North Carolina is at the bottom of the rankings for public school funding. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Each year, the Education Law Center publishes its “Making the Grade” report, ranking the 50 states and Washington, D.C. on their funding for public education. Most of us — across race, place, and background — all want to live in a North Carolina where everyone has access to a great public education, teachers make a livable wage, and we can build the foundation for a more secure future. However, December 2025’s “Making the Grade” release shows that NC has dropped to second-to-last in cost-adjusted, per-pupil funding.
This is only the latest chapter of the same long and tiring story: State funding for public education in North Carolina has declined while some state lawmakers have repeatedly chosen to give corporations and the wealthiest few giveaways in the form of tax cuts.
Steep state tax cuts have proved incompatible with adequate funding for the Department of Public Instruction
While some state lawmakers continue to pretend that endless tax cuts for corporations and the richest North Carolinians are not coming at the expense of our public schoolchildren, the facts tell a different story.
A look at the state Department of Public Instruction’s budget going as far back as the early 2000s shows that inflation-adjusted, per-student funding has declined by 13 percent since 2003 — all while state lawmakers have enacted deeply unpopular tax cuts, including the scheduled elimination of the corporate income tax.
When our state leaders craft education budgets, they should be accounting not for inflation in general, but for the specific types of inflation that governments face. As other analysts have pointed out, state governments don’t buy the same types of goods as households: Instead of eggs and milk, they’re paying for salaries and benefits. That’s why the chart above — along with the annual “Making the Grade” reports — uses a measure of inflation specific to state and local governments, better reflecting the real damage that prioritizing tax cuts has had on per-student funding.
Repeated tax cuts for the wealthy are causing NC to fall behind other states in funding public schools and teacher pay
The prioritization of tax cuts above students has real consequences for the state’s economy and its ability to recruit and retain excellent educators. The chart above shows that since the NC General Assembly passed its 2013 tax policy changes, NC has been ranked in the bottom five states for per-pupil funding. The difference in funding between NC and the national average (let alone the best-funded state) isn’t a mere few dollars: The average American public-school student gets almost 50% more funding than a kid in North Carolina.
The failure to prioritize public education is also reflected in NC’s ranking for average teacher pay. The chart below shows that in the early 2000s, NC was paying public school teachers better wages than approximately half of the other states in the country. NC has since dropped to 43rd out of the 50 states and Washington, D.C. The latest data for the 2023-2024 school year shows the average teacher salary in North Carolina was about $58,300, compared to the national average of about $72,000. Unsurprisingly, educators are realizing that state lawmakers are offering them a bad deal and that a move across the border to teach in Virginia can almost double their income.
In absence of comprehensive state budget, neglect of public schoolchildren continues in the new year
As 2026 begins, North Carolina lawmakers still have not passed a comprehensive state budget. Since missing the July 1 deadline to pass a new budget last year, lawmakers have passed only a few small spending bills for time-sensitive needs, leaving state services to largely operate on last year’s funding levels, despite increased costs and needs in communities. That means that state employees and public-school teachers aren’t receiving any meaningful pay raises that could start to make progress on our dismal rankings, and our public school children still — after decades — are not receiving the funding needed for a sound, basic education.
