Charter schools spark a polarizing debate in Atlanta’s black community

Blacks and their views on charter schools are crucial as Georgia grapples with an ever growing number of schools deemed to be “chronically failing,” and as state leaders make fixing them a political priority. November’s failed constitutional amendment for an Opportunity School District, in which the state would have taken over failing schools, many of them with black majorities, was one of the hottest state issues on the ballot, and Gov. Nathan Deal and lawmakers are looking for another approach this year.

The event at the church, "Is School Choice the Black Choice," was coordinated by the state's main advocacy group for charter schools, the Georgia Charter Schools Association. It was prompted by the NAACP's controversial call last year for a moratorium on new charter schools.

The call for a moratorium inspired a backlash from school choice advocates, black and white. Proponents contended that charter schools work well, especially for black students from low-income households who would otherwise be stuck in a low-performing traditional school.

Black people can start their own charter schools, so they’re “an option for you to control your own destiny without waiting for someone else to fix it,” said one the panelists, Roland Martin, a TV interviewer, commentator, author and school choice advocate.

His adversary on the dais was Francys Johnson, president of the Georgia NAACP, who alleged that charter school advocates are aligned with opponents of raising the minimum wage and “the same folks who sell us out every day.” He said charter schools contribute to the racial segregation that has endured in Georgia schools and are held to lower standards of transparency and accountability. “Let’s stop expanding until we hold public schools and charter schools to the same standard,” he said.

The other speakers were Atlanta school board chairman Courtney English, a former Atlanta Public Schools teacher and now candidate for city council, and Kevin Chavous, a former D.C. councilman who sits on the board of the American Federation for Children. Chavous blamed the dropout rate in metro Atlanta schools on a “one size fits all” approach to education, a common criticism of the traditional educational system.

English pointed to another oft-cited cause: “The single biggest crushing factor that is absolutely debilitating to our kids’ ability to move forward is poverty.”

In 2012, voters overwhelmingly approved a referendum establishing the state's power to authorize new charter schools. That authority previously resided only with local school districts, which some proponents felt were moving too slowly. A recent poll for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that 61 percent of registered voters polled still favor expansion of school choice.

But only 54 percent of blacks did, compared with 64 percent of whites.

The debate came amid what Georgia leaders are calling a crisis: a growing number of schools deemed by the state to be "chronically failing." A recent count by the Governor's Office of Student Achievement, which sets the scores on state measures that define failing, pegged the number at 153, up from 127 the prior year. Gov. Nathan Deal highlighted the issue in his state of the state address to the General Assembly Wednesday, when he vowed to focus on these schools during the current legislative session.

Black voters in metro Atlanta were a major force in the defeat of Deal's proposed constitutional amendment in November, which would have allowed the state to take over neighborhood schools and hand them to charter operators. Nearly 70 percent of voters in black majority precincts in metro Atlanta voted against it, versus 55 percent in white majority precincts. It was a stark reversal from blacks' embrace of the constitutional amendment for charter schools four years previously.