The new state budget includes teacher salary increases for teachers at all levels, with increases ranging from a high of 17% for beginning teachers to a low of 5% for teachers with 13 or more years of experience. The pay raises are not retroactive to account for last year’s pay freeze due to the NCGA’s failure to pass a new budget last year. As a result, this year’s raises amount to an average annual increase over the last two years of approximately 2.5% for veteran teachers.
The new budget also keeps in place the salary freeze for teachers with 15 through 24 years of experience. The NCGA first froze this 10-year span in 2018-19, creating a huge barrier to keeping quality educators in the classroom.
When the true purchasing power of the salary is calculated by adjusting for inflation, veteran teacher salaries in 2026-27 are higher than they were in 2024-25 and 2025-26 but are lower than every year in the decade before 2024-25 (dating back to 2014-15).
In 2018-19, teachers earned the equivalent of $66,377 in today’s dollars, nearly $10,000/year more than today’s teachers.
The new budget (p. 115 – 116) does expand support for the Advanced Teaching Roles program, which adds $3,000 – $10,000 to annual salaries for teachers who take on additional responsibilities such as leading teams of teachers or who show excellence in classroom instruction. However, the current scope of the program is limited and restricts the number of teachers who can receive the salary supplements.
As lawmakers look to improve the teacher pipeline, creating a salary schedule that has a professional starting salary and also rewards all teachers who stay in the profession and improve their skills is essential.
The base salary schedule is the key foundation, but not the only critical element of teacher pay. Over the past 15 years, in addition to passing either no salary increases or woefully insufficient increases, lawmakers have dismantled other components that were in place to develop and retain high-quality teachers such as ending master’s pay and longevity pay.
These and other changes are all part of a systematic dismantling of public education in North Carolina.Our privatization timeline gives year-by-year changes that are making the teaching profession harder, eroding the teacher pipeline, and pushing less regulated charter and private school options.