Massachusetts voters should take note of Education Secretary John King's charter school endorsement.
Charter schools are in the news. The NAACP's national board recently passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on charter school expansion across the United States. In Massachusetts, voters are about to decide on a ballot initiative to raise the state's charter cap so that up to a dozen charter schools can be opened or expanded each year.
As we've come to expect in 21st century America, the debate over charters is generating more heat than light. In October, however, U.S. Secretary of Education John King offered some remarks that the NAACP leadership and Massachusetts voters might find illuminating.
In a gentle rebuke to the NAACP leadership and those opposing the expansion of charters in Massachusetts, King said during a talk at the National Press Club that "any arbitrary cap on the growth of high-performing charters is a mistake in terms of our goal of trying to improve opportunity for all kids."
The most recent Suffolk University poll shows Massachusetts voters evenly split (45 percent to 45 percent) on the question of whether the charter cap should be raised. It is interesting to note, however, that while white voters oppose raising the cap by 48 to 43 percent, nonwhite voters support raising the cap by a wide margin: 58 percent to 33 percent. Thus, it is King and not the NAACP who is on the side of the majority of nonwhite Bay State voters.
(It's also worth noting that representatives of the nation's other venerable civil rights organization, the National Urban League, have come out in favor of raising the cap. And, on a related note...
Read the entire piece here at U.S. News & World Report
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Charles Sahm is the director of education policy at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in U.S. News and World Report