North Carolina Democrats are calling on state legislators to boost public school teacher pay. Arguing its case, the party said Oct. 29 that Tar Heel State teachers draw the South’s lowest salaries.
“North Carolina teachers are already the lowest paid teachers in the South and thanks to the NCGOP’s inability to pass a budget their take home pay continues to decrease while the cost of living and inflation only skyrocket,” state party Chair Anderson Clayton said in a written statement.
North Carolina’s legislature primarily funds public school districts, including teacher salaries. The state’s Republican-controlled House and Senate are at an impasse over funding after failing to agree on a long-term spending plan before the current fiscal year’s July 1 start. The state is operating on funding levels in the previous budget, approved in 2023. That means teachers won’t see significant salary increases, unless lawmakers reach an accord.
The state Department of Public Instruction, which oversees the state’s public schools, collects data related to public school education and employee salaries. We emailed the department to ask about Clayton’s claim that North Carolina teachers are the “lowest paid teachers in the South.”
A DPI spokesperson told PolitiFact North Carolina that the department doesn’t track pay in other states, and therefore doesn’t know exactly how teacher salaries in North Carolina compare to teacher salaries in other states. The spokesperson instead referred us to data collected by the National Education Associationthe nation’s largest teachers union.
NEA tracks the average teacher salary in each state, as well as the average salary for teachers who are starting their careers. In the 2023-24 fiscal year, North Carolina’s average teacher salary of $58,292 ranked 43rd in the nation. The state’s average starting salary of $42,542 ranked 39th in the nation.
How does that compare to other Southern states? NEA data shows average teacher salaries are lower in Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana than in North Carolina. Starting salaries are lower in Mississippi and Kentucky.
A PolitiFact review of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2024 — the most recent year of complete data available — found average teacher pay to be lower in Mississippi than in North Carolina, as well.
PolitiFact asked NEA if there’s any metric showing North Carolina with the lowest teacher pay in the South. Staci Maiers, the association’s spokeswoman, said NEA believes it’s more useful to compare a state to its neighbors than to an entire region.
“It would be more accurate to say that North Carolina teachers are the lowest paid among its neighboring states, behind Virginia, Georgia, Tennessee, and even South Carolina,” Maiers said.
The NEA numbers include base-level pay set by state lawmakers, as well as supplemental pay provided by local-level governments.
Public Schools First NC, a nonprofit organization that researches public education issues, published a report earlier this year that compared teachers’ base pay, among Southern states. The analysis excluded supplemental pay.
The group’s comparison, which doesn’t include teacher pay information for Florida or Virginia, found that North Carolina’s base pay for starting teachers to be the lowest of all the other Southern states. North Carolina’s new teachers make base pay of $41,000 annually. The next lowest is Mississippi’s $41,500.
Supplemental pay provided in North Carolina’s richest counties could make overall starting salaries look larger than they are, said Public Schools First NC spokesperson Heather Koons.
“In North Carolina, Wake County has a nice, robust local supplement because we have a stronger tax base in Wake County, whereas others don’t,” Koons said. In comparing each state’s base pay, Koons said: “We wanted to compare apples to apples.”
When we asked Clayton about the NEA data, she responded by email with sarcasm:
“After seeing the data, we’d like to formally apologize to the GOP leadership in the General Assembly for misspeaking and not recognizing that they made sure that North Carolina teachers are not in the bottom 15% for teacher pay but instead, only in the bottom 20.”
Our ruling
Clayton said “North Carolina teachers are already the lowest paid teachers in the South.”
Data from the NEA, the largest teachers’ union in the nation, shows North Carolina’s teacher salaries are among the lowest among neighboring states, but not the lowest. Other southern states have lower average teacher salaries and lower starting teacher salaries than North Carolina.
The NEA’s data includes both state-level base pay and supplemental pay provided by local governments. If supplemental pay is excluded, North Carolina’s base pay for starting teachers is, indeed, lower than other southern states, according to a North Carolina-based education nonprofit.
The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate this claim Mostly False.
