Board certified teachers fare well in NC

North Carolina looks bad on most national comparisons of how it pays teachers.  But when it comes to rewarding those who earn certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards,  the state does better than most.

Certification,  which requires teachers to meet demanding national standards and analyze their own teaching techniques, brings a 12 percent bump to teacher salaries here.  Exactly where that ranks is hard to say because there are so many different approaches.

Twenty states provide some kind of salary incentive,  and most of those offer a flat amount rather than a percentage,  says the board's communication director Aparna Kumar.  For instance,  a recent state report comparing North Carolina to surrounding states showed that South Carolina offers $5,000 a year,  while Virginia offers $5,000 the first year and $2,500 in subsequent years.  Georgia has approved rewarding board certification but has yet to provide the money,  the report from the N.C. General Assembly's Fiscal Research Division says.  Tennessee provides no statewide reward but encourages local districts to do so.

In North Carolina, the amount of the certification bump depends on the teacher's base salary.  For one making the state minimum of $30,800,  12 percent comes to just under $3,700.  For a teacher at the top of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools scale,  it's a bit over $8,300 a year.

"As a rough comparison, North Carolina is among the states with a strong incentive in the approximately $4,000 to $6,000 range,"  Kumar said.

North Carolina was one of the first states to embrace the certification process as a way to develop strong teachers. North Carolina has more board certified teachers than any other state,  and Wake County tops all other districts nationwide.

"North Carolina is well poised to build from its history of strong support to help make Board certification the norm for teachers as it is in other high-regard professions such as medicine,"  said board President Ronald Thorpe.

N.C. leaders are scrutinizing every aspect of teacher compensation in hopes of getting the best bang for the taxpayer buck.  They're phasing out extra pay for master's degrees,  arguing that the 10 percent increase doesn't correspond to stronger results for kids.  So far they seem willing to keep the certification pay intact,  though I never venture a firm prediction on what the future might hold.

Will National Board pay survive?

Earlier this week I got an email from a Butler High teacher worried about losing North Carolina's pay supplement for teachers who earn National Board Certification.  Last summer's session brought unpleasant surprises for teachers,  including the elimination of extra pay for master's degrees and the phase-out of tenure.  With changes to teacher compensation a near certainty for the 2014 session,  she wondered if anyone was eyeing the National Board pay as a pool to tap.

Jennifer Lunsford at Rocky River

The question came up the very next day at a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools news conference at Rocky River High,  where Superintendent Heath Morrison celebrated the large numbers of board-certified teachers in CMS and North Carolina.

Morrison said he and leaders of other N.C. school districts would resist any move to cut the supplement.

"It is a way to show the commitment to quality teachers in our state,"  he said.  "It's working really well the way it is now."

Jennifer Lunsford,  a math teacher at Rocky River,  talked about the work she did to earn her certification.  She had to video and critique her own work in the classroom, analyze her lessons and provide evidence of her impact on student learning.  She fell short the first time,  then worked with advisers to improve her skills and try again.

"The process helped me become more honest with myself,"  she said.  "It's hard to deny what you see on the camera."

Morrison noted that his wife has twice earned the certification  (no, she doesn't work for CMS).  The work load is staggering,  comparable to earning an advanced degree,  Morrison said.  "It's like the best professional development,"  he said.  "It makes you look in the mirror and say, 'How do I improve my craft?'  "

CMS hasn't yet analyzed whether board-certified teachers rated higher than others on new state value-added ratings,  which crunch student test scores to determine how much teachers contributed to their gains.

Master's degree pay: Nasty surprise ahead?

We know the N.C. legislature has eliminated extra pay for teachers who earn advanced degrees after 2014.  But like so many things coming out of this summer's rapid-fire session,  details are still being sorted out.

It's not even clear what the deadline is for completing a master's degree to qualify for the 10 percent pay hike that's now part of state's teacher pay scale.  The state budget bill says teachers are grandfathered into the old pay scale if they earned the salary supplement  "prior to the 2014-15 school year."  Currently,  the deadline for earning master's pay in 2013-14 is April 1,  2014.

But Tom Tomberlin,  a human-resources official with the N.C. Department of Public Instruction,  said today that his department will ask the state Board of Education to consider pushing that back "to accommodate those teachers finishing their masters in the spring of 2014."

The bigger question,  Tomberlin says,  is what happens after 2014,  when everyone converts to one pay scale.  Teachers who are grandfathered into the current master's scale have been assured their pay won't be cut,  he said,  but it's possible they'd be frozen in coming years until their pay comes in line with the new scale. For instance,  a teacher with 10 years' experience and a master's degree made $40,820 on the 2012-13 state scale  (many local districts supplement state pay),  compared with $37,110 for a teacher with only a bachelor's.  The bachelor's scale doesn't hit that level until Year 17.

