...Charter critics worried about draining funds from district schools and a lack of union regulations over teacher hiring, wages and benefits, especially in low-income communities. Russell Rickford, associate professor of history at Cornell University and author of We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power, and the Radical Imagination says that for him, “it is impossible to see advocating measures that harm public education as a win for black students when the vast majority of black children depend on public schools.”
Noliwe Rooks, author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education, sees in Fuller’s legacy the worsening of an already bleak education landscape. “In Milwaukee, vouchers have been an educational failure for black and poor children,” she says, “and have primarily benefited middle class whites by shifting money to religious and private schools that those children attend.”
Fuller saw an opportunity for community-led institutions with greater autonomy, which cost nothing for black students to attend.
Read the article in its entirety at hechingerreport.org.
