RALEIGH, N.C. — When State Superintendent Mark Johnson debuted a new website last month showcasing the
finances of every public school system in the state, he lauded the site as a new, transparent way for the public to see how schools spend taxpayer money.
But since its launch, critics have accused the superintendent of presenting the data in a "
misleading" and "
deceptive" way, especially as it relates to teacher salaries. At issue is how the
N.C. School Finances website compares
average teacher salaries to
median household income and wages across the state.
Here is a breakdown of what the finance website shows, why critics take issue with the data and the superintendent's response to the criticism.
What is the NC School Finances website?
The site debuted in late April and shows
financial info for every school system in the state, including average teacher salaries, textbook funding and class sizes. Similar to the state's
School Report Card website, the new dashboard allows state and local leaders, researchers, news media, community members, and educators and parents to learn more about the funding that goes into, and is spent on, the state’s K-12 public schools.
Why compare average teacher salary to median income?
Visitors to the homepage of the
NC School Finances website are greeted by a video of the state superintendent alongside data comparing North Carolina's average teacher salary to median income and wages in the state, broken down the following way:
- $53,975 – Annual average projected compensation for teachers for the 2018-19 school year
- $50,320 – Annual median N.C. household income (includes all household income) for 2017
- $47,258 – Annual median wage (individual) in N.C. for a person with a bachelor’s degree for 2017
- $30,326 – Annual median wage (individual) in N.C. for 2017
Soon after the website's launch, Lauren Fox, senior director of policy at the Public School Forum of North Carolina,
wrote on Twitter that it "is not appropriate" to compare average salaries of one group to the median salary for the other.
"These are two separate calculations. The median wage is the salary that falls in the middle of the distribution for all employees in a given category, rather than the average,"
Fox wrote. "The median value is less likely to be skewed by wages at the top of the distribution as a result."
A spokesman for the state superintendent said they considered using median teacher salary from 2017-18, "but the standard going back decades, mostly driven by the NEA’s [National Education Association] annual report on average teacher compensation and widely accepted by the news media, is to report average teacher salary."
"Switching from the common practice would cause confusion, but fortunately, we know that in this case the median and the mean are very close (since the teacher salary schedule precludes outliers that would skew the mean)," Drew Elliot, communications director for the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, told WRAL News by email.
"It's a very fair comparison, because we are actually using the numbers from the teacher union [National Education Association]. So the teacher union in D.C. is the one that comes out with the teacher average salary ranking every year. This is the same formula that has been used for longer than I've been in Raleigh, before I was on a school board, before I was even a teacher, this is the metric that has been used.
"And yes, it is also fair to point out the median household income, because median's important. It takes out some of the extremely wealthy people in North Carolina who make millions of dollars a month, billionaires. We cannot have an accurate comparison to our teachers and anyone in North Carolina, really, to people who make that kind of money. So, median is fair.
"And also, we have put out there the average salary for starting graduates who graduate from our UNC System of schools. We have been able to identify that average, and the average starting salary for a teacher is considerably higher. The average starting salary for a teacher is $39,300. The average starting salary for a graduate from one of our UNC System schools is just over $26,000, so that's a fair comparison as well."
What is North Carolina's median teacher salary?
The state Department of Public Instruction was not able to provide North Carolina's 2018-19 median teacher salary, saying the figure will be computed after this school year. However, the agency was able to calculate the 2017-18 median salary and provided the following information:
We know that the median teacher salary for 2017-18 is within 1 percent ($600) of the mean for that school year.
For that calculation, the base salary only includes Base Salary + Average LEA [Local Education Agency] Local Supplement and does not include additional pay, such as bonuses, annual leave pay out, etc. The base salary accounts for 98 percent of the total compensation. The calculated median base salary for 2017-18 was $49,603.
While this figure is not comparable to the total average teacher compensation for 2017-18 ($51,234), which includes all compensation, it is comparable to the mean teacher base salary plus local supplement.
The following shows the difference between the mean and median at approximately 1 percent in 2017-18:
Mean base salary $45,861
Supplementary pay $4,337
Total mean $50,198
Median base salary $49,603
Difference $595
What median wage figures are used?
To determine North Carolina's median wage, the state Department of Public Instruction used the five-year estimate of the American Community Survey from the U.S. Census.
Kris Nordstrom, a senior policy analyst at the North Carolina Justice Center’s Education & Law Project, called the income comparisons "deceptive and inappropriate" and accused the state superintendent of "statistical gaslighting."
Years of comparison: Johnson is comparing teacher pay in 2019 with Census data on North Carolina incomes from 2017.
Hours of work: The average teacher salary includes only full-time teachers, yet the Census data on North Carolina incomes include individuals who may be out of work or only working part time.
Age range: The Census data on North Carolina incomes include children as young as 16 who might still be in school, as well as elderly North Carolinians who are no longer working.
Level of education: Teachers have higher educational attainment than the average North Carolinian. Sixty-five percent of North Carolina teachers have a bachelor’s degree and 35 percent have a master’s degree or higher. Johnson shows the median wage for North Carolinians with a bachelor’s degree, but a more honest comparison would equally weight the samples’ levels of education.
Average teacher pay doesn’t include all teachers: North Carolina’s average teacher pay figure only includes teachers paid from state funds. It does not include teachers paid from federal or local funds (more than 12 percent of all teachers). North Carolina’s finance system is designed to encourage districts to pay their highest-paid teachers from state funds and pay lower-paid teachers from local and federal funds. As a result, North Carolina’s published average salary figure overstates the actual average salary of North Carolina’s teachers when all teachers are included in the calculation.
