NC education leaders promote new teacher pay and licensure proposal to State Board

North Carolina education leaders promoted Wednesday their proposed overhaul to how teachers are licensed and paid in the state, while noting it is only a rough draft and has received criticism and questions from some teachers.

The state’s draft proposal would be an upheaval of the system the state has never seen before.

That's according to Tom Tomberlin, who is the Department of Public Instruction's director of educator recruitment and support.

Tomberlin delivered an update the proposal to the State Board of Education on Wednesday, where it received little reproach.

The proposal comes as the state’s teaching profession has struggled. Enrollment in North Carolina colleges’ education programs has declined by thousands in the last decade, and school systems report having trouble hiring amid the reshuffling of the nation’s workforce at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. When they do hire, more schools are hiring teachers with alternative or temporary teaching licenses.

The state's rough draft proposal would raise base pay for teachers in the state and require them to prove they are effective teachers to receive pay increases.

The proposed model relies on evaluations of teacher performance, while the current model rewards training and preparation. State leaders have said the proposed model rewards outcomes, versus inputs.

Current base pay starts at $35,460 for beginning teachers, topping out at $52,680 for the most experienced teachers.

Proposed starting base pay would range from $38,000 to $45,000 for classroom teachers. It would be $56,000 for professional teachers (those with five or more years of experience), who would receive an additional $5,000 every five years that they successfully renew their license.

Tomberlin said the state has previously offered bonuses and salary increases for higher credentials and achievement but has not tied pay entirely to student outcomes.

The proposal aligns the values of helping students learn and helping teachers become great.

“Then you have the alignment between the compensation system and the desired goals of the organization” Tomberlin said. “That has never happened before.”

Teachers have told State Board of Education members they are concerned the proposal is “merit pay,” Board Member Jill Camnitz said.

Critics of the proposal contend past merit pay efforts haven’t necessarily led to better outcomes for students.

Tomberlin agreed that past efforts didn’t work.

“What we did is we took one ideas and we layered them on top of a century-old compensation structure and expected something different to happen,” he said. “And it didn’t happen.”

But Tomberlin said the proposal isn’t merit pay because it’s a total restructuring of licensure and pay.

The proposal addresses three problems, according to state Superintendent Catherine Truitt: attract more people to teaching, removing barriers to entering the teaching profession, retaining teachers. Increasing compensation is part of those efforts, she said.

Board Member Olivia Oxendine, who chairs the board’s educator standards and practice committee, said many people believe the proposed model dismisses the value of experience. It doesn’t, she said.

“We’ve got to clear up that message,” she said.

The model rewards experience to the extent that teachers can get paid more with successful licensure renewal.

The proposal has received both praise and criticism outside of the State Board. While it would improve compensation, many educators have expressed concern that the model places too much emphasis on student test scores and doesn't improve the challenges teachers already face in the classroom.

The state will continue to work on its proposal before seeking State Board approval later this year. Lawmakers asked for the revision and would need to sign off as well. Truitt said any changes could be two to three years off.

What the new proposal is

The proposed licensure model includes seven licenses across two areas: beginning teachers and professional teachers.

Beginning teachers have several options to advance through the licensure process. Broadly, those options measure competency in some subject areas or teaching methods.

They would all be mentored or supervised by a professional teacher.

After five years, beginning teachers must qualify to be professional teachers to continue leading a classroom.

Professional teachers would have two options to have their licensed renewed — and receive the $5,000 pay increase that comes with each five-year renewal. or upgraded to an advanced teaching license that also comes with higher pay:

• They must show that they are “effective” at raising student achievement via the state’s educator evaluation algorithm, known as EVAAS, for three out of five years
• Or they must show that they are “effective” through evaluations conducted by their principal, a professional-level teacher and their students. The teacher must place in the top 25% of teachers who receive student evaluations to qualify for renewal. All of those evaluations work together in this review option.

Board Member Amy White said teacher mentoring can be subjective. The board needs to find out more about how teachers who will be mentors would be trained and working with their mentees.

“So that we can make sure we have highly qualified teachers for every student in every classroom one very school,” White said.

Teachers whose students don’t take standardized tests, such as music teacher, would undergo a “qualitative growth review” that’s done by a “classroom excellence” teacher. That review measures student learning at the beginning of the school year and how well they’re doing at the end of the school year.

Tomberlin clarified some other aspects of the proposal:

• The state would cap the number of teachers who can fill advanced teaching roles, which call for $61,600 or more in base annual pay. Teachers who meet the criteria of advanced teachers must be employed as an advanced teacher to receive that increase in pay.
• Advanced teachers who don’t qualify for an advanced teaching license renewal can no longer be advanced teachers. They can continue to be the generic professional teacher. Tomberlin said teachers can only get the higher pay that comes with being an advanced teacher if they are employed in those higher positions. Generic professional teachers have lower base pay, though base pay can increase with successful license renewals.
• The five-year professional teaching license is automatically renewed even if the teacher does not meet the requirements of the license, so long as they completed continuing education requirements. Teachers who meet all of the requirements get a $5,000 increase in their base pay, while those who do not meet the requirements would not receive a pay increase.
• Failure to successfully renew the teaching license two times in a row leads to the license expiring, which is the case under the current system, as well. It expires automatically, without a second chance, if the teacher does not complete required continuing education.
• The model does not address National Board of Professional Teaching Standards certification, which currently comes with several thousands of dollars in higher base pay, per the General Assembly. Tomberlin said the proposal expects lawmakers would continue that higher pay

What research says

Tomberlin has said no state has undertaken this scale of reform to teacher licensure and pay, so the state has no research to point to showing that similar overhauls have produced certain outcomes.

However, Tomberlin said research supports a positive correlation between certain skills the state would require for teachers and student outcomes, such as those that move beginning teachers up the licensure scale.

The proposal places less emphasis on skill attainment once a teacher achieves professional status, which happens after three to five years.

A study co-authored by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill professors this February found that many efforts in the past decade to improve student outcomes by emphasizing teacher evaluations haven’t succeeded. Some have. Researchers noted success depends on educators substantially changing what they’re doing; investment and substantive feedback can help.

Vanderbilt University researchers have found some success in merit-based pay, in which teachers are paid more based on student outcomes. But researchers studied 44 programs that varied in structure. Ultimately, they recommended additional research on the most effective approaches.