PolitiFact NC: Phil Berger’s claim about teacher pay raises is misleading

One of North Carolina’s most powerful Republican lawmakers said that he and his GOP colleagues have raised average teacher pay in North Carolina by more than 15 percent in three years.

PolitiFact NC looked into that claim and ruled it Mostly False.

In reality, the average teacher has seen a raise of about 10.8 percent in the last three years. So Berger’s claim missed the mark – and he also failed to mention that the GOP has been in charge of the state budget for the last six years, not just the last three years.

In the first three years of budgets written and passed by Republican lawmakers, average teacher pay declined every year. So in the total span of GOP control, average teacher pay has risen about half as much as Berger’s claim.

Berger did point to a state document that initially seemed to back up his 15 percent claim, but it applied only to the state’s portion of teacher pay and also relied on accounting tricks to reach that number.

For more details on Berger’s claim, read the full fact-check here.

PolitiFact defines “Mostly False” as a claim that “contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.”

This story was originally published March 20, 2017 at 6:18 PM with the headline "PolitiFact NC: Phil Berger’s claim about teacher pay raises is misleading."