Biddle links to two more black leaders who've come out against the NAACP. Here's Stanley Crouch's op ed in the NY Daily News, with a brilliant idea ("the NAACP should sue the UFT for refusing to allow for the fair evaluation of teachers") and analogy ("an explanation for why oxen never win the Kentucky Derby. Spending more money on them (the UFT solution) will not solve the problem. Oxen will never win. Thoroughbreds are called for - both at the races and in our public schools. The UFT may never realize this, but if the NAACP wants to stay relevant, it must."):

Not knowing when to hold or when to fold, the NAACP refuses to look at public education with any kind of nuance. If it did, it would understand that the UFT and its allies are only hurting the push for fair schools that began with the Brown victory more than a half-century earlier.

Instead of aligning with the UFT to squash charters, the NAACP should sue the UFT for refusing to allow for the fair evaluation of teachers. This most often leads to the very worst teachers staffing schools in minority neighborhoods.

Poor teaching performance is dismissed or explained away with the position that everything will be just fine if teachers are paid more money and given more benefits. The UFT does not admit to its members' inferiority, even if test scores and graduation rates stay stagnant.

Charter schools aren't unionized, which to them is the whole problem. They are able to retain good teachers but fire bad ones. As a result, charter leaders like Canada and Eva Moskowitz, both based in Harlem, are able to focus on results, not the kind of ideological loyalty that makes the UFT an enemy of our children's future.

To believe otherwise would be like accepting an explanation for why oxen never win the Kentucky Derby. Spending more money on them (the UFT solution) will not solve the problem. Oxen will never win. Thoroughbreds are called for - both at the races and in our public schools. The UFT may never realize this, but if the NAACP wants to stay relevant, it must.

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