Consider that in the nation’s largest cities, where well over 80 percent of charter-school students are black or Latino, fewer than 33 percent of teachers are black or Latino, and fewer than 10 percent of charter schools are founded and led by blacks or Latinos. In New York City, the last figure is under six percent.

Look no further than KIPP, Uncommon Schools, Achievement First and Success Academies. The largest charter-school operators in New York, they were founded and have been led and staffed primarily by whites, even as the majority of the students and communities they serve are black and brown.

The dominance of white leadership sends a message that only whites can save black and brown people from abysmal traditional public education (which, too, is typically led and operated by whites).

Charter schools — which are privately managed public schools, and mostly nonprofit — were intended to generate innovation and increased community control. Yet the proliferation of charter schools led and staffed overwhelmingly by whites is a serious impediment to their potential.

We cannot expect those responsible for this problem to be authors of its solution.

Read the full article on black leadership in schools by Rafiq R. Kalam Id-Din II, Esq. at The Hechinger Report