RALEIGH – As state legislators, the Perdue administration, and others begin to debate budget-savings recommendations this week, you can expect to hear a lot of talk about state spending on education, particularly for classroom teachers.

The debate is important, but its terms are miscast. Educational performance is clearly tied to teacher quality, which is itself tied to a variety of state policies and variables. Policymakers shouldn’t think they are determining the effectiveness of instruction in North Carolina public schools through the appropriations process. Teacher quality is not simply a product of state expenditure.

Indeed, as previous JLF studies have demonstrated, standard nationwide comparisons of state spending on teachers, and thus on education in general, typically fail to include such explanatory factors as the cost of living, the value of non-wage benefits, and the average years of teaching experience. So you can’t use the raw data to assert that overall spending and teacher quality are correlated. Careful studies reveal that other variables matter more.

Don’t take my word for it. Take a look at the latest State Teacher Policy Yearbook from the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington-based organization with a broad base of directors, advisors, and supporters.

The NCTQ report grades each state according to performance on 15 factors that, according to a preponderance of the research, play a significant role in producing teacher quality. The 15 policy goals are grouped into three areas: identifying effective teachers, retaining effective teachers, and getting rid of ineffective teachers (the report authors are more diplomatic here, but that’s what they mean).

North Carolina’s overall score in the 2008 study was a C-. Plenty of states were worse. But here’s another instance of educational rivalry that ought to motivate patriotic Tar Heels to action: South Carolina posted one of the highest scores in the country, a B. For ways to rid schools of ineffective teachers, South Carolina got an A. We got a C-.

Here are some specific goals where North Carolina needs a great deal of improvement according to the NCTQ study:

• Measurement. If states are going to evaluate teacher effectiveness, with an eye towards retaining the best teachers and retraining or removing the bad ones, they must establish a longitudinal data system that tracks both teacher and student performance over the years. Tennessee is a best-practice state in measurement. South Carolina partly meets this goal. North Carolina’s system is woefully lacking.

• Mentoring. South Carolina is a best-practice state when it comes to matching new teachers with mentors who are truly excellent teachers themselves. North Carolina is not.

• Pay policies. Teachers ought to be compensated according to factors truly related to student achievement, rather than simply for years served or degrees received. Both Carolinas fare poorly here. North Carolina does receive praise in the report for rewarding teachers for relevant expertise earned in other professions, such as a science teacher having previously worked in a science occupation. But we aren’t among the leading states when it comes to differentiating pay according to shortages (too few math and science teachers, for example) or student performance (our ABC system is faulted for giving too many bonuses, of too small an amount, to entire schools rather than to individual teachers).

• Benefit policies. North Carolina ranks very low in making pensions portable, flexible, and fair to all teachers. Thus, we tend to discourage prospective teachers with excellent potential from entering the system for shorter stints, while keeping mediocre teachers in the system for longer stints. Again, South Carolina has a much better system.

Maximizing the ranks and average pay of teachers is not an education-reform agenda. Given the political heft of the teacher union, it is really just a re-election agenda. Don’t let the politicians claim otherwise.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation