UPDATED
North Carolina鈥檚 teaching force will for tenure or to receive the pay bump that accompanies earning a master鈥檚 degree, reports The Wall Street Journal鈥榮 Stephanie Banchero.
When last I wrote about tenure, in 2010, a few states were beginning to tie tenure to performance evaluations, but there was less of an appetite to end it outright. That has since changed. Florida eliminated 鈥渃ontinuing contracts鈥� for teachers in 2011, and Idaho made tenure-granting a district option also that year, a move that was later overturned by voters in a referendum.
In North Carolina, top-performing teachers will still be able to receive four-year contracts, but otherwise continued employment will be for on one- or two-year contracts.
UPDATED, 7/30 4:59 p.m. I should have specified here that, under the terms of the budget bill, teachers still can鈥檛 be dismissed during the middle of a contract year unless it鈥檚 for 鈥渃ause,鈥� established during a hearing. Tenure is a slippery word in K-12 education that refers both to continuing employment and to the granting of due-process protections.
In what may be a first, North Carolina is also doing away with the salary premiums for teachers who hold master鈥檚 degrees, the newspaper reports.
Paying teachers for holding master鈥檚 degress is estimated to , but aside from degrees in advanced content for math and science teachers, there鈥檚 not much evidence that holding them makes for better teaching.
And the action comes on top of a bunch of other legislative policymaking in the state. Among other things teacher-related, lawmakers in recent years have frozen teacher salaries and dismantled that helped to interest promising high school students in a teaching career.
Meanwhile, Ann Doss Helms at the Charlotte Observer does a nice job for you. Any way you slice it, North Carolina teachers are at the bottom end of the 50 states in terms of teacher pay, she concludes.