Nordstrom said a better comparison would be one used by researchers at the Economic Policy Institute.
Luckily for us, there are smart researchers out there who have figured out how to accurately compare teacher salaries with salaries of other industries. Researchers from the Economic Policy Institute have been measuring the teacher wage gap for more than 15 years. Unlike Johnson, the EPI researchers’ comparison of teachers to non-teachers ensures an apples-to-apples comparison by only including working age, full-time workers with comparable educational attainment. According to their more accurate measures, pay for North Carolina teachers trails other professionals by 26.5 percent. The superintendent's spokesman pushed back, saying several critics have pulled "the same stunt" in reviewing the data.
"They point out areas that would tend to pull a figure in one direction while omitting areas that would tend to pull it in the opposite direction," Elliot wrote. "Two examples: Some have pointed out that individual income data includes part-time workers (tending to decrease the median) without mentioning that the measures also include households with two full-time earners (tending to increase the median). Some have pointed out average teacher pay doesn’t include locally funded teachers, who tend to be lower-paid, but fail to mention that it also doesn’t include federally paid teachers, who tend to be higher-paid."
Elliot provided the following for context:
Median household income figures include the incomes of all household members ages 16 and above, so while it includes households made up of individuals that work part-time, it also includes many households with multiple, full-time wage earners.
Individual income data taken from the Census includes both full and part-time work, not just “full-time, year-round” employees. The Census defines “full-time, year-round” as working at least 50 weeks out of the year, which is longer than most teachers’ annual contracts.
The Census data on individual earnings includes age 16 and above, but only those individuals with earnings, so it would not include elderly North Carolinians who are no longer working. Median household income figures include the incomes of all household members ages 16 and above, so while it includes young wage earners it also includes many households with multiple, full-time wage earners. (More N.C. households have two earners than have just one earner.)
While it’s true that the average teacher pay doesn’t include locally funded teachers, who tend to be lower-paid, it also doesn’t include federally paid teachers, who tend to be higher-paid. There are 6,164 locally funded teachers in the state and 5,372 federally funded teachers.
While many teachers have earned a master’s degree, it is not required to teach in North Carolina – a bachelor’s is generally required. The NCSF [NC School Finances] site was developed not just for educators, but for parents, students, taxpayers, and more. A current teacher with a master’s degree might consider it a better comparison to use a weighted formula, but a parent and student looking at career choices might not.
Are principal and administrator salaries included in average teacher pay?
"No," the superintendent's spokesman wrote, bolding the word for effect – principal and administrators' salaries are not included in the average teacher pay calculation.
To determine average teacher pay, the state Department of Public Instruction collects payroll data for every traditional public school teacher in the state. Their pay is then audited to make sure each teacher is paid according to their license and years of experience and to make sure they have the appropriate licensure. Using December payroll data, because the population is fairly stable that month, the salary data is downloaded into a mainframe program, which calculates the average.
Since teachers are paid in a variety of ways, the agency breaks down the compensation into 12 categories to show how the average is calculated:
Was the finance website released to coincide with the May 1 teacher rally?
The state superintendent released the school finance website on April 25, less than a week before the May 1 teacher rally, which drew thousands of educators to Raleigh. So, was the website's release timed to influence the rally?
"No, we have actually been planning that to be in late April for over a year now," Johnson told WRAL News. "That website took over a year to develop, and it was always on the books for late April, because we wanted it to be the week after most spring breaks were over and people were back in school, going into these budget discussions."
The superintendent "is interested in laying out the facts – good and bad," his spokesman said.
"He is lobbying the legislature for aggressive increases to educator compensation, and he is also joining with other educators, community and business leaders to counter the negative narratives about the teaching profession via the soon-to-be-launched TeachNC effort," Elliot wrote. "Students and parents need to know that teaching is a great career choice. We need great teachers in our classrooms, and the facts show that while more needs to be done, we are on the right track."
Who created the school finances site?
The
N.C. School Finances site was developed in partnership with the Government Data Analytics Center of the N.C. Department of Information Technology and Cary-based SAS. It's part of the multimillion-dollar, multi-year School Business Systems Modernization program that the General Assembly has funded to modernize systems including financial and payroll information, human resources information, and capital and repairs and renovations planning information systems at both the state and school district levels.
What other statistics does the website show?
According to the NC School Finances website:
- The average salary for a beginning teacher in N.C. is $39,300 per school year, which is more than the average starting salary for other college graduates and more than the median wage for individuals in North Carolina.
- $47,258 per year is the median wage of a person in North Carolina who has obtained a bachelor’s degree as his or her highest level of education completed.
- $26,400 per year is what the average person makes one year after graduating from a UNC system school with a bachelor’s degree.
- $30,326 per year is the median wage for an individual in N.C.
- The state sends $1,300 per teacher to schools for textbooks and supplies each school year.
- North Carolina has more than 2,500 public schools that serve more than 1.5 million students.
- The state's largest school district (Wake County) serves almost 160,000 students, making it the 15th largest district in the nation.
- North Carolina’s 115 school districts receive mostly state funding, while other states are divided into many smaller school districts that rely more heavily on local funding. (Pennsylvania, for example, has 500 school districts.)
