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 One key contributor to this leaky pipeline is the outdated way we pay teachers.
The good news is that North Carolina is at the forefront of a national movement to change how teachers are paid, with programs like Advanced Teaching Roles and strategies like Front-Loaded Pay. But there’s only so much that strategic investments can help when the salary structure that they’re layered on is so outdated. During the 2023 North Carolina Education Innovation Lab, stakeholders from across the state examined the past, present, and reimagined future of teacher compensation in our state, diving deep into recommendations from BEST NC’s recent report Teacher Pay in North Carolina: A Smart Investment in Student Achievement.
Find everything from the Lab, including recordings and pictures of the day’s panels and presentations, downloadable slide decks, and additional resources to help you continue your work long after the Innovation Lab has ended.
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The North Carolina Education Innovation Lab represents the collected time, effort, and perspectives of professionals from across North Carolina’s education, workforce, legislative, and business communities.
Walter McDowell | Chairman, BEST NC
Leah Sutton | Vice President of Policy & Engagement, BEST NC
Brenda Berg | President & CEO, BEST NC
This panel provides a national, research-based foundation for the day, clarifying what tailored learning is — and what it is not. Drawing on decades of work in competency-based education, participants will define the distinctions and overlaps among CBE, mastery-based learning, and personalized learning, emphasizing that tailored learning is a system of redesign, not a curriculum or instructional add-on.
The keynote will examine why traditional, summative assessment models provide only static snapshots of learning and fail to diagnose specific gaps or readiness for acceleration. In contrast, the session will highlight how formative, performance-based, and adaptive assessments enable real-time instructional decision-making. This session will also examine common implementation pitfalls — such as starting with report cards instead of competencies — and outline the conditions required for scale and equity.
Virgel Hammonds | Co-CEO, FullScale
Lisa McIntyre-Hite, Ph.D | Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Competency-Based Education Network
Moderator: Brenda Berg | BEST NC
This panel explores the foundational shifts required to move from time-based schooling to mastery-based progression. Panelists will describe how tailored learning reshapes grading practices, pacing, instructional roles, and school structures — and why these changes are often most viable in high-need contexts willing to rethink traditional models.
This conversation will address cultural and technical barriers, including community understanding of grading, teacher collaboration time, and calibration of mastery expectations. Panelists will also clarify where policy flexibility exists today in North Carolina and what statutory or regulatory changes may be needed to support broader adoption. The session is designed to help participants understand that successful tailored learning depends on aligned systems, not isolated innovation.
Kayla Siler | CBE Partnership, RTI International
Angela Whitford-Narine | CEO, Second Mile Education Schools
Rachel Wright Junio | Golden LEAF Project Lead, North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NC DPI)
Moderator: Rupen Fofaria | Director, North Carolina State Board of Education
This breakout makes tailored learning concrete by focusing on instructional practice inside real classrooms. Facilitators will highlight how many educators already use formative assessment, flexible grouping, and differentiated pathways — often without labeling them as competency-based practices. Participants will examine how clearer learning targets, better assessment design, and emerging AI-enabled tools can help teachers understand precisely what students know and do not know. The session emphasizes how tailored learning can support both remediation and acceleration without stigma, while reducing — not increasing — teacher workload when implemented thoughtfully.
Facilitators:
Jessica Avery | AVID District Director, Pitt County Schools
Rachel Candaso | 2025 North Carolina Teacher of the Year, Pitt County Schools
Matt Daniels | Assistant Principal at Pactolous Global School, Pitt County Schools
This session synthesizes the day’s learning to identify what must change outside the classroom to support tailored learning at scale. Participants will consider implications for state guidance, accountability systems, reporting structures, and cross-sector alignment with higher education and workforce pathways.
The focus is on translating insight into action, clarifying near-term priorities, roles, and decision points for state agencies, districts, philanthropy, and intermediaries.
Facilitator:
Maureen Stover | Vice President of Research & Engagement, BEST NC
This breakout focuses on how tailored learning could scale responsibly across North Carolina. Participants will examine policy tools such as pilot grants, phased implementation models, and networked learning communities, drawing lessons from SB 580, the Golden LEAF PCBE cohort, and SparkNC.
Groups will discuss how to balance innovation with coherence, identify capacity-building needs, and design pilots that inform long-term policy rather than remain isolated experiments.
Facilitators:
Dr. Lynn Moody | President, SparkNC
Rachel Wright Junio | NC DPI
This breakout makes tailored learning concrete by focusing on instructional practice inside real classrooms. Facilitators will highlight how many educators already use formative assessment, flexible grouping, and differentiated pathways — often without labeling them as competency-based practices. Participants will examine how clearer learning targets, better assessment design, and emerging AI-enabled tools can help teachers understand precisely what students know and do not know. The session emphasizes how tailored learning can support both remediation and acceleration without stigma, while reducing — not increasing — teacher workload when implemented thoughtfully.
