According to CNN’s Eve Bower, Hillary Clinton was wrong to place blame on North Carolina Republicans for low teacher salaries.
During Clinton’s speech in North Carolina Wednesday, she said “For many years North Carolina was a leading state when it came to education. Now, unfortunately, thanks to your governor and the legislature, the average teacher salary can barely support a family.”
Bowers did find that it would be difficult to support a family with one adult and two children solely on one teacher’s income. By her calculations, it takes $54,917 in pre-tax income to cover basic expenses and the average teacher salary in North Carolina is $47,985.
But responsibility for teacher pay doesn’t lie with Gov. Pat McCrory or the state’s Republican legislature. “A recent report from the National Education Association found North Carolina third among states with the largest real decline in average teacher salaries over the decade from 2004-2015, with an inflation-adjusted decrease in salary of 10.2 percent,” Bowers writes. “McCrory may be partially responsible for this, as he was elected in 2012, but he has only had influence over teacher salaries since 2013. McCrory was preceded by almost 20 years of Democratic governors, during which time the Senate was controlled by Democrats the entire time, and Democrats controlled the state House from 1999-2010.”
As a result, Bowers says North Carolina Democrats hold partial responsibility for any complaints about teacher pay. “By placing the blame for this exclusively on the state’s current Republican leadership,” Bowers writes, “when the trends have existed through several Democratic administrations, we must rate the second portion of her claim as false.” [emphasis in original]
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
