In his “Pedagogic Creed” from 1897, John Dewey stated, “education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.” As public educators in North Carolina, we are in partnership with the community to provide a quality education to all children, regardless of their socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, or ability to learn.
We are obligated to teach the easy and difficult, the children who need few resources and those who need significant resources to succeed. We foster social learning so that children of all beliefs and values can sit side by side and learn from each other. We provide for students who have strong parental advocates as well as those who are essentially alone in the educational process.
The success of our schools can only be accomplished through strong community support. Unfortunately, recent trends toward charter schools, selection policies and school choice decrease community support for the primary mission of public schools – to provide a quality education for all children.
This increasing privatization of education is leading to an increase in social stratification and racial segregation. Recent studies indicate that charter schools increasingly serve more white and higher socio-economic populations and fewer students with disabilities, fostering inequality among students.
Charter schools cause inefficiency and redundancy in educational services, leading to increased stress on the public education system. Funding formulas often lead to the schools that serve the least-needy populations having the greatest resource advantages.
As a society, we can choose to improve education for some students at the expense of others, or we can commit ourselves to providing a quality education for all. We cannot do both.