Paul Peterson and Marty West have a great piece in today’s WSJ showing how increasingly popular charter schools are among African-Americans. Despite that fact, the NAACP continues to oppose charters.
Given that 64% of African-Americans surveyed stated that they supported the formation of charter schools (up from 49% last year), Peterson and West remark that: “It’s time civil-rights groups listened to their communities.”
Unfortunately, Peterson and West tell us, the NAACP has picked their political allies in the teacher unions over their constituents:
By casting their lot firmly with teachers unions, the leadership of the NAACP and the Urban League hope to preserve their power and safeguard their traditional sources of financial support. Not only is this is a cynical strategy, it ignores where African-Americans and Hispanics are on the issue. Thankfully, the Obama administration is paying attention to the needs of low-income, minority communities and not to their purported leaders.
You can read more about the survey over at Education Next.
Jay P. Greene's Blog 
Be nice to know how big a percentage of the NAACP’s membership are teachers. Other then that I can’t see much reason for the NAACP to support the public education status quo provided there isn’t some consideration being supplied by the NEA to garner support.
That’s a pretty big “provided.” What I’d like to know is not just how many NAACP members are teachers, but how much of NAACP revenues are directly or indirectly provided by the unions themselves.
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