UNC Wilmington professors Scott Imig and Robert Smith conducted an online survey revealing North Carolina educators’ negative response to recent education law changes by the state legislature. 

NC educators responded with mostly negative feedback and statements such as, “I have already made the decision to leave this profession, unfortunately;” “I will be leaving the state because I cannot live on the teaching salary in North Carolina;” and “I will spend the money I need to get the job done and continue to do without at home as I have always done.”

Imig said they could fill “50 pages of text with responses like these.”

Smith and Imig began their study after hearing the frustrations of being an educator in NC among their peers.  To affirm their suspicions of low morale, they began a study asking educators a series of questions about the educational changes made by the NC General Assembly over the past six months. The survey reached over 700 participants across 40 school systems in North Carolina.

Decided in the NC General Assembly, tenure will be completely eliminated by 2018.  In the meantime, teachers identified in the top 25 percent will be offered four year contracts and $500 annual pay increase starting this year.  Essentially, tenure is a public educator’s right to not be downsized without just cause; however, eliminating tenure is only the start of the problem. 

“Suddenly you take all these teachers who haven’t received any pay raise and say to them, ‘Look, we want to give you a pay raise but only 1 in 4 of you deserve that pay raise.’ That’s a horrible message to say to people who you haven’t really done right by to begin with,” Imig said.

Additional legislative changes include the removal of class size caps, ending additional pay for teachers who have earned their master’s degree, and the implementation of a voucher program. 

Created in the North Carolina 2013-2015 NC education budget plan, vouchers deemed “Opportunity Scholarships” are being offered to families wanting to send their children to private schools.  With an already declining budget, 87 percent of survey respondents believe this will have a negative impact on public schools. 

NC Educators have also seen the smallest change in teacher pay grade in the last decade across all 50 states, with an average of one raise of 1.2 percent in the past five years. According to the study, a teacher beginning with a salary of $30,400 in 2009 would now be making $30,880—only a $480 increase in five years. 

“One reaction is teachers moving out of NC because they can get better pay, basically by going to any other state. If they can bump their salary by any small amount, why would they stay where they are at?” Smith said. 

The survey responses are telling of the teachers’ frustrations. About 96 percent of respondents believe public education in North Carolina is going in the wrong direction. Ninety seven percent of NC educators think the legislative changes help create low teacher morale. Most importantly, two-thirds of respondents believe recent legislative changes have hurt the quality of learning and teaching at their own schools. 

 “I think there is some short term economic savings they were considering through these policies,” Smith said. “Lots of ways in which they have been frugal at the expense of teachers. But those short term savings can easily be overwhelmed by the impact this is having on teachers.”

Both Smith and Imig claim these changes send a negative view of teaching to students thinking about it as a profession. However, recent UNCW graduate and high school teacher James Brown shows there are mixed feelings about the laws passed. 

“I don’t mind the changes, because I believe I will be in the top 25 percent of my peers,” Brown said. “However, I do think it is not fair for those that still work diligently, but are not considered in the top 25 percent. Most of the laws were created in response to test scores by students. Many fail to realize that you can’t force a student to want to try. It’s not fair to teachers who have students that don’t want to try in their classrooms.”

In his first year of teaching, Brown teaches three classes and aims to have successful students, just as most other educators. But with all of these changes, especially financially, enacted in such a short period of time, most teachers find difficulty in seeing the positives Brown has. 

“I just think we need to remind people in control education is an investment, not an expense,” Imig said.