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The NAACP’s Board of Directors this weekend ratified a resolution that calls for a freeze on the expansion of charter schools.

The board cited the schools’ lack of transparency, accountability, and harsh disciplinary practices as some of the reasons for the decision. The NAACP also believes federal dollars used to fund charter schools could be better spent on making traditional public schools better.

In a statement, the NAACP said:

“While we have reservations about charter schools, we recognize that many children attend traditional public schools that are inadequately and inequitably equipped to prepare them for the innovative and competitive environment they will face as adults. Under-funded and under-supported, these traditional public schools have much work to do to transform curriculum, prepare teachers, and give students the resources they need.”

The National Alliance for Public Schools called the NAACP’s decision “misguided.”

Dr. Steve Perry, Founding Head of Schools of Capital Preparatory Magnet School, said on Monday’s edition of NewsOne Now that the NAACP “is stalwart in their position regardless of the fact that it’s based upon specious information and cherry-picked data.”

Perry, who recently partnered with Sean “P. Diddy” Combs to open a charter school in Harlem this year, expressed his opinion that the national chapter of the NAACP is “significantly detached from what’s happening at the local level,” adding his school in Connecticut was opened as a result of a local branch chapter that “was a staunch supporter of school choice.”

Questioning the motives of the NAACP’s board of directors, Perry said, “When the overwhelming majority of Black children are forced into failed schools … Why on earth would you support a system that has never served Black people?” 

Perry continued, “Why would you expect that that same system with its current DNA would produce anything other than which it’s produced – which is an under educated African-American population that is clawing its way up through the social and economic ranks.”

Calling the resolution “absurd,” Dr. Perry alleged, “The NAACP national headquarters has received a significant amount of money from the teachers’ union. The only organization to call for a moratorium on charter schools in particular, because they are non-union, are the teachers’ unions,” Perry said.

The well-known and respected educator claimed the NAACP resolution “is a teachers ‘union statement that they have implanted in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s national headquarters.”

Watch Roland Martin, Dr. Steve Perry, and the NewsOne Now panel discuss the NAACP resolution calling for a moratorium on charter schools.

This Friday, watch the “Is School Choice The Black Choice?” town hall starting at 7AM ET on TV One.

Editor’s note: NewsOne Now reached out to NAACP President and CEO Cornell Brooks and Hilary Shelton, Senior Vice President for Advocacy and Policy from the Washington Bureau of the NAACP, for comment. Both have yet to respond.

PHOTO CREDIT: Getty

Watch NewsOne Now with Roland Martin, in its new time slot on TV One.

SEE ALSO:

P. Diddy Founds New Charter School In Harlem: This Is “A Dream Come True”