NC ranks 30th nationally in average teacher salary, 2nd again in Southeast

New numbers from a national educators group came out in July but flew largely under the radar as the pandemic grew.

Posted 12:45 a.m. Sep 2, 2020 — Updated 1:02 a.m. Sep 2, 2020

Travis Fain

, WRAL statehouse reporter

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina's average teacher salary of about $54,700 ranked the state 30th in the country over the last school year among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

That's about where it was the year before too, according to the latest numbers compiled by the National Education Association.

The annual figures from country's largest teacher's union actually came out in July, but they went largely unnoticed in North Carolina until last week, when legislative Republicans pointed to growth in teacher wages. Lawmakers are gearing up for another budget tussle with Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper as the General Assembly goes back into session Wednesday, and teacher pay is always a flashpoint.

The new report puts the state's education funding increase – the percentage funding changed from the 2018-19 school year to 2019-20 – at No. 7 in the country and first in the Southeast, according to Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger's office, which highlighted the change.

The state's per-pupil funding, now just over $10,632 a year, also increased faster than anywhere else in the Southeast.

Senate Republicans focused on the growth numbers. The raw numbers are less complimentary compared to other states, but they're also not adjusted for cost-of-living differences state to state.

"As a reminder, North Carolina provided teachers with the third-highest salary increase in the entire country for five years, until Gov. Cooper's veto stopped the streak last year," Berger spokesman Pat Ryan said in an email.

Cooper vetoed that budget, in part because he sought significantly higher raises for North Carolina teachers than Republicans were willing to give. He wanted to hold back on business tax cuts the GOP majority favored, using that money to boost education spending.

The North Carolina Association of Educators backed Cooper's play. Berger's office chastised the group last week as "predictably silent on high-octane growth" in the NEA report.

"When I was in school, sometimes the loudest person in class became the quietest when called on, and right now, all I hear is the sound of crickets from the far-left NCAE," Sen. Deanna Ballard, R-Watauga, who co-chairs the Senate Education committee, said in a release last week.

"The facts speak for themselves: North Carolina Republicans are delivering for teachers and students in spite of obstruction from the far-left NCAE (chirp, chirp)," Ballard said.

The NCAE responded that "despite years of the Republican-led General Assembly falsely championing ‘record increases,’" the state still hasn't managed to get back to what it spent on educator compensation prior to the recession a decade ago, adjusted for inflation.

The state has moved up in the national rankings, though. In 2013-14, in the early years of a GOP takeover of state government, the state hit its lowest rank in a decade, 47th in the nation. Two years ago, it was up to 34th. These latest preliminary numbers moved the state to 30th, though that ranking can change.

Last year's preliminary numbers, for example, put North Carolina at 29th among the states. Those numbers were finalized this summer, dropping the state a spot to 30.

Likewise, the latest numbers will be finalized next year. In fact, the NEA doesn't actually rank the states based on the preliminary numbers, but it's easy enough to sort raw numbers the group publishes.

For now, the average teacher salary here for the last school year, according to the NEA, was $54,682. Only Georgia was higher in the Southeast, at $60,578.

The average nationwide was $63,645.

“We applaud the efforts made by educators to push the NC General Assembly on action to get to these rankings," NCAE President Tamika Walker Kelly said in a statement. "However, North Carolina still falls well-below the national average not only for educator pay, but also for per-pupil spending."

The state ranks 38th in that particular metric, also called "Expenditures Per Student in Fall Enrollment" in the report.

Again, Republican legislative leaders focused on the growth, not the total dollars. Berger's office noted that, on a year-to-year percentage increase, the state ranked No. 6 in the country and first in the Southeast in per-pupil spending.

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