Every student deserves access to a great teacher. Unfortunately, too many North Carolina students are deprived of that access because of a leaky teacher pipeline that fails to recruit, support, and retain enough high-quality educators for our public schools. One key contributor to this leaky pipeline is the outdated way we pay teachers.

Overall, our current education system fails to meet the needs of students, educators, and our 21st century economy. In fact, the structure of the current education system was designed in the 1800s, reflecting the norms of the Industrial Revolution. Even though our economy and the needs of our students have shifted tremendously since then, the fundamental way we design our classrooms and the way we treat our education professionals has evolved very little.