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The concerted effort, guided by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, to promote school choice is the newest iteration of a longstanding racist plan to segregate students, according to the American Federation of Teachers president.

The New York Post reports that the teachers union head Randi Weingarten berated school choice proponents Thursday at an AFT conference.

“This privatization and disinvestment are only slightly more polite cousins of segregation. We are in the same fight, against the same forces who are keeping the same children from getting the public education they need and deserve,” she stated, according to The Post.

Weingarten equated the current school choice movement to the 1950s pushback against school integration, in which White racists established publicly funded private schools.

The response was quick and harsh from school choice advocates, who say they merely want to give families in failing school districts better options.

Derrell Bradford, a New York-based charter school advocate, told The Post that Weingarten is trying to “dehumanize” her opponents by injecting race into the debate. He added that the teachers union president is lashing out, in part, from seeing the diminishing strength of teachers unions.

“That impotence makes you act out in ways that are not smart,” he told the newspaper. “One of the ways that is not smart is to be a White person who runs a White organization talking about segregation that you foster.”

Federal data show that public schools nationwide are becoming increasingly segregated, with poor children of color concentrated in failing school districts. Some of the most segregated public school systems are not in the South.

New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest public school system, has the most segregated schools, according to an eye-opening 2014 study by UCLA’s Civil Rights Project.

SOURCE:  New York Post

SEE ALSO:

Watch: How School Choice Impacts The Black Community

NAACP Ratifies Resolution Calling For Moratorium On Charter Schools

Is The School Choice Movement Segregationist?  was originally published on newsone.com