and sometimes hand-selected cohort of students. Second, they employ a young, underpaid, overworked workforce that allows them to save money on salaries, healthcare, and pensions: money they can use to have smaller class sizes and fund extracurricular programs that traditional public schools can’t afford.