Educator Innovation Plan
BEST NC has engaged alongside key education stakeholders to design and implement new and innovative policies, programs, and initiatives that will address the systemic barriers facing North Carolina’s education system, specifically the educator pipeline. BEST NC’s strategic and actionable effort to support systemic transformation is called The Educator Innovation Plan.
The New North Carolina Principal Fellows Program (NCPFP)
The New North Carolina Principal Fellows Program allows districts to partner with vetted EPPs and sponsor teachers with leadership aptitude for a fully paid MSA in school administration.
TeachNC
TeachNC is a state-supported one-stop-shop for anyone interested in becoming a teacher in North Carolina, with access to financial aid, information on licensure, 1-on-1 coaching, and the state’s first jobs board.
TeachReadyNC: Teacher Apprenticeship in North Carolina
BEST NC’s research indicates that a state-supported, paid teacher apprenticeship program like TeachReadyNC will help North Carolina’s largest and fastest-growing teacher candidate pool find the support and resources they need to ensure student success.
Principal Pay in North Carolina
Thanks to BEST NC’s research and recommendations, North Carolina is currently the only state in the nation that pays its school leaders for more than just the size of their student population.
Teacher Pay in North Carolina
Teachers are the most significant in-school factor for student success, which means the most important thing we can do to improve our education system is to recruit, prepare, support, and retain great talent for our schools. However, for years, tens of thousands of early and mid-career teachers were earning less than a living wage for a family of four. And despite North Carolina’s investment of +$1 billion in teacher pay over the last decade, many teachers are still pointing to pay as one of the main drivers of turnover. BEST NC’s research is helping policymakers, educators, and other stakeholders make sense of North Carolina’s teacher pay landscape, and our recommendations are designed to not only improve educators lives, but student results as well.
Advanced Teaching Roles (ATR)™
Advanced Teaching Roles (ATR)™ is the nation’s only school-level, state-supported strategic staffing initiative, empowering North Carolina schools to design and adopt new organizational structures that provide meaningful advancement opportunities and higher pay for highly effective educators, create systems of embedded professional support for developing teachers, distribute leadership across the schools building, and increase students’ access to effective educators and high quality instruction.