Roland Martin: ‘Is School Choice The Black Choice?’
Two years ago, Alabama passed a law authorizing charter schools to operate in the state but the concept has been slow to catch on. Alabama has only one charter school so far in Mobile and the state earlier this year approved a second to open in Birmingham. These schools are meant to offer access to better quality public education but many black families have been resistant to the idea. Washington based television host Roland Martin is trying to change that. He’s making the rounds this weekend from Birmingham to Selma and Montgomery speaking with African Americans.
Fear of the unknown
Many African Americans don’t support charter schools and school choice because they don’t know a lot of about them, Martin says. “This is the thing, we only know what we know. So when you go, ‘… You get to control your own charter schools. You get to be in control of the curriculum and everything else,’ Some people go, ‘Oh what are you talking about?’ That’s the fear. “
Problems with the funding of public education in Alabama.
Martin says Alabama doesn’t have a way to fix public school funding to be able to try new things. “How long have we been waiting for that to happen?” he says. “What I am saying is black parents say, ‘I can’t wait.’”
Accountability for charter schools
State law that establishes charter school operations also establish the rules of accountability, Martin says. “The accountability is there because the law says you’ve got three years. You don’t get the numbers? You shut down.’ Tell me where is accountability for school as being grossly underperforming for 20 years?”
Nancy Guthrie search enters its second week as a purported deadline looms
"This is very valuable to us, and we will pay," Savannah Guthrie said in a new video message, seeking to communicate with people who say they're holding her mother.
Immigration courts fast-track hearings for Somali asylum claims
Their lawyers fear the notices are merely the first step toward the removal without due process of Somali asylum applicants in the country.
Ilia Malinin’s Olympic backflip made history. But he’s not the first to do it
U.S. figure skating phenom Ilia Malinin did a backflip in his Olympic debut, and another the next day. The controversial move was banned from competition for decades until 2024.
‘Dizzy’ author recounts a decade of being marooned by chronic illness
Rachel Weaver worked for the Forest Service in Alaska where she scaled towering trees to study nature. But in 2006, she woke up and felt like she was being spun in a hurricane. Her memoir is Dizzy.
Bad Bunny makes Puerto Rico the home team in a vivid Super Bowl halftime show
The star filled his set with hits and familiar images from home, but also expanded his lens to make an argument about the place of Puerto Rico within a larger American context.
Japan’s Takaichi to pursue conservative agenda after election landslide
Japan's first female Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, brought the ruling Liberal Democratic Party its biggest-ever electoral victory, fueling her ambitions to pursue to a political agenda which she says could "split public opinion."
