RALEIGH — Gov. Pat McCrory rolled out a five-part education reform initiative Wednesday featuring a multimillion-dollar pay raise plan for veteran teachers in 2014-15, with future hikes linked to performance, market, and experience factors.
But a paucity of funding details puzzled lawmakers already facing a budget deficit approaching a half billion dollars, while the modest increase drew jeers from the teachers lobby for being inadequate.
“Teachers can expect to see an average raise of 2 percent” under his proposal, with some getting a larger boost, depending on where they are on the salary scale, McCrory said. “We’d like to do more, but that’s a start.”
The proposal would fulfill a pledge the governor and legislative leaders made in February when unveiling a separate plan to raise base pay to $35,000 for more than 42,000 early career teachers with up to nine years of experience, at a total cost of about $175 million. At the time they said they had a consensus to raise pay later for remaining teachers as well as other state employees.
McCrory said the pay raises announced in February and those in his new plan would bring the total cost to about $265 million.
“I can see that at least doubling to $400 million or $500 million if we try to do” everything McCrory proposes, said state Sen. Jerry Tillman, R-Randolph, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.
That is a concern, he said, because lawmakers already anticipate a shortfall of $400 million to $500 million this year due to slow economic growth and sluggish tax revenue, with Medicaid approaching an additional $90 million deficit. He said he has no clue where McCrory intends to find the money for his proposal.
“We cannot, and we will not, fund anything that we don’t see the revenue to fund,” Tillman said. “I don’t see raising taxes as being a palatable alternative for us, who just did a major tax cut.”
Asked if a cynic might view McCrory’s call for an across-the-board teacher pay raise as a political maneuver in the middle of an election year because Republicans have steadfastly pushed the accountability principle of linking pay raises to performance rather than longevity, Tillman responded, “Yeah, you could make that point.”
“I appreciate the governor’s leadership on these important education policy initiatives for the upcoming short session and look forward to learning more about his outlined proposals,” said House Speaker Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, who is running for U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Kay Hagan. “Raising state employee and teacher pay is a top priority for this legislative session.”
“We look forward to receiving and reviewing copies of the governor’s newest proposal, and how he plans to fund it in his budget, and will consider it during the upcoming session,” said Amy Auth, spokeswoman for Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham.
Mark Jewell, vice president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, called the pay raise plan “disappointing.”
“Two percent, we feel, is inadequate for teacher salaries that have been frozen for five years,” Jewell said. A 10 percent increase would be necessary “just to recoup what they lost.”
Funding all components of McCrory’s plan would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, “without doubt” would require a tax hike, and would “put his leadership to the test” in a General Assembly with a Republican supermajority, Jewell said. He said the legislature should rescind tax breaks for “billionaires and corporations” that lowered budget revenue some $500 million.
Under McCrory’s proposal, introduced at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, all state employees would receive a flat pay raise of $1,000.
The governor also is calling for $3.6 million to expand early childhood education, doubling the state’s textbook purchase budget to $46 million while continuing a transformation to digital technology, and giving salary supplements of up to 10 percent for teachers who earn advanced degrees in the subjects they are teaching.
He hopes to create a scholarship fund allowing newly discharged veterans to receive the equivalent of in-state tuition at University of North Carolina institutions.
But “most important … for generations to come,” McCrory said, is a Career Pathways for Teachers structure that replaces an outdated “20th century platform and guidelines” for teacher pay. “We have no long-term pay plan for our teachers, and that ends today.”
His budget, to be delivered to the General Assembly in about a week, contains $9 million for eight pilot programs to be selected from applications by school districts. Another eight pilots would be budgeted in the succeeding year. Based on results and feedback, the initiative could be rolled out statewide by the 2017-18 school year.
McCrory said Career Pathways is a market-based approach. It would allow teachers to reach higher pay grades faster, reward experience and performance, pay more to teachers in hard-to-staff schools and in high-demand subject areas, especially technical fields that offer superior pay from private sector employers outside education. Superintendents would have more flexibility in pay decisions.
“If a teacher is not meeting the needs of the students, of other teachers,” and is not a team player, “then that teacher will not get automatic pay increases as they have in the past,” McCrory said.
Also Wednesday, Tillman and Lt. Gov. Dan Forest won approval of the Joint Legislative Education Oversight Committee to introduce a bill in the short session starting Wednesday to create an education endowment fund.
The endowment would be sustained by purchase of education vanity license plates or tax-deductible corporate gifts. No money would be requested from the General Assembly.
“It will follow the lines for teacher performance that we’re going to follow for the governor’s pay plan,” Forest said.
Tillman said the proposal would require a small staff to provide legislative oversight of the fund.
Terry Stoops, director of research and education studies at the John Locke Foundation, said the McCrory and Forest plans “should be a win-win for Republicans. They are good politics and good policy.”
McCrory’s plan combines an acknowledged need to pay teachers more with strong performance and career advancement components, he said.
“The big question is, do we have enough money to pay for it?” Stoops said.
“The state has needed to make structural changes to the teacher salary schedule for decades. The consensus among education researchers is that paying teachers based on credentials and experience, as our current system requires, is unproductive and inefficient,” Stoops said. The governor’s plan is the first step toward a system of rewarding excellence in the classroom.
The mainstream media, public school advocacy organizations, and teachers unions will oppose McCrory’s plan “because they are conditioned to reject any education reform idea proposed by Republicans. On the other hand, most taxpayers, teachers, and school personnel will find a lot to like about his initiative,” Stoops said.
McCrory’s plan received praise from superintendents, teachers, legislators, and June Atkinson, the Democratic superintendent of public instruction, he said.
“This kind of broad support will make it difficult for those on the extreme left to oppose the governor’s proposal,” Stoops said.
Forest offered a “put your money where your mouth is” plan, allowing supporters of public education to purchase a license plate and/or give tax-deductible cash donations to an endowment designed to reward the state’s best teachers, Stoops said.
Dan E. Way (@danway_carolina) is an associate editor of Carolina Journal.