BEST NC Releases Comprehensive Teacher Pay Report
BEST NC Releases Comprehensive Teacher Pay Report In 2023, BEST NC released a new report on teacher pay entitled Teacher Pay in North Carolina: A Smart Investment in Student Achievement. The BEST NC team, along with leading economists and experts from across the country examined the complex issue of teacher pay. In our analysis, we uncovered important new evidence that the existing teacher pay structures in North Carolina, and across the country, fail to address dramatic decades-long shifts in our national workforce and are inadequate for meeting the personal and professional needs of today’s teachers. This teacher pay report offers specific, actionable recommendations for both an increased and transformed teacher salary structure that can help retain exceptional educators and attract the next generation of top-tier talent into North Carolina public schools. You can access the full report and the executive summary here. Below is an overview of the report. This is the first in a series of blogs that will highlight key concepts and recommendations from the report. Background: Why Professional Compensation Matters Research has consistently found that teacher quality is the most important in-school factor for student success, with high-performing teachers producing significantly higher achievement gains than low-performing teachers. Given this reality, it is essential for teacher compensation to attract highly qualified candidates into the profession and to support continued professional growth throughout their career in the classroom. In his NYT best-selling book Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink contends that professional compensation is fundamentally important to fulfill an individual’s biological need to support oneself and one’s family (compensation must be adequate), and individuals must feel that they are fairly paid for the skills they hold and the work they do (compensation must be equitable). The Teacher Pay in North Carolina report considers Pink’s framing of professional compensation, compared to the current, 100-year-old teacher step-and-lane pay structure that is used in North Carolina and across the country. Through this lens, the report finds that our teacher pay and retention practices are outdated and fail to recruit and retain the top-tier candidates our students deserve. Beyond baseline requirements of adequacy and equitability, Pink finds that high-skilled professionals are motivated to perform at their best when their jobs present the opportunity for mastery, autonomy, and purpose. Current teacher pay practices and organizational structures, in stark contrast, encourage a “one-teacher, one classroom” approach that stifles growth and leaves high-performing teachers with few opportunities for professional advancement. Five Key Challenges of Current Teacher Compensation Models An exploration of research on best practices in teacher compensation revealed five major challenges, each of which is examined closely in the Teacher Pay in North Carolina report. Challenge 1: Teaching is a Mostly Female Workforce, Yet Teacher Pay Has Not Kept Up with Increasing Opportunities and Pay for Female, College-Educated Professionals. Nationally, between 1985 and 2021, median income for women with a bachelor’s degree grew by 22% when adjusted for inflation, compared to just 10% for teachers. Earnings for college-educated women have now eclipsed earnings for teachers. Women still comprise the majority of the teaching workforce, but, as women have more professional opportunities than ever before, teaching is arguably less attractive now than ever before for top-tier female candidates. v Challenge 2: Under the Existing Salary Schedule, North Carolina Teachers Must Wait Far Too Long Before Their Salaries Provide a Living Wage that Can Support a Family. Outside of retirement, teacher attrition is highest in the first five years of a teacher’s career. These years coincide with the time that teachers are starting to build their families. At this crucial juncture, the traditional step-and-lane schedule does not provide a living wage that allows teachers to support a family. The Teacher Pay in North Carolina report uses the Living Wage Calculator from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which leverages geographically specific data on living expenses (e.g. housing, health insurance, food, childcare), to estimate that nearly one-third of North Carolina teachers earned less than a living wage for a family of four in 2021-22. Even when compared to other public sector employees in our state, teachers earn less and take much longer to reach the top of the base salary schedule. Challenge 3: The Traditional Teacher Compensation Model Does Not Provide Meaningful Professional Promotions that Attract Top Talent and Keep Effective Educators in the Classroom. Research has demonstrated that the traditional step-and-lane salary schedule limits overall earning potential and discourages high-aptitude individuals from pursuing a teaching career. Reinforcing this notion, a report issued by McKinsey in 2010 revealed that 87% of top-tier candidates indicate that their preferred occupation provides opportunities to advance, compared to just 45% who believe teaching will provide similar