Many who have lived and grown up in North Carolina are well aware of the fragile state of the current public school system. Teacher protests are becoming annual. School funding has been dry for decades. Claims of indoctrination from the left and the right have been ongoing, making the profession nearly unbearable.
We are currently in the midst of a K-12 educator shortage, unlike anything we’ve seen in recent years. As one of the fastest-growing states, North Carolina necessitates higher investment in education, yet North Carolina spending-per-pupil is below the national average. That hasn’t stopped the state legislature from instating a plethora of motions intended to make education even more unappealing.
Republicans have taken egregious measures in recent weeks to make education an unaffordable position. Firstly, a plan titled the North Carolina Pathways for Teaching Professionals, which has a reform that could introduce merit-based pay, is being supported as a means to address the teacher shortage.
Beyond the fact that overhauling pay structures when teachers are concerned about pay is extremely poor timing, the way in which teachers are getting paid is ill-informed. Pay seems to be shifting to performance, specifically as it pertains to “skills acquisitions and proof of competency,” according to the proposal.
For those who aren’t aware, the way we assess these “acquisitions” and “proofs of competency” is through standardized tests like the EOC, EOG, SAT, ACT or other final tests and grades. In a time when teachers are leaving en masse, largely because of poor pay, this new pay structure is beyond tasteless.
While it is important that students succeed and that teachers get recognized for stellar performance, we’ve seen the effects of merit-based pay before. Look no further than the No Child Left Behind Act, which set standards for education based on benchmark test scores. Under NCLB, schools with poorer performance on tests were punished.
As with NCLB, this Pathways program will benefit wealthier areas. Because local taxes are a crucial component of school funding, student performance in less economically advantaged areas generally tends to be lower. This is because most funding for afterschool programs, supplies and even extra teachers and teacher assistants comes from the county rather than the state.
This has the potential to further deplete the quality of education in poorer areas which, due to a history of redlining and segregation, affects POC disproportionately. The poverty rate for Black Americans was nearly double that of white Americans in 2020. Because merit pay will be based on test results, and poor areas tend to test lower due to having fewer resources, teachers will start making less in these areas.
This will have a doubling effect, disincentivizing teachers from working or retaining their positions in these areas. Teachers will then leave the state in bigger droves, further driving down student performance and degrading teacher pay.
In addition to the revised pay structure, the redesigning of licensure requirements for becoming a teacher might serve to “de-professionalize” the field, as said by Michelle Burton, president of the Durham Association of Educators. The plan contains a section that provides a sort of apprenticeship for aspiring teachers.
The provision is controversial, allowing students on track to receive bachelor’s degrees in education to begin teaching after two years in college. This seems good in principle, allowing students to gain on-the-job experience. However, it also means that the initial pay for students coming out of college could start drastically lower than previously established.
For NC State education majors, the plan scraps bonuses for the bachelor’s degrees they receive, instead shifting bonuses to their time as apprentices. This might help ease the debt accrued for obtaining education but would also put even more stress on students who will now have to juggle a new and stressful class environment on top of their school work.
For students interested in gaining master’s degrees, it’s possible that, under this plan, there would be a near-zero direct financial benefit to acquiring that level of education. Because of the system’s quantity-over-quality aspects, some veteran teachers are concerned that lower education quality will drop overall pay for teachers as the state increasingly relies on inherently inexperienced students to teach.
Because of their lack of skills in teaching, the scoring of their students, some say, will drop. The result will be a decrease in veteran teachers’ pay because of their students’ and schools’ lower performance. With a reform like this, it is truly hard to tell whether the effects will be positive or negative until its implementation.
If you haven’t gotten the picture by now, these actions being taken by the state legislature are not only failing to address the teacher shortage but have the potential to make it even worse. All the while, the state is sitting on a $6 billion surplus. Please reach out to your politicians and state your opposition to this action.
There’s been moderate success so far in the recommendations of a subcommittee of the Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Commission to reinstate higher pay for teachers with advanced degrees. We must continue to work with teachers, going to protests, city council meetings and town halls to get them the pay they deserve.
Follow groups like the NC Association of Educators and the Carolina Teacher’s Alliance and continue tracking legislative efforts to reform educator pay. By bearing down on politicians to enact change that educators actually support, we can provide a more equitable solution that enhances teacher pay to livable wages while increasing the quality of education in the state.
