Winston-Salem Journal

During the campaign, while candidates were busy tossing around numbers about the North Carolina school budget and claiming to be champions of education, more teachers were packing up and leaving the state — or leaving the profession entirely. Now that the election is over, it’s time for our legislators to get serious about supporting education.

More North Carolina teachers left the profession last year because they were unhappy or decided to go to another state, according to a new study presented to the State Board of Education that Raleigh’s News & Observer reported on recently. About one in seven of the 96,010 teachers employed statewide during the 2012-2013 school year left their school district last year. …Teacher turnover has climbed steadily in the past five years, from 11 percent in 2009-2010, the report said.

According to the report, 1,011 teachers said they were quitting classroom jobs because they were dissatisfied with teaching or were changing careers, up from 887 the previous year and 366 five years earlier. Seven-hundred thirty-four teachers reported quitting to take teaching jobs in other states, up from 455 the previous year. …

In the meantime, they also had to deal with bad-mouthing from public officials and efforts to eliminate hard-earned job protections.

The damage is evident. The report also shows that more public schools are having trouble finding teachers in high-demand fields like math, science and special education.

During the most recent election cycle, North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis and the Republican-led General Assembly were able to legitimately claim that they had given raises to the state’s teachers. But many were cynical of the raises coming during an election year; they felt like they didn’t make up for the years of negligence and didn’t go to enough teachers.

Legislators also legitimately claimed that, in raw numbers, they increased the state education budget after the Democrats had for many years come up short on education funding — but that was following many years of budget cuts because of the financial collapse of 2008. The budget has never risen to its pre-recession level. …

North Carolina once had a reputation as a state that valued education, which leads to secure futures and increased financial opportunities for all of our citizens. The lucrative jobs of the future will go to the educated. Companies will move into states that have educated populations.

Teaching is a calling, but it’s also a job. Teachers usually have families to support; they live and participate in their communities. They’re talented and intelligent and respected by those who know them. It’s wrong to relegate them to subsistence wages.

Superior educators will follow — and will earn — the superior financial incentives.

We can’t settle for a mediocre teaching force in North Carolina. The way to recruit the best teachers is to give them the best deal. Our legislature has talked a good game; it’s time for it to follow through.