advancement opportunities. The same report noted that nations that perform at the top on international assessments recruit 100% of teachers from students in the top-third of their class. In the United States it is 23%, and only 14% for teachers in higher poverty schools. Advanced Teaching Roles provide one pathway for highly effective educators to advance professionally as they take on greater responsibility and leadership. Currently, approximately 1,000 North Carolina teachers are working in advanced roles, earning up to $20,000 in additional pay. However, with just 21% of districts currently participating, there is significant room for growth. Challenge 4: 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 Educators. Like most states, teacher staffing inequities in North Carolina are driven, in part, by the structure of the state teacher salary schedule, which requires that teacher base pay is the same for equivalently experienced teachers, regardless of what, where, or how well a teacher teaches. In high-demand fields like STEM subjects, average teacher pay significantly trails average wages for recent UNC System graduates for those majors. These subject areas also see markedly higher teacher vacancy rates. Additionally, there are tremendous disparities in student access to highly qualified teachers […]
WCPSS Seeking to Add More ‘Charter-Like’ Schools
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_hidrop] WCPSS Seeking to Add More ‘Charter-Like’ Schools The “restart” model for high-needs schools will expand to 10 more WCPSS schools next year. Last week, the state Board of Education approved the application submitted by WCPSS to restart five more elementary schools and five middle schools. All of which are schools that need to improve their test scores. The school system “relaunched” Walnut Creek and Barwell Road elementary schools last year under the state’s restart program, bringing “charter-like” flexibility in school start and end times, calendar, budgeting and hiring. WCPSS retains full control of the schools, however, and all teachers must still be actively certified to teach. The restart model was so well received at those two schools, the WCPSS staff decided to add 10 more schools for next school year. This is different than the Renaissance School Program implemented under former Superintendent Tony Tata. That model focused on human resource incentives such as offering signing and performance bonuses, hiring additional teachers, and adding more professional development all funded partly by federal Race Top The Top grant money. WCPSS ended that program two years ago when the grant money ran out. The restart model gives principals, teachers, and parents the room todevelop creative, data-driven solutions to the issues raised by the data at each school. The school system also gains flexibility for converting funds to pay for additional staff, and the schools offer and extended school day one day a week, parent academies, and additional family services that aren’t typically offered inschools. To qualify, a school must be designated as “recurring, low performing” by the state based on its test scores in two of the last three years on a rolling basis. Walnut Creek and Barwell are part of the 12-school Elementary Support Model group overseen by Area Superintendent James Overman. All 12 schools would qualify for restart status, but not all ESM schools are part of Wake’s application this time. The school system submitted requests for a combination of elementary and middle schools, many of them magnet schools. Bugg Elementary School Carroll Magnet Middle School East Garner Elementary School East Garner Magnet Middle School East Millbrook Middle School East Wake Middle School Fox Road Magnet Elementary School Millbrook Elementary School Poe GT/AIG Basics Magnet Elementary School Wendell Middle School Now that the State Board of Education approved the application for all 10 schools, each school will develop plans which may include extending the school day, extending the school year, changing the school calendar, adding family support services. Many changes will need to be approved by the WCPSS School Board. Click here to view State School Funding Overhaul, Principal_AP Pay Plan PDF [/vc_hidrop][/vc_column][/vc_row]
Ranked 49th in principal pay
[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_hidrop] School administrator pay in North Carolina is dismal, says Frank Till Jr., superintendent of Cumberland County Schools, but a new legislative call to alleviate the problem by completely nixing the state’s principal salary scale could be disastrous. “Without a salary schedule, it means we’d have to negotiate every single principal’s salary,” complains Till. “It would lead to inequities. You would open yourself up to a variety of things.” That includes, according to Till and other critics, yawning pay gaps between rich and poor counties and uncertainty for school district leaders now tasked with negotiating scores of The proposal, which emerged in a legislative study group meeting this week, is intended to reform a much-denigrated system of administrator pay that, by most accounts, ranks North Carolina among the poorest states in the nation for prospective school principals and vice principals. Since local administrator supplements vary in the