An editorial the Fayetteville Observer published in late June declared that North Carolina is facing a teacher shortage because “teacher pay stinks.” This assessment of the teacher labor supply had been prompted by remarks by Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson, who speculated that state education policy could produce a teacher shortage in the near future.
According to this theory, teaching position vacancies increase during periods of slow salary growth. Prospective teachers seek better, presumably higher-paying, opportunities elsewhere in the job market. Similarly, vacancies decrease during periods of salary growth. Attractive compensation draws prospective teachers to the profession.
There are two possible sources of data available to test their theory. The annual Teacher Turnover Report documents the number and percentage of teachers who leave the profession in any given school year. The Teacher Vacancy Report details the difference between the number of teachers who leave their positions and the number of teachers who are hired to fill those vacant positions. The remaining vacancies signal the relative ability of public school districts to accommodate the annual demand for teachers, which makes the vacancy report a better choice.
N.C. Department of Public Instruction data indicate there were nearly 1,000 teaching vacancies at the beginning of the 2012-13 school year. This was a slight increase from a year earlier. While 1,000 vacancies may appear to be an extraordinary number, the state employed more than 95,000 teachers in 2012. Thus, the vacancy total represents a small percentage, just over 1 percent, of the total number of teachers in the state. In addition, it means that each of North Carolina’s 115 school districts had, on average, nine vacancies.
An admittedly simplistic comparison of average salary and teaching vacancy data suggests there is no consistent relationship between the two. Vacancies increased significantly during two periods of sizable salary growth. There was a $2,500 average salary increase between 1999 and 2000 and a $4,000 increase in teacher pay between 2003 and 2007. As mentioned earlier, we would expect vacancies to decrease when salaries rise, but teaching vacancies rose during both periods. Between 2001 and 2003, average teacher salaries and vacancies stagnated simultaneously.
Vacancies are not distributed evenly from region to region. School districts in western North Carolina have had relatively few teaching position vacancies. Over the last five years, western districts averaged just over 18 vacancies per year among the 17 districts included in the region. In 2012, the highest vacancy total belonged to the 14 districts in the region including the Triangle and a swath of northeastern counties. The region averaged 188 vacancies over the last five years. School districts in Durham, Wake, and Johnston counties accounted for much of the total.
This is a predictable finding. Not only are these districts larger than most, but teachers in growing urban and suburban counties also typically have access to greater employment opportunities than those in rural areas.
Does compensation have a role in determining the supply of teachers in North Carolina? Absolutely. Nevertheless, prospective and employed public school teachers base their employment decisions on any number of factors, including salary, benefits, working conditions, job performance, family circumstances, and the health of the local job market, to name a few.
I would welcome those making claims of an impending teacher shortage to present a more comprehensive analysis of the effects of salary on teacher supply and demand based on historic trends in North Carolina. Those who reduce the complexities of the education job market to one factor — average salary — demonstrate either an unwillingness or inability to transcend their own ideological biases.
Dr. Terry Stoops (@TerryStoops) is director of research and education studies at the John Locke Foundation.