Facing pushback, NC education leaders defend teacher licensure revision

For years, fewer people have been enrolling in teaching degree programs and vacancies are growing, Davis said.

Davis and state Superintendent Catherine Truitt delivered comments prepared together for about 30 minutes Thursday during the state board’s meeting in defense of the current effort to revise the state’s teacher licensure system and, ideally, reverse the decline in interest in the profession.

The catch, according to critics: Teachers’ license eligibility and long-term employment would be contingent on a review of their effectiveness, measured in one of two to three ways that many worry aren’t clear enough yet to understand or evaluate. Teachers could renew their license without meeting the conditions outlined in the licensure model once, but not twice.

Others have worried about how it may influence where and what teachers may choose to teach or whether resources will be sufficient enough to carry out the directives and performance evaluations, among other things.

Essentially, the licensure proposal is a major change to an increasingly volatile industry, so the stakes — and tensions — are high.

But, Truitt and Davis note, the proposal isn’t set in stone.

“This process isn’t close to being complete,” Truitt said.

The State Board of Education expects to consider a finalized model this fall, to either approve or requests additional tweaks on, before sending the proposal to the General Assembly during the 2023 session. If lawmakers approve it, the implementation process may take several more years, Davis said.

DPI officials have suggested continued review of the proposed compensation amounts to make the model less expensive and more palatable to lawmakers, though starting pay for a fully licensed teacher would remain above the current maximum pay for the most experienced teachers, of $54,000.

The Professional Educator Preparation and Standards Committee and its subcommittees are still deliberating the model, delivered to them initially as a suggestion from a group called the Human Capital Roundtable. The roundtable is a group of many education and public officials in North Carolina who met privately, with funding from the Southern Regional Education Board, via the Gates Foundation, to develop a licensure model. The resulting model resembles others the Southern Regional Education Board has developed for other states, though they have not been passed anywhere.

DPI officials have pushed for the plan and the Belk Foundation has paid a public relations firm, Eckel & Vaughan, to promote the plan, according to emails obtained by Justin Parmenter, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher and North Carolina Association of Educators board member.

Parmenter has opposed the plan and, along with others, argued it doesn’t address bigger reasons why people are not entering the teaching profession, including divestments in certain types of compensation or recruitment tools.

The model also raises more questions teachers want answers to, including on the different ways teachers would be evaluated.

“All of these are useful tools but have a degree of subjectivity that educators who live paycheck to paycheck have legit concerns about,” Parmenter tweeted Thursday.

Truitt and Davis suggested critics have lost sight of the problem at hand and the improvements the model can provide.

The current licensure system “provides few supports, little assistance to developing teaching skills or expertise and no opportunity to increase compensation,” Davis said.

This year’s Burroughs Wellcome North Carolina Teacher of the Year, Leah Carper, also a board adviser, stressed in a comment to Truitt and Davis that the increased compensation while being able to stay a classroom teacher would be critical for many teachers who often only contemplate administrative roles for higher pay.

Carper has an administrative license but doesn’t want to use it.

“The only reason went to graduate school and went into debt was so that if something ever happened to my sweet husband, then I could afford to pay for my children to survive and be OK,” Carper said. She has three children. “And the fact that teachers have to make those choices and have to go into debt to be able to support their families is really sad.”