PEFNC Chief Talks Refreshingly About School Choice in the Tar Heel State

Last week the University of North Carolina Law School hosted a discussion titled The State of Education in North Carolina: Addressing the Constitutional Implications. There were a number of prominent names in the education reform and civil rights spheres on hand, including the following group:

• Dean Boger, moderating
• Matthew Ellinwood, North Carolina Justice Center, Policy Advocate Education Law Project
• Dr. Terry Stoops, John Locke Foundation, Education Studies Director
• Neal Ramee, Tharrington Smith, Education Lawyer
• Darrell Allison, Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina, President
• Mark Dorosin, Center for Civil Rights, Senior Managing Attorney

Each of the folks above has a specific area of expertise and significant experience discussion the plight of public education in America as well as ways to improve it, but one person in particular has been a longtime friend of the Federation and the Alliance, in a state where we're working to bring even more choice that already exists.

That man is Darrell Allison, the president of Parents for Educational Freedom in North Carolina. Always a man with a gift for eloquence in making the case for expanded educational options, Allison was particularly clear about why school choice is so important during his talk at UNC Law last week.

Here's an excerpt:

They don't give a rat's flip about the make and model of the school. They just want a school that works for them. So if it be a public charter school and they're knocking it out of the box in terms of performance, with a high concentration of low-income and free and reduced lunch children, they're knocking it out of the box—which we see a number of schools like that in North Carolina—and it happens to be 99.9 percent African American, they're okay with that.

Watch a clip of Allison at last week's forum below:



- American Federation for Children | Alliance for School Choice, MAG