Harris-Perry: Schools targeted for closure have ‘predominantly minority kids’ | The Raw Story: On Melissa Harris-Perry on Sunday, she and a panel of journalists and advocates discussed the closure of underperforming schools in the country.
Harris-Perry said that there were discussions of closing “17 in NYC, 37 in Philadelphia, 15 in Washington, D.C., and possibly as many as 15 or more in Chicago.”
“The catch?” she asked. “The vast majority of them are filled with children who are predominantly minority kids and from low-income families.”
On Tuesday, “students, parents, and advocacy representatives from 18 major cities are taking their case to the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, D.C. Their argument: those who decide which schools to close are unfairly targeting poor and mostly African American schools. And that constitutes a civil rights violation.”
Zakiyah Ansari, advocacy director for Alliance for Quality Education, called it an “epidemic.”
The coalition wants a national moratorium on school closings and colocations, to meet with President Obama to discuss the issue, and to develop a solution for a “sustainable success model” that goes “against the grain of everything that’s happening in education reform.”
