President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress are all-in on promoting racial equity and justice for African Americans. Nearly every bill or executive order out of the administration thus far has promised to close racial gaps, erase disparities, and right the racial wrongs of America. While closing racial gaps is clearly good, it is less clear if untargeted and broad spending is the best way to close those gaps, nor if it will narrow the disparities at all.

There is an alternative
approach. What if I offered you a proven means to reduce racial inequities in criminal
justice system outcomes, STEM education, and university degree attainment?

You might think that surely
leaders on Capitol Hill would endorse such an effective solution because
it is making real progress toward racial equity without breaking the bank.

You would be wrong.

The solution I am hinting
at is charter schooling.

In late July, the House Democrats passed a $617 billion spending bill to increase federal funding for an array of educational programs from early childhood education to professional support for public school teachers. Despite their willingness to spend in these areas, they found something to cut: parental choice in public schools. Jammed within a myriad of other progressive programs that increase overall education spending by 40 percent is a plan to defund the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) by nearly 10 percent, cutting $40 million in funding to charter schools across the country.

The provision goes further by prohibiting the allocation of federal funds to for-profit charters — managed by business entities that are approved by state and local governments. While nationally only 11 percent of charters fall into the for-profit category, almost one out of six of the current 3.3 million students attend these schools.

Rather than closing racial gaps, a legislative
change of this nature to CSP will do the opposite.

For many lower-income students, and particularly students of color, a charter school can be a lifeline for lifetime success. One Harvard study shows that charters close the racial achievement gap between black and white students faster and more substantially than traditional public schools. Charter school students’ annual earnings are 13 percent higher than their public school peers, and their lifetime earnings are higher by as much as a half-million dollars. To top it all off, charter schools’ black faculty and school leaders have been shown to boost black student achievement, self-esteem, and career options. These are also the hallmarks of parental choice as shared by five founding members of the charter school movement — Linda Brown, Yvonne Chan, Howard Fuller, James Goenner, and Ember Reichgott Junge — during a discussion about the charter school movement which is now 30 years old.

Despite the evidence and support from broad
coalitions of people, resistance to charters is deep. In the late 2000s, I
helped lead a push to open a public charter school for students in some of
Atlanta’s high-risk zip codes, but black principals at traditional public
schools denounced us, saying we would drain the coffers of their schools. Black
and white clergy went further with their criticism — equating our preference
for charter schooling with anti-integration forces in the 1960s and 1970s.

Even with the strong push back, our endeavor
succeeded and, most importantly, so did its students. The Title I charter
school that we opened in Atlanta which had a study body that was 99 percent
black and of whom 78 percent qualified for free-and-reduced meals quickly
surpassed the statewide averages in reading, language arts, math, science and
social studies. The school won the coveted Blue Ribbon award from the US
Department of Education in 2015, and the Georgia Charter School of the Year
award in 2018.

While couched as an attack on for-profit schools, anti-charter forces’ latest gambit will hurt some of the people they claim to want to help. Charter schools aren’t the only way to lift up families and communities, but they certainly help — a lot.

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