 "We don't know the answer to that,"  Tomberlin said.  "It's a point we've got to get clarity on from the legislators."

Meanwhile,  teachers in grad school and the universities that serve them are scrambling to figure out how to meet the new deadline  (whatever it turns out to be).  One teacher who had been enrolled in UNC Charlotte's graduate program forwarded an email sent Friday by Dean Ellen McIntyre.  The College of Education is  "strategizing to find ways to help as many of you as possible complete your programs with integrity by December 2013," the email says, adding that more information will arrive in the coming week.

Teachers are resorting to dark humor to cope with what Annie McCanless,  a veteran teacher at Providence High,  dubs "the summer of misery for education in North Carolina."  Shortly after the budget passed last week,  she sent me her Ten Reasons Why Teachers Don't Need an Advanced Degree in North Carolina.  Among them:  "If teachers get an advanced degree they will leave NC so they can work in a state that rewards the educational achievement,"  "Paying all teachers the same salary simplifies the salary charts"  and  "Teachers don’t need the knowledge and skills learned in an advanced degree. All they needed to know they learned in kindergarten."

There's one bright spot for teachers:  Legislators didn't touch the 12 percent supplement for those who have earned National Board Certification.  "I think  'for now'  is the operative word,"  cautioned Tomberlin.

Taking away master's pay for teachers

The supplement North Carolina teachers get for advanced degrees would disappear for teachers who earn those degrees in the future,  according to House and Senate budget plans.

Contrary to rumors,  those proposals wouldn't strip pay from teachers who have already earned the supplement.  According to an N.C. Association of Educators summary of how the budget plans would affect teachers,  anyone who gets the extra pay in 2013-14 would be grandfathered into the existing pay scale.  Under the 2012-13 pay scale,  a teacher with 10 years' experience and a bachelor's degree gets $37,110,  while a master's degree adds another $3,710 to the annual salary  (local supplements may push that higher). Neither proposal eliminates the additional pay for National Board Certification.

A petition on Change.org created by Bobby Padgett of Gastonia urges legislators to protect pay for advanced degrees as they work toward a final budget this summer. "This is a particular slap in the face to all NC educators who are in the middle of a master's program and cannot complete it by this arbitrary deadline,"  the petition says.  It had more than 1,000 electronic signatures as of Wednesday.

"Why wouldn't you want to give an incentive to the people you trust to educate your children to continue educating themselves?" wrote signer Gabriel Cohn of Davidson, a teacher who doesn't have an advanced degree.

"It's not just about the money; it's about valuing education,"  wrote Brittany Stone of Charlotte. "Eliminating master's pay is just another of the myriad ways in which North Carolina is devaluing education and educators."

Meanwhile,  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Superintendent Heath Morrison said Wednesday that district officials will keep lobbying for an employee raise in 2013-14,  even though neither the House nor the Senate budget calls for one.  He said studies that rank North Carolina as low as 48th in the nation in teacher pay are cause for alarm:  "It is going to be very hard to make the case for quality teachers to come and stay in North Carolina."

This week Gov. Pat McCrory charged his education cabinet with creating a plan to boost pay for good teachers, along with other strategies for improving public education. Their plan is due in time to be presented to the legislature in 2014. 
 

Rumor buster, hot topics and CMS en Español

No one can accuse Heath Morrison of being stingy with communication.

The superintendent's web page has added a "Heath's Hot Topics" feature,  with graphics suggesting someone was drinking a lot of caffeine during the design. Early topics include the budget process, an update from Raleigh and the threats at Hough High earlier this month.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has also added a "Rumor Has It" feature for district officials to address questions and controversy.  I can claim the distinction of kicking it off;  the first entry was in response to my reporting on a Providence employee who was still listed on the CMS payroll 10 years after he left on worker's comp.  Other posts have addressed questions about extra pay for National Board Certification and the raises proposed for 2013-14.

(The item about  "selective raises" reminded me of the flap over last year's market-adjustment raises,  which bumped up some salaries by as much as $17,000.  Chief Financial Officer Sheila Shirley says there are no market adjustment raises in the 2013-14 plan.)

The CMS web page has also added a prominent link to  "CMS en Español,"  with several key documents translated.  It's a recognition of the growing international population here,  with Spanish speakers as the largest language minority.  It'll be interesting to see whether CMS adds options for some of the other 165 languages spoken by students.  The Portland Public Schools site,  for instance,  has links for Chinese,  Russian,  Somali,  Spanish and Vietnamese.