Facilitators:
Jessica Avery | AVID District Director, Pitt County Schools
Rachel Candaso | 2025 North Carolina Teacher of the Year, Pitt County Schools
Matt Daniels | Assistant Principal at Pactolous Global School, Pitt County Schools
This session synthesizes the day’s learning to identify what must change outside the classroom to support tailored learning at scale. Participants will consider implications for state guidance, accountability systems, reporting structures, and cross-sector alignment with higher education and workforce pathways.
The focus is on translating insight into action, clarifying near-term priorities, roles, and decision points for state agencies, districts, philanthropy, and intermediaries.
Facilitator:
Maureen Stover | Vice President of Research & Engagement, BEST NC
This breakout focuses on how tailored learning could scale responsibly across North Carolina. Participants will examine policy tools such as pilot grants, phased implementation models, and networked learning communities, drawing lessons from SB 580, the Golden LEAF PCBE cohort, and SparkNC.
Groups will discuss how to balance innovation with coherence, identify capacity-building needs, and design pilots that inform long-term policy rather than remain isolated experiments.
Facilitators:
Dr. Lynn Moody | President, SparkNC
Rachel Wright Junio | NC DPI
This panel addresses one of the most persistent challenges in tailored learning: how to measure mastery, growth, and readiness fairly and transparently. Panelists will examine the limitations of traditional summative assessments and the promise of formative, adoptive, and competency-aligned approaches.
The discussion will include North Carolina’s current assessment landscape — particularly NC Check-Ins 2.0, and how it could evolve to support real-time instructional insight without abandoning accountability. Equity considerations will be central, with attention to calibration, grading consistency, and avoiding new forms of gatekeeping. The session reinforces that assessment is not a technical detail, but a core design choice that shapes instructional culture.
Leah Carper | Director of Stakeholder Engagement, Guilford County Schools
Nicholas Munyan-Penney | Assistant Director of P-12 Policy, Ed Trust
Moderator: Brenda Berg | BEST NC
Brenda Berg | BEST NC
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Challenge: Competitive Starting Pay
Starting Teacher Pay is Not Competitive with Surrounding States, Making it Difficult to Attract Top Candidates and Compete for Talent in Our RegionCost of living-adjusted starting teacher pay in North Carolina ranks last in the Southeast region. A 2020 DPI analysis found nearly a quarter (23%) of educator prep program graduates were not employed in NC schools within two years of graduation. Between 2017 and 2022, beginning-teacher attrition was 12%, versus 7% for fully licensed teachers. |
Challenge: Living Wage
Under the Existing Salary Schedule, North Carolina Teachers Must Wait Too Long Before Their Salaries Provide a Living Wage that Can Support a FamilyIn 2022-23, nearly two thirds of North Carolina teachers’ state base pay fell below a living wage. State base pay does not include local salary supplements or bonuses. Living wage gaps are largest in the first ten years of a teacher’s career, when most teachers choose to start their families. This salary structure conflicts with research showing the largest gains in teacher effectiveness occur in the first five years of a teacher’s career. |
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Challenge: Attracting Top Talent
The Traditional Teacher Compensation Model Does Not Provide Meaningful Professional Promotions that Attract Top Talent and Keep Effective Educators in the ClassroomNations that perform at the top on international assessments recruit 100% of teachers from the top-third of college graduating classes. In the United States, that number is 23%, and 14% in high-poverty schools. In North Carolina, Advanced Teaching Roles (ATR) provides meaningful career advancement, allowing effective teachers to extend their reach in exchange for higher pay — revamping outdated staffing structures and delivering positive impacts on student performance. In many of the 24 districts implementing ATR, teachers earn additional pay on top of their ATR supplement for working in hard-to-staff schools — mirroring advancement opportunities found in private-sector careers. |
Challenge: Hard-to-Staff Positions
Existing Pay Structures are not Designed to Fill Hard-to-Staff Subject Area Positions and Schools, Leading to Persistent, Critical Vacancies and Disparities in Student Access to Effective EducatorsIn North Carolina, students in high-poverty schools are more likely to be taught by less experienced, less qualified teachers than students who attend more affluent schools — restricting student access to high-quality teachers. In high-demand fields like STEM, average teacher pay significantly trails average wages for UNC System graduates in those majors — likely contributing to markedly higher vacancy rates in these subject areas. |
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