Fuller to charter advocates: You're in a fight, don't run home to Mama!

Charter schools came to the education game as a bipartisan plan to force a "bold departure" from the failure trap that caught too many students in traditional public schools.

Creating alternatives to assigned district schools for families that wanted them was picking a fight with the educational establishment that lives or dies on the student headcount that drives per pupil revenue. Now, after years of losing market share, the empire is striking back with organized moves to establish moratoriums on charter growth, forge attacks on the the integrity of charter supporters, and calcifying public narratives about the supposed negative impacts of charters on public education.

So what do reform advocates do when the opponent finally hits back (hard) and our cherished reforms take a public whooping like they stole something?

According to lifelong freedom fighter Dr. Howard Fuller we firm our spines and fight like we mean it. That's what he told attendees at a recent conference for the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.

"You can't go running home to your mama," he says. "There are people out there who don't care that you all have created good schools. They don't care that you are going to teach computer science. They don't care."

His message comes at a time when weary charter school supporters are feeling drained from constant attacks, and many are vacillating between wanting to stand their ground and wanting to accommodate anti-charter organizers by finding fleeting common ground.

"They want you to not exist," Fuller said of the organized opponents of charter schools.

See his powerful speech below.