state, snapshots of North Carolina principal pay are hard to come by, but 2015 data from the U.S. Department of Labor place the state at a lowly 49th in the nation. The mean administrator pay in North Carolina—about $68,000—trails all of the state’s neighbors in the southeast, according to the federal department. Yet with much of the general public’s focus on teacher pay, it’s perhaps one of the most overlooked crises for North Carolina schools, advocates say. Republican Sen. Jerry Tillman, a former school administrator who represents Randolph and Moore counties in the General Assembly, sponsored legislation in 2015 that would have funneled millions into boosted principal pay and bonuses for high- performing administrators, but that legislation stalled. And this year, GOP lawmakers once again opted out of raises for school administrators, but they did commission a study group co- chaired by Tillman to suggest fxes. The group’s frst solution, unveiled at the study group’s meeting in Raleigh this week, is a multi- pronged proposal that completely axes the state’s oft-maligned principal salary scale, provides so-called “gap funding” for administrators in poorer school districts and creates a pot of money for principal bonuses. Under the proposal, state leaders would provide a set pool of funding for administrator pay, but it would be left to districts to negotiate pay with principals. It’s a concept that received a chilly reception from a panel of school administrative leaders who spoke to the legislative study group this week. In addition, legislators would also look to revamp the scale for assistant principals. Advocates have pointed out that, due to the state’s outdated pay schedule, some assistant principals could earn less than the teachers they oversee. Till is among the most outspoken critics of the new proposal. The Cumberland County Schools chief points out that, in his rural district, offcials would be charged with negotiating contracts for 87 different principals. In larger counties such as Wake and Mecklenburg, which manage hundreds of schools, the burden would be even larger, administrators said. And, across the state, the lack of a state-mandated foor for principal pay could lead to growing inequalities across districts and a spike in employment complaints and lawsuits. “Board members could suddenly start negotiating salaries with their friends,” Till told Policy Watch this week. “It would be about who you know and what you know. It’s just a slippery slope that you don’t want to go down.” GOP lawmakers have yet to commit to any course of action, but Tillman told study group members this week that he expects final proposals for the legislature to be readied by the end of the year. Katherine Joyce is executive director of the N.C. Association of School Administrators, an organization of school chiefs representing administrators in Raleigh. This week, Joyce said lawmakers are right to be concerned about the state’s dysfunctional system of administrator pay. “There needs to be adequate incentive to get teachers to leave the classroom if they want to take on more responsibility,” said Joyce. After all, administrators are vital to the success of a school, Joyce points out. Research suggests that effective classroom teachers and strong administrators are the top two drivers of student success, Joyce says, but without ample incentive, quality administrators are likely to fock out of the state for employment. “They have to go hand in hand. If we’re not investing enough in our principals, we have a problem that’s going to trickle down all the way into the classroom and affect student learning. It’s got to be a high priority for the General Assembly.” Joyce says there’s merit to some of the study group’s proposals, namely, reforming assistant principal pay and placing a focus on principal bonuses and “gap funding” for low-income districts priced out of the competition for top administrators. But the proposal lobbed in the legislative study group this week has still earned poor marks from multiple school leaders, including Joyce, chiefy because of the uncertainty created for school districts if the state dissolves its principal pay schedule. The state scale, while badly in need of boosts for long-overlooked administrators, still sets a foor for pay across North Carolina, they “School districts need some stability and a level playing feld between districts so that the bidding war out there for the really effective principals is not exacerbated,” Joyce tells Policy Watch. It’s a legitimate concern, says Till, who adds that the reform could be misleading to the general public. “By doing away with the salary schedule, (the NCGA) can say we raised the administrator pay by 5 percent, 10 percent, but what they don’t say is it’s not across the board.” Rep. Hugh Blackwell, a powerful Republican from Burke County who co-chairs the study group, questioned this week whether state leaders would be better suited to negotiate principal contracts than local leaders. Blackwell did not respond to a request for comment, but at least one defender of the new legislative proposal told Policy Watch this week that some pushback is to be expected. “Because they’re not used to negotiating in this way doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a bad idea,” […]