Teachers Unions' only care about protecting their racket, they don't care about children getting the best education possible. This happens in every state in America. Real choice is only for the rich.
The following piece appeared on the
Daily Signal.
Thanks to a lawsuit, over 92,000 kids, many of them children of
color, from low-income families are at risk to lose their privately
funded scholarships to attend the private schools of their choice.
And to add insult to injury, the NAACP is one of the plaintiffs in this lawsuit.
Last week, the Florida Education Association—the state’s largest
teachers’ union—along with the Florida NAACP and other plaintiffs made a
third attempt to challenge Florida’s tuition tax credit scholarship
program, which allows individuals and companies to receive tax credits
if they donate to a scholarship fund that helps low-income students
attend the school of their choice.
After losing in trial court and then again in the 1st District Court
of Appeals, the Florida Education Association and NAACP, along with
other parties, appealed to the state Supreme Court on Sept. 14. Their
lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of the 15-year-old education
choice program.
In January, over 10,000 people rallied in Tallahassee, Florida, in
support of the scholarship program and heard Martin Luther King III
declare that this fight “is about freedom—the freedom to choose for your
family and your child.”
The NAACP, which was started to support the rights of black people,
is now taking a position that, in my opinion, only hurts black children
and other children of color’s chance of getting a quality education in
this country through access to school choice. Involving itself in
lawsuits against the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program seems
counter to their mission.
I have been involved in advocating for school choice for the last 20
years and I still don’t understand why anyone, especially the NAACP,
would oppose families having a choice in education.
As a young mother raising kids in Washington, D.C., when I found my
son failing in school and honestly needing to be in a different kind of
educational environment, I had no choice but to continue sending him to a
public school that was not in his best interest. Had it not been for
the generosity of a neighbor who saw something special in my son and
provided a scholarship for him to attend a school that better met his
needs, I shudder to think where my son would be now.
Because of that scholarship, he was able to be successful and
graduate and move forward with his life. This is what I’ve seen over
the years with the children who have had access to school choice,
including public charter schools and private and public scholarship
programs like the tuition tax credit scholarship program in Florida.
I’ve watched them succeed when most people expected them to fail.
I’ve seen children go on to college when this possibility had never even
been discussed with them. I’ve seen entire communities come out and
support the families whose children were thriving in schools that their
parents chose. It’s been incredible seeing low-income families obtaining
the American dream because their children were able to obtain a quality
education.
My cousin Rev. Joseph C. Crenchaw was a civil rights leader with the
NAACP and the president of the Little Rock, Arkansas, chapter during the
Little Rock Central High School crisis in the ’60s—a crisis about
children of color having access to equal, quality education. My father,
William Harry Fowler, was the first black assistant superintendent of
the Little Rock School District and a member of the NAACP.
Both my cousin and my father were adamant about making sure black
children were able to receive the best education possible. I was a
beneficiary of that fight and attended Little Rock Central High School
myself and know that it made a difference in my life and the lives of my
classmates.
But now the NAACP, who fought so hard for us to get the education we
deserved in the ’60s, is trying to make it harder for parents to make
the same decisions our parents did then on behalf of their children.
Threats to school choice options like the Florida tuition tax credit
scholarship program create unnecessary limitations for families who
can’t get access to quality education simply because they live in the
“wrong ZIP code” or don’t have resources to attend quality private
schools.
This is exactly why I, and so many others, continue to fight for
school choice options. When I look at the changes in the lives of the
families I serve, I know that I will continue to do whatever I can do to
empower them to determine the direction of their children’s future.
My hope is that the NAACP and other leaders in the African-American
community who support these lawsuits in Florida will spend a moment
talking to the parents and children who have been touched by school
choice.
