Five takeaways from the NAACP’s charter school hearing in Memphis

Declaring their desire to understand the nuances of charter schools in cities like Memphis, members of a national NAACP task force dug in this week to the nitty-gritty of the education reform tool and how it’s impacting everything from funding to equity.

The group’s National Task Force for Quality Education heard more than four hours of presentations Tuesday night from Mid-South education leaders invited to share their insights in the wake of last fall’s call from the civil rights group for a moratorium on charter school growth.

The NAACP has come under fire for its position, with some other civil rights organizations pointing out that charter schools offer options and innovations aimed at educating low-income minority students. The task force was created to drill down on issues such as school accountability, transparency and discipline before sending its report to the board in May.

About 200 people attended the hearing that ended with a public comment period in which about a dozen teachers and parents from Memphis and Chicago spoke.

Here are five themes that dominated the discussion:

Charter schools are not a silver bullet in solving inequities in education.

“The original charter schools were set up to help all of us learn,” said Carol Johnson, who served as superintendent of the former Memphis City Schools. “Too often, they have operated as a singular solution, a stand-alone effort, the one magic bullet that will close all achievement gaps.”

While there’s much division about charter schools, there was consensus that more collaboration is needed among traditional and charter schools to figure how best to address decades of inequities in educating America’s black children.

The NAACP’s call for a charter moratorium does not excuse low-performing traditional schools.

Task force members emphasized that traditional schools need to step up their game, too.

“If we stopped all charter schools today, we’d still have a huge problem,” said Scot Esdaile, a task force member from Connecticut. “There are schools in our communities that have not been performing for a long time. We have to come up with a comprehensive plan to put an end to those schools in our communities also.”

State funding for education is insufficient, no matter what kind of public school it is.

One of the elephants in the room was not actually in the room: state government.

Many presenters jabbed at state leaders for funding that they said is inadequate to oversee Tennessee’s growing charter sector.

About 200 people attended this week’s hearing in Memphis. (Laura Faith Kebede)

But even before the state legislature passed a 2002 law opening the door to charter schools, district leaders complained that Tennessee wasn’t allocating enough money for traditional schools — a charge that has sparked a new round of funding lawsuits in the last two years.

By the same token, charter leaders have lamented the lack of local or state funding for facilities, even though they are part of the public school system, too.

A charter advisory committee in Memphis has made strides in coming up with potential solutions to issues related to charter accountability, including a voluntary fee that charters would pay the district to provide better oversight.

But the money drained from students leaving traditional schools for charters has yet to be addressed, said Teresa Jones, a member of the Shelby County Schools Board of Education.

“The funding model is antiquated and inadequate. It actually pits charters against the local school district,” she said. “I’m not saying charters have no place. … I think the state did not really address that at all and is continuing to not address the funding impact on the local school district.”

The conversation is becoming increasingly important as the United States prepares for a new administration.

President-elect Donald Trump supports school choice programs such as charter schools and tuition vouchers that allow families to spend taxpayer money to send their children to private schools. He’s nominated Michigan’s Betsy DeVos, a proponent of both, to be his secretary of education.

With growing uncertainty on how educational systems will change under a Trump administration, task force members said facts must be established on the impact of charter schools on the education of minority students.

Though Trump hasn’t laid out a detailed plan, his selection of DeVos suggests he’ll aggressively seek to reshape the nation’s public education system.

The NAACP is open to learning about the nuances of charter schools across the nation.

When the NAACP board passed its resolution resolution calling for a pause in charter growth, many charter leaders feared the civil rights organization would generalize charter schools at the expense of those that are working well.

But participants walked away from Tuesday’s hearing saying they felt better as task force members softened their language while learning about the education landscape in Memphis and about Tennessee’s charter law. The state only allows nonprofit operators that are authorized by local school districts or the state.

“When I measure what they’ve done in Tennessee and what the legislation has been, what the laws and standards have been in Tennessee, it’s better than a lot of places, but it still needs a lot of work,” said Gloria Sweet-Love, president of the NAACP’s Tennessee State Conference.

Achievement Schools Superintendent Malika Anderson speaks to the task force. (Laura Faith Kebede)

Task force members learned about Tennessee’s Achievement School District, which relies mostly on charter networks for its school turnaround work. They praised the state-run district for addressing Tennessee’s lowest-performing schools and confining enrollment mostly to neighborhood zones, even as the ASD has begun to lose charter networks and plans to close at least one school.

ASD Superintendent Malika Anderson was asked whether charter schools contribute to segregation in Memphis, where decades of white flight was underscored by the 2014 exit of six white suburban municipalities from the urban district serving mostly poor black students.

“I think there are systemic inequities in public education. Period,” Anderson said. “The systemic inequities that exist in housing, in the job market and in zoning of schools … is creating the kinds of failure that we see in predominantly black neighborhoods. We go where the need is. I don’t think it’s discriminatory to go where this is needed.”

The hearing was the task force’s second of seven planned across the nation. Other hearings are scheduled for Detroit, New York City, Los Angeles, New Orleans and Orlando.