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.