October 26, 2005
RALEIGH – Gov. Mike Easley has announced a costly initiative to raise average teacher pay in North Carolina to “the national average and beyond,” but a preliminary analysis by the John Locke Foundation shows that the state’s average teacher pay, when properly measured, already ranks 11th in the nation and exceeds the national average by $1,600.
At the time of Easley’s announcement, the Locke Foundation’s Terry Stoops had been working on an update of previous studies of teacher compensation by the Raleigh-based think tank. Since 1991, this research – which adjusts the raw teacher-pay data for cost of living, teacher experience, and other factors – has demonstrated that North Carolina has long remained at or above the national average in teacher compensation despite political rhetoric to the contrary.
Stoops’ latest analysis is no exception. It shows that North Carolina’s average teacher compensation exceeds national and regional norms when the state’s lower cost-of-living and less-experienced teaching force are taken into account.
“Few in the private sector would evaluate a job offer without researching housing prices and other living costs,” Stoops said. “Talking about North Carolina’s national ranking in teacher pay based on nominal figures is essentially useless – it’s like comparing teacher salaries in 2005 and 1955 without adjusting for inflation.”
Interestingly, Stoops noted, Gov. Easley seems to agree that cost of living should be taken into consideration. He told reporters that North Carolina teacher pay will exceed the national average even faster under his plan, in 2006-07, when cost of living is taken into account.
“I want everybody who’s looking for a place to teach to know that those same dollars in North Carolina represent a lot more buying power,” Easley reportedly said.
But the governor appears not to have considered another important factor, according to Stoops. Average teacher pay in each state is affected not just by the dollars and benefits offered but also by the distribution of teachers. Rapidly growing states with a higher-than-average number of new teachers, such as North Carolina, can appear to have lower average pay even if pay at equivalent levels of seniority is at or above the national average.
In Stoops’ analysis, he found that North Carolina teachers had 13.6 years of experience, on average, while the national average was 14.9 years. Eleven of the top 15 states in adjusted pay employ teachers with below-average experience.
On one issue, however, the Locke Foundation analysis supports a contention of the Easley administration: that pay for beginning teachers in North Carolina, even when properly adjusted, is below the national average. Stoops’ analysis ranked the state 30th in starting pay, below that of nearby states such as South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, and Georgia.
The larger issue, he said, is whether nationwide examinations of average teacher compensation truly have a relevance to the issue of increasing student success in the classroom.
“There is no evidence that North Carolina’s average teacher pay is substandard – but there is also no evidence that raising average teacher pay is an effective way to attract good teachers or improve student performance,” Stoops said. “Across-the-board raises unrelated to performance serve to reward both good teachers and mediocre ones, thus doing little to help students learn.”
For more information about teacher compensation or JLF’s forthcoming study of the issue, please contact Terry Stoops at 919-828-3876 or [email protected].