Where We Stand: The free market is working

RALEIGH (Oct. 20, 2022) – For those who like to preach about free markets – well, the free market is working. And would-be teachers are voting with their feet:

The free market works when you offer educators wages that force them to take second jobs – and when school opens with 4,400 vacant teacher positions across the state.¹

The free market works when undergraduates choose a college major other than education – often at the insistence of their parents.²

It works when potential child-care workers decide not to take early-childhood education classes at the local community college³ and go to work at Starbucks instead because it pays better and offers college benefits.

It works when school districts in northeastern North Carolina have to rely on teachers who are not fully licensed, rather than teachers who went through university educator-preparation programs, to fill their classrooms.⁴

It works when community-college graduates – such as nurses or welders – make more than their instructors.⁵

And it works when a wave of UNC System faculty and staff opt to depart the universities and political broadsides for work in other universities or private industry.⁶

North Carolina is competing for educator talent. And it’s losing, as teachers and would-be teachers at every level walk away from teaching.

WITH INTERNATIONAL employers such as Apple, Google, Wolfspeed, VinFast and Toyota coming to town,⁷ we need to pay the folks who teach our kids if we want to provide those companies with competent workers.

Yet the state – chiefly its legislature – repeatedly, chronically undervalues educators. Adjusted for inflation, K-12 teacher pay in North Carolina has actually declined since 2011.⁸

And until we value our educators, our students – and our employers – will suffer.

North Carolina ranks 49th among the states for the percentage of its GDP it spends on K-12 public education.

As recently as 2009, we spent more than 3% of what we produced on public education⁹ – if we still spent that percentage, it would produce about $2.5 billion more a year for our schools.

But we don’t.

Adequate funding is what the pending decision in the Leandro school-funding case – which has been pending for 28 years as the case repeatedly moved through our courts – is about. At issue now is whether the NC Supreme Court can bypass a recalcitrant General Assembly and order $785 million in additional school spending.¹⁰

IT STARTS IN PRE-SCHOOL, with instruction that carries through to proficiency in 3rd-grade reading and 8th-grade math and eventually preparedness for college:

Yet a pre-school teacher in North Carolina made median wages of just $30,680 in 2020, while a kindergarten teacher made median wages of $49,540.

Is it any surprise enrollment in early-childhood education programs at NC community colleges has dropped more than 40% since 2010?¹¹

As we already noted, average K-12 teacher pay has declined in North Carolina since 2010 when adjusted for inflation. While public school teachers received an average raise of 4.2% this year, it was less than half the 8.6% inflation that prevailed at the time – effectively a pay cut.

And yes, average teacher pay in North Carolina even trails Alabama.¹²

Is it any wonder the number of undergraduate education majors in UNC System Colleges of Education is down 43% since 2010?¹³ Again, that’s the free market at work.

Lateral entry – teachers who didn’t major in education – is now the leading source of teachers in North Carolina, surpassing UNC System Colleges of Education.¹⁴

“We own this because we train the teachers,” Anna Spangler Nelson, a member of the UNC Board of Governors, said in a committee meeting yesterday. “When the state is growing and we can’t provide the teachers, that’s a problem.”

Laura Bilbro-Berry, the System’s Executive Director of Educator Preparation & Lab Schools, agreed.

“It is nowhere near where we ought to be,” she said, adding that teachers tend to leave if they are not successful in their first three years. “We have to retain those who are there.”

Perhaps most embarrassing of all, what we pay instructors at NC community colleges – who will train most of the workers for our incoming employers¹⁵ – ranks even less than what we pay K-12 teachers.

Less than Alabama. Less than South Carolina. And yes, less than Mississippi.¹⁶

What don’t we get?¹⁷

The University of North Carolina System enjoys a tradition of low tuition and low debt for its graduates.

State legislators deserve credit for NC Promise, which offers tuition of $500 a semester for in-state students at four state universities. And the UNC Board of Governors deserves credit for holding tuition constant for six consecutive years.

Yet the state spent $2,900 less per UNC System student in 2020-21 than it did in 2006-07, when adjusted for inflation.

That has only contributed to an ongoing shift of the burden of financing college from the state to students – in a state with a constitutional mandate for low tuition.¹⁸

Despite its tradition, student debt in North Carolina is approaching the national average, if it hasn’t already surpassed it.¹⁹

And starting in June 2021, the UNC System also saw a dramatic increase in departures among faculty and staff.²⁰

There are multiple factors – Baby Boomer retirements, the pandemic and frustrations of teaching remotely, the Great Resignation, politicization of the universities – but pay was undoubtedly one of them.

Again, we need to pay the people who teach our kids.

After all, it’s the free market at work.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply