The Relationship Between Education and Politics in North Carolina: A Historical Perspective

Abstract

My motivation for writing this paper is based on a twenty-five-year observation of the decline of North Carolina’s public school system. I witnessed an aggressive and reactionary North Carolina state legislature reducing the investment for the education of the state’s children. As a result, North Carolina has lost its progressive reputation in education. The purpose of this paper is to address the questions of how and why a socially conservative agenda realigned the direction of education in North Carolina. Through my research, I identified sources of tension between social conservatism and progressive liberal values pertaining to education over the past one hundred and fifty plus years. I discovered that there was a socially conservative faction that regained power through the United States Supreme Court rulings, out-of-state political funding, and right-wing super-lobbyists. The result is institutionalized segregation of North Carolina public education through the rapid expansion of charter schools, the support of private school voucher payments, and the defunding of public schools. These actions reflect the ongoing history of racial discrimination in North Carolina’s public schools.