The welfare of our nation rests heavily upon our system of public education. Throughout America’s history, we have striven to provide all children with equal access to a high-quality, free public education because we know that without it, our democratic way of life will be at peril. Indeed, it is our democratic system of governing, based upon the twin pillars of individual rights and civic responsibilities, which requires that we have a system of public education.

We continue to fall short of this most basic democratic commitment. We do not ensure that every child in this nation has equal access to a high-quality education. And even though we have made great strides, we have work to do before this task is complete.

There is a pressing need to redesign our schools to meet the demands of a global 21st century society in which knowledge and technology are changing at a breath-taking pace, and new forms of education are essential for individual and societal survival. Our most recent policy strategies have constrained, rather than enabled, the educational innovation our school system needs. Such a path, if we continue to pursue it, promises to leave our schools, and our children, behind.

For this reason, we believe it’s time to take the next step for school reform — addressing long-standing inequities in student funding, access and opportunity, and ensuring that all our citizens have the skills, support and self-confidence they need to work and compete in a global economy and strengthen the fabric of our democracy.

To guide our work in this area, we believe in the following statements:

1. A high-quality public education is a civil right that should be made available to all people on equal terms.
2. All children deserve a well-prepared and supported teacher who knows his or her content area and how to teach it well.
3. All children deserve access to an educational experience that fully and intentionally prepares them for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.
4. We cannot demand equal outcomes from schools without equalizing the resources they provide. Therefore, a central role of the federal government must be to ensure that all schools are funded centrally and equally.
5. The shared mission of our schools should be to end the predictive value of race, class, gender and special capacities on student success by working together with families and communities to ensure each individual student's success.
6. Instead of thinking of educational inequities as an achievement gap, we should view them as an education debt. This term references our country’s historic inequities in educational and economic opportunities, and invites us to think about how all of us, as members of a democratic society, are implicated in creating  -- and addressing -- these achievement disparities.
7. To reduce the education debt, schools cannot work in isolation. Alongside our efforts to improve the in-school learning conditions for students, we must also address the powerful impact that out-of-school factors have on student achievement, such as the role of parenting, the availability of health care, and the challenges of poverty.
8. All schools should demonstrate non-discriminatory and inclusive policies, practices and pedagogies. Schools should model democratic practices that involve all voices. Schools should also honor diversity and build on the strength of their communities, deliberately and explicitly challenging all forms of inequity.