Introduction
One truth about education has been underscored repeatedly over the last decade: A high-quality teacher is one of the most significant influences on student achievement. It’s a truth regularly confirmed by personal experience and research. As such, there are compelling reasons why North Carolina should work hard to ensure every public school classroom is staffed with a well-trained, caring, and qualified teacher.
Regrettably, many policies work against that happening. Reformers correctly identify education schools as the root of many problems. North Carolina’s teacher preparation programs too often attract mediocre or low-quality students. Graduates of the state’s education schools frequently lack mastery of relevant content along with the skills to teach literacy or basic math. What’s worse, most education schools in North Carolina reject this diagnosis and resist the impulse for reform.
Another barrier to ensuring classrooms are staffed with quality teachers is the North Carolina salary schedule. The teacher salary schedule awards pay differentials based on years of service or academic credentials (e.g., master’s degree or doctorate or National Board Certification), not student learning. If teachers are paid to teach, shouldn’t teacher pay, in part, be tied to how well students learn?
Unfortunately, tying pay to time on the job and academic credentials has created disincentives for excellence. For example, great teachers are limited in how much they can be paid. Often great teachers are paid the same as teachers who are not so great. This has implications. Placing limits on what teachers can earn, especially early in their careers, causes the best teachers to rethink a career in education. What sort of message does that send?
Likewise, knowing pay will be the same regardless of job performance inevitably has made it possible for subpar teachers to remain in the workforce — for years. It’s a reality that seldom gets discussed but adversely impacts the education and future lives of millions of students.
One effort to help redress these concerns is the Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Commission (PEPSC). The commission was established to advise the North Carolina State Board of Education on matters of teacher preparation and entry as well as professional conduct and training. In February 2023 the commission developed a new plan to replace the traditional pay scale based on years of experience with a multi-tiered licensure system that ties compensation to a teacher’s demonstrated effectiveness and qualifications. The proposed model would award teachers significantly higher compensation than under the current plan and would also provide a range of licensure options from
apprentice to advance leadership roles. A pilot program to test this model in several school districts has been proposed but not yet approved.
Teacher recruitment and teacher retention are two indicators of a healthy teaching profession. Compensation (pay and benefits) is one of the ways state policy influences teacher recruitment. After losing ground with small or no raises for the first half of the last decade, increases in salaries and in the value of benefits both helped to improve North Carolina’s ranking on average teacher pay to as high as 32nd nationally and boost North Carolina’s teacher compensation to third best in the Southeast behind Virginia and Georgia in 2023. However in 2024 North Carolina’s ranking on average teacher compensation in the Southeast fell from third to sixth best in the Southeast, with Georgia having the highest average teacher compensation of $67,641 .
Teacher pay remains one of the largest, and often most contentious, items in the state budget. As of this writing, North Carolina still has not enacted a state budget for Fiscal Year 2025-26, and one of the sticking points is teacher pay. The House’s budget plan called for higher salary increases than the Senate, but the Senate plan made up much of the difference with a one-time bonus.
North Carolina’s high quality of life and low cost of living also influence recruitment and retention. North Carolina’s cost of living — generally regarded to be lower than that of most states — helps to draw people to the state. A high quality of life deriving from the state’s diverse geography, strong economy, temperate climate, and access to jobs is another plus. Such qualities can help to temper the importance of salary and benefits.
Lastly, a healthy and active array of alternative pathways to the teaching profession can enrich the profession with diverse teaching skills and help local school districts address growing vacancies in hard-to-fill subject areas. In 2025, the General Assembly debated (but did not pass) several bills that would have impacted various aspects of the teacher profession, including licensure reform, salary supplements, teacher recruitment, elimination of standardized tests as a requirement for licensure, and making it easier to hire retired teachers for high-need areas.
Key Facts
- In the 2024–25 school year, North Carolina public schools employed 90,481 full-time teachers. That’s down from 92,428 from the year before. Charter schools employed 9,591 full-time teachers in 2024–25.
- As of the 2023–24 school year, North Carolina has over 24,243 National Board Certified Teachers, according to EdNC. It is the highest number of board-certified teachers of any state. North Carolina teachers who achieve certification receive a 12 percent supplement to their pay
- Over the past decade, North Carolina’s unadjusted teacher pay increased from $47,792 (2014–15) to $61,449 (2024–25), an increase of 28.5 percent. From 2001–02 to 2024–25, annual pay for state employees increased by 52.1 percent, while teacher pay grew by 95.3 percent. Over the same period, the Consumer Price Index rose by 83.4 percent.
- According to the state salary schedule, a beginning teacher with a bachelor’s degree on a typical 10-month contract has a base salary range of $41,000. Likewise, a teacher with a doctorate with over 25 years of teaching experience and National Board Professional Teaching Standards Certification (NBPTS) will earn $70,790. These figures do not include local supplements.
- Most teachers also receive an annual salary supplement from their local school districts. In 2024–25, the average local salary supplement for teachers was $7,028. Three districts — Caswell County Schools, Graham County Schools, and Weldon City Schools — provided no local salary supplement. Wake County Public Schools provided the largest salary supplement ($11,289), while Yancey County Schools provided the smallest supplement ($300).
- For academic year 2024–25, North Carolina’s estimated average teacher pay was $61,449, up from $59,431 the year prior, which was slightly below the Southeast average of $59,712. This figure did not include benefits, which include Social Security, medical/hospitalization insurance, retirement benefits, and liability insurance. With the value of benefits included, average North Carolina teacher compensation was $89,016.
- The cost of benefits continues to climb, with health insurance coverage and retirement costs rising faster than all other costs. Over the past decade, the total cost of benefits for the average teacher increased from $16,303 in 2014–15 to $27,567 in 2024–25, an increase of 69 percent.
- According to the 2023–24 “State of the Teaching Profession in North Carolina” report from the Department of Public Instruction, the teacher attrition rate for the state’s 115 school districts was nearly 9.9 percent, a decrease from the nearly 11.5 percent in the 2022–23 report. The rate includes teachers who retired or resigned due to personal circumstances.
Recommendations
1. Ease or eliminate certification and licensure requirements.
The case for certification is weak. There is little evidence that certification contributes to teacher quality or raises student achievement. One way to address these concerns is by encouraging alternative certification programs for teachers in North Carolina, just as the state already has alternative licensure programs. Another is to make the candidate selection process more democratic and focused on the needs of schools. Giving local education agencies more leeway in supervising and selecting candidates is a step in the right direction.
2. Eliminate the teacher pay schedule.
The current salary schedule has significant flaws. It limits what a teacher can earn and links salary to time on the job and educational credentials rather than student learning. To remedy these flaws, replace the salary schedule with grants to school districts that give districts and principals the flexibility they need over local pay schedules and the ability to respond to personnel needs in differing labor markets. Since principals and superintendents are the most knowledgeable about teacher performance and local labor markets, they should have the flexibility to influence salary levels.
3. Raise Admission Requirements for Teacher Preparation Programs.
Some studies show graduates of teacher education programs had among the lowest standardized test scores of any college graduates regardless of academic discipline. Raising admission standards for colleges of education and calling for more rigorous subject-area course requirements would help to improve the quality of the graduates. In addition, providing greater academic value for students with rigorous instructional, research, and subject-specific backgrounds can help boost the quality of the graduates and help schools develop teachers who have subject mastery and can effectively teach children of different backgrounds.
