North Carolina's "Education Exodus" Worsens as More Teachers Leave for Better Pay
What's a young couple to do when they are expecting a baby, and both husband and wife are public school teachers in a state ranked one of the worst places to be a teacher?
For Dan and Katie Mangum in Asheville, North Carolina, the answer was clear: move to Georgia for better-paying teaching jobs.
In the years since North Carolina's Republican takeover in 2010, the state's once-proud education system has fallen on tumultuous times thanks to politicians who no longer seem to value public schools. Despite a $450 million budget surplus this year, lawmakers have refused to restore school funding to pre-recession levels -- which leaves teachers struggling to cope with rising enrollment while their salaries remain stagnant.
"A big thing was just a lack of respect," Dan Mangum told the Asheville Citizen-Timesabout his decision to leave North Carolina for better pay. "[We] just kept looking around every year and just seeing a revolving door of people coming in and out and kept looking at other states and seeing North Carolina pay not comparing year after year."
You can see more of Dan and Katie's story in a video produced by Progress North Carolina, a public policy nonprofit working to raise North Carolina teacher pay to the national average:
Last year, personal finance website WalletHub compiled nationwide data on teacher pay and classroom spending and found North Carolina to be the worst state in the nation for teachers. This year, we moved up on the list -- all the way to second-worst. According to WalletHub's data, North Carolina ranks 43rd in teacher safety, 46th in per-pupil spending, and 49th in teacher pay increases over the past decade.
The report highlights what North Carolina educators have been saying all along -- that although politicians claim to support public education on the campaign trail, their actions over the past few years have done absolutely nothing to improve North North Carolina's "Education Exodus" Worsens as More Teachers Leave for Better Pay | Logan Smith: