Professor Howard Fuller is a civil rights activist and advocate for school choice as a means to better serve minority and underprivileged kids. He’s been vocal about the work charter schools still need to do to meet that goal, but says Colorado’s charters are a good example to follow.
Fuller is the founder and head of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University in Milwaukee. The institute aims to provide alternative education options for black and underprivileged students.
Last month Fuller had strong words for the National Charter School Conference in Nashville, Tennessee. He gave a fiery speech that touted the achievements of the charter movement, while adding caveats that there was still inequality reflected in many of the schools.
“We have developed some great organizations and schools led by white people, while failing to understand the critical moral and political reason to ensure that we must also have great schools and great organizations lead by people of color,” he told the crowd. “Not just school leaders, but boards of directors that are controlled by people of color. And let me be clear here - we need people of all races in this struggle. But we will not be successful in the long run if the people who are most impacted are relegated to second class citizens in the power arrangements to drive this idea.”
Fuller visited Denver last week to speak to the staff at Denver School of Science and Technology. He praised Colorado charters for their progress serving minority students, as well as the city of Denver for creating the “innovation zone.” The “innovation” designation gives schools some of the freedoms of a charter school, while retaining their lifeline to the school district.
Fuller told KUNC in an interview that other states and cities could learn from those initiatives.
Last month you kind of tore into charter schools for what you saw as a failure to live up to their mission of improving opportunities for minority and low income kids. But Colorado’s charters are improving access and opportunity to those same kids. In your mind, what is Colorado doing right?
“I wouldn’t characterize my remarks as ‘I tore into them.’ What I was trying to do was to talk about the kinds of positive things I think have happened in charter schools in places like Colorado, but also to talk about work that we have yet to do. And it wasn’t so much around whether or not we were serving black children as much as it was, ’We need to have more black people who are in control of charter schools.’”
Meanwhile, Denver Public Schools released the results of a report last week that showed the district struggles with institutional racism. Charter and other specialty schools within the district were called out as often being disconnected from the needs of students of color. So while Colorado’s charters as a whole seem to be doing a better job of serving more minority and low income students, many of the schools in the Denver area are still dealing with these more deep seated issues that go beyond simple access. After a charter is able to get more diverse students in the door, what needs to be done to ensure they get the same quality of education as their white peers?
“What you’re talking about is the ability of schools to appreciate the issues that kids bring to the table based on the experiences that they’re having in their homes or their communities. The question is - or the reality is - We’ve got to be able to figure out what are the assets that kids bring by virtue of their experiences? And not seeing those experiences as a deficit. And so what you want to be able to do, for example, if you’re dealing with Latino students is to be able to appreciate the Latino culture. To be able to appreciate not only the language, which is obviously a part of culture,but other aspects of the culture and to be able to find the positive things about that culture to build on so that you use building on the positive things that students of color bring to the table in order to help them with their academic performance. Years ago, a guy named Howard Gardner wrote a book about multiple intelligence and what he’s really trying to argue is you don’t ask the question ‘How intelligent are you?’ You ask the question ‘How are you intelligent?’ What we’re talking about is being able to find the intelligences that our kids have that they bring to the table and to use those positive aspects to try to build on those areas where they are weak.”
Earlier this week, the NAACP approved a resolution calling for an end to privately managed charter schools, saying that they contributed to school segregation. The resolution is still pending a full vote, but do you agree with that assertion?
“The question is: Should a publicly approved entity have the ability if they desire to hire a private entity to manage schools? When I was the superintendent in the Milwaukee Public Schools, what people don’t want to say is that traditional public school districts have done this as well. It used to be mostly for special education kids. We would go to an outside entity and contract with them to serve those kids. Now that charter schools - and not all charter schools do this, but some do - people all of a sudden have issues with it. What I would argue is that the thing that we need to focus on is not who manages the schools, but how well are the children doing.In my opinion, people who care about kids - whether you’re in a charter school or private school or traditional public school - we should be uniting to fight on the issue of funding for all kids, and particularly for low-income and working class kids, no matter where they go to school.”
