It’s Off
Posted by novometro on February 23, 2009
It seems that no one in Oakland education circles thought that pitting two hotheaded firebrands against each other in a charter school debate was going to do much good for either side. Chris Dobbins says that he got calls from every ideological corner of the city asking him to cancel the debate between charter school founder Ben Chavis, and Shanta Driver, who was slated to argue that charter schools are nothing more than a latter day Jim Crow system. Dobbins decided to heed their advice, and has said he will assemble a new panel.
NovoMetro 
Caroline said
There’s no doubt that the charter folks were pretty nervous about how Chavis would come across. Since their party line is to disagree with those of us who accuse charter schools of being a right-wing, free-market effort to undermine and destroy public education, it would have been a bit of an image problem if he had totally agreed with us. Undoubtedly he was squelched by his own partisans.
Really, we should start a “Free Chavis!” movement and demand that he be allowed to speak.