Two out-of-the-box ideas for N.C. teacher pay

If we want great teachers, we need a smarter way to pay them

As a general rule, I don’t write about bills when they’re first filed. You can put together a bill on just about anything (yes, even diversity in pickleball), so there’s no sense getting worked up until it’s actually getting voted on.

But I made an exception for this one: Rep. Erin Paré’s House Bill 192, which would raise entry-level teacher salaries to $50,000.

The Charlotte Observer/News & Observer published my column on it yesterday, which you can read here: Republicans are finally leading again on teacher pay

You can get the gist of the column from the headline. It’s a good bill. But the deeper theme is this: Teacher pay debates shouldn’t just be about how much to raise salaries. Instead, we need a smarter approach that structures teacher pay in a way that actually improves education.

The column doesn’t get much into the nitty gritty details of what this would look like, but I have a few ideas.

Peg entry-level pay to a benchmark

North Carolina universities publish data on the average s…