It's the NAACP vs. the schoolchildren

In my last email, I included a blog post by Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.  Here's an op ed he wrote in Feb. 2010, when the NAACP previously joined the union's lawsuit:

 

Has all of that rich history and litigation on behalf of educational equality been forgotten and sacrificed on the altar of expediency and convenience for students who don't want to leave the comforts of mediocrity?

 

Somebody's got to save us from the NAACP's war on educational standards. It has attacked standardized tests as "culturally biased." It has objected to competency testing of teachers for fear that bad teachers who happen to be black might lose their jobs in a competitive educational marketplace. It has even toyed with the stupid notion that minority kids think and learn "differently" than, say, white and Asian kids, and therefore deserve separate schools.

 

Is there no end to such racial idiocy?

 

…Shame on the NAACP. The remedy to failing schools is at hand: Close them. Let the reorganized and smaller schools hold teachers accountable for their students' academic achievement, as some of the better charter schools are doing. Examples abound - and include those vibrant schools chartered by the Center for Educational Innovation and no-nonsense schools like the KIPP Academy, where alibis for failure aren't accepted. At successful public schools, academic achievement is valued, and the staff values kids who, in turn, excel because they want to be successful - because they want their slice of the American pie.

 

The parents of the kids at these successful public schools don't cry racism. Instead, they know what a difference a good school makes. They know that a good school is the place where cultural superstitions are overcome and where great teachers and staff welcome the measurement of their own success. They know - unlike the NAACP - that a mind is neither black nor white, and, is always a terrible thing to waste.

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It's the NAACP vs. the schoolchildren

By Michael Meyers
Special to NYDailyNews.com

Thursday, February 4th 2010, 4:00 AM

www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/02/04/2010-02-04_its_the_naacp_vs_the_schoolchildren.html