By Cash Michaels –
According to a recently released state report, more than 10,000 North Carolina teachers left the classroom in 2023, the highest number for an annual period in the last twenty years.
Purportedly, the resignations were mostly from first-year teachers, as well as educators who had just become eligible for full retirement benefits.
That’s 11.5% of North Carolina’s rank-and-file 90,000 teaching force—1 in 9—who have left between March 2022 and March 2023, and at least 42% more than those who left in 2022.
The concerning news was part of the State of the Teaching Profession report presented to the State Board of Education April 3.
Officials say the reasons for the massive teacher exits are not specifically clear, though traditionally, low salaries and difficult working conditions are considered the likely causes. North Carolina is 46th nationally in first-year teacher pay, and 34th out of fifty states in average teacher pay.
Raising teacher pay is one of the issues state Attorney General Josh Stein raised during a candidates interview with the NC Black Publishers’ Association.
“It is a disgrace how the General Assembly has defunded public education in the state. North Carolina ranks 49th in the country in the share of our state’s economy that we spend on K-12 education,” Stein, a Democrat, said.
“We don’t pay our teachers enough, there are not enough support personnel in our schools, or school counselors or school nurses. And we don’t have enough affordable early childhood education slots in North Carolina. We can do better; we must do better.”
Stein’s Republican gubernatorial opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, is on record as saying that if elected governor, he would cut money from the state’s education system. Robinson told the East Wake Republican Club last December, “It…
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