Teacher pay, school funding are top of mind in WRAL News questionnaire

Teacher pay and school funding top the list of priorities collected as a part of a new WRAL News questionnaire.

The results suggest high interest in a classic issue in education: whether resources are sufficient for schools.

The results aren’t surprising, said Lance Fusarelli, professor of education leadership and policy in the North Carolina State University College of Education.

“North Carolina typically ranks in the bottom quarter in starting salaries for new teachers, and average teacher salary and per pupil expenditure,” he said. “So if you're in the bottom quarter in those states, and those things are reported annually, people see that. Politicians talk about that.”

WRAL News’ survey, which collected 862 responses over 11 days, isn’t scientific. But the responses to the questionnaire reflect past scientific public polling.

The survey’s purpose is to gauge community opinions on a broader scale ahead of a statewide election for superintendent of public instruction and to give the community a chance to provide their input on one of the biggest races in the state this year.

Democrat Mo Green, a former Guilford County Schools superintendent with a legal background, faces Republican Michele Morrow, a homeschool mom and former nurse, in the Nov. 5 election for state superintendent.

In 2022, a scientific WRAL News poll found that most adults — 62% — believed public schools were underfunded. About 19% believed they were properly funded, 14% were unsure and 5% believed they were overfunded.

In the same poll, 68% of respondents felt teachers were underpaid, although the state and local school systems have since provided additional raises.

The latest survey was open to any respondent, and WRAL was unable to authenticate the identity, demographics or location of all the respondents. WRAL did seek interviews with some respondents.

Cathy Warner selected “providing enough money to schools” in her questionnaire response to what she considers the top public education issue.

“I hate to say ‘money,’ because it shouldn't always come down to that,” Warner said in an interview. “But if you have money, then you can do a lot of the other things. … You can pay the teachers better. You can have better facilities. You can address learning loss.”

What questionnaire respondents said

More than 40% of responses to the WRAL questionnaire came from people who identified themselves as parents of public school students. About one-third said they were “concerned citizens” and about one in five said they were grandparents. Almost half were Wake County residents, and the remaining responses came in from dozens of other counties.

The questionnaire asked what issue people thought was the most important in North Carolina Public Education.

Most people responding to the questionnaire said public school teaching experience is the most important quality to have in a state superintendent candidate — a quality neither candidate has this year.

At least 460 responses listed that as their top quality for the next state superintendent of public instruction. About 160 people said they wanted the candidate to have an education degree — again, something neither candidate has.

Green has a law degree, although he spent the bulk of his professional career working in public schools as either an attorney or administrator. He sent his children to North Carolina public schools. Morrow has a degree in nursing and sent her children to homeschool in North Carolina. She’s also sent her children to public and private schools in other states.

Many questionnaire respondents also lamented politics in schools and even the political nature of the superintendent race.

That sentiment is something that concerns Warner.

Warner identified herself as a concerned citizen. Warner, who supports Green, doesn’t have children in North Carolina schools but has volunteered in them and found the teachers to be overwhelmed with tasks — one reason she wants state and education leaders to focus on teachers.

“This position shouldn't be a partisan position,” she said. “I hate to see people using it for political gain or taking it as a step into something bigger.”

She thinks past superintendents have used the position as a stepping stone in politics, rather than being sincerely interested in it.

Other findings:

• More than 400 responses — nearly half — said hiring and retaining quality teachers was the most important issue in North Carolina public education.
• More than 200 selected providing sufficient funds to schools as their top issue, and nearly 100 selected providing quality curriculum.
• The other options — prioritizing school safety, addressing pandemic student learning loss and providing enough special education services — drew a total of just 68 selections.
• Many people who responded to the questionnaire indicated they were teachers in comments. Many people, including non-teachers, argued for more teacher pay. Several lamented the lack of pay raises for teachers with 16 or more years of experience; those teachers earn only a single raise — at year 26 — unless a new state budget offers a cost-of-living adjustment or raise. Those most experienced teachers often receive the smallest raises when a new state budget is passed, as lawmakers focus more on providing bigger raises or new and early career teachers.

School vouchers

Many respondents said they were opposed to publicly funded vouchers for families to send their children to private schools. WRAL News did not ask about vouchers — called Opportunity Scholarships in North Carolina — but they were mentioned more than 100 times in open-ended responses.

“It’s a hot-button issue,” Fusarelli said. He noted even voucher supporters and conservatives outside of North Carolina have expressed skepticism toward opening eligibility to all income levels.

That’s clear in the “tipping point” he said even North Carolina lawmakers were at, in which the House of Representatives declined to vote for full funding of the voucher program this year — even after voting to expand it — without also being able to guarantee further public school teacher raises. He compared it to Santa Claus handing out Christmas presents.

“If it's a good Christmas, then everybody gets some — teachers get a pay raise, people that want vouchers get a voucher,” he said. “But if it gets perceived as we're going to spend this much on vouchers, we have to make cuts or limit or freeze teacher pay or, you know, class size and stuff like that, then that goes from a win-win to like a zero-sum.”

People will push back if they perceive vouchers as having a negative effect on their local public schools, which people generally favor, Fusarelli said.

What national polling tells us about public education sentiment

National polling for decades has shown that people are generally happy with their own public schools, but skepticism of public school systems as a whole has grown.

Fusarelli said school elections are often too far down the ballot to attract as informed of votes as president or governor elections, and they can be harder to predict. Many voters sometimes just pick one party down a whole ballot, even in races they’re not familiar with, he said.

But he said if people know the differences between the candidates and they like their public schools, it’s possible they’d be less likely to risk shaking up the school system.

In 2022, Gallup found that most U.S. parents continue to be satisfied with their own children’s education, although most U.S. adults were not satisfied with public education overall. That suggests some dissonance between people’s own experiences and their perceptions of schools their children don’t attend.

Most who said they were dissatisfied cited insufficient curriculum. About one-quarter cited a lack of resources.

But parents’ general satisfaction with their own public school has been a common finding in many other polls, according to Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization that reports on education issues. People who aren’t parents are less satisfied with the public school system in their communities.

A new PDK International poll asked adults about what they wanted a new federal education administration to focus on. It found large majorities across party lines supporting workforce preparation, attracting and retaining good teachers, helping students who have academically fallen behind and addressing student mental health.

The concern for the teacher workforce was particularly stark; when asked if they would support their own children going into the education profession, just one in four respondents said they would support it, primarily citing insufficient pay. When PDK International first began asking that question in 1969, three in four parents said they would support their children going into the education profession.