Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Black Alliance for Educational Options

Formally launched in August 2000, the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) is a national organization for Black people that advocates for a range of expanded educational options, including private school vouchers, charter schools, tuition tax credits, and public school choice. Its mission, educational reform efforts, and association with some conservative organizations have sometimes been criticized by pro–public school groups.

History and Mission

The Black Alliance for Educational Options began with a March 1999 meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hosted by the Institute for the Transformation of Learning (ITL) at Marquette University. ITL, which supports expanding educational options for students in low-income families, was founded and directed by BAEO's first board chairman, Howard Fuller, a former Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent and prominent African American supporter of school choice. ITL convened the March 1999 meeting to focus on the benefits of educational options for Black families and determined during the meeting that a national organization of African Americans was needed to support increased educational options for Black people.

As a result of this determination, 50 African Americans interested in expanding educational options for Black families convened at The Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., in December 1999 to create BAEO. This meeting was then followed by a second organizing meeting during which participants elected Fuller as the first chairman of the board of BAEO. Kaleem Caire became BAEO's first president when the organization officially launched in 2000. Since its inception, BAEO has established a national office in Washington, D.C., and has grown to thousands of members and includes chapter organizations in cities across the United States.

BAEO states that its mission is “to actively support parental choice to empower families and increase quality educational options for Black children.” Its goals include educating the general public about parental choice; educating Black families, in particular about their educational options; creating and promoting efforts to empower Black parents to exercise school choice; and informing the general public about efforts to limit educational options.

Activities

Although much of the attention on BAEO focuses on the organization's support of publicly funded school vouchers, which allow students to use public money to pay private school tuition, the organization's activities actually support a much broader range of educational options. These options include charter schools, homeschooling, privately financed scholarships, tuition tax credits, innovations in public schools, and private management of public schools. Its activities include media outreach campaigns, mobilization strategies to expand parental options, creation of new schools of choice, and development of leaders and advocates for the parental choice movement.

In 2002 BAEO received a $600,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop Project Clarion, a public information campaign to inform parents of their available options under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, including public school choice and free tutoring. It focused its outreach efforts on cities with high concentrations of low-income Black families and low-performing schools, including Dallas, Detroit, and Philadelphia. In 2004 BAEO received another $2.5 million from the U.S. Department of Education to continue its outreach activities under Project Clarion, including handing out fliers at barber shops, sending postcards to families, and running radio and television ads.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution