A powerful and personal story in a NY Post op ed by Rafiq R. Kalam Id-Din II, founder & managing partner of Teaching Firms of America-Professional Preparatory Charter School in Bedford-Stuyvesant:

If this lawsuit succeeds, the 7,000 students registering with 19 schools will have no space this coming school year. Such a monstrous turn of events, facilitated by the venerated civil-rights organization, would destroy high-quality educational opportunities for several thousand of the most disadvantaged black and brown students in the country -- the very children the NAACP purports to serve.

Indeed, how things have changed.

Let me be clear: I am not against unions (though I oppose the UFT), nor do I speak for every charter school (though I stand with those serving their students well).

I've loved the NAACP all my life. As a young black boy in deep poverty in North Philadelphia, I was raised on a steady diet of the NAACP's storied battles to change a world that resisted Brown every step of the way. Today -- as a teacher, lawyer and school leader -- I am the product of public education, a direct beneficiary of Brown.

It is shocking to see the NAACP now stand with the multibillion-dollar UFT, and condemn a publicly funded implementation of the very strategy it pioneered.

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