Report Cards indicate the percentage of classroom teachers with 0-3, 4-10, and greater than 10 years of teaching experience. North Carolina credits teachers with an additional year of experience at the end of each school year. Teachers may be credited with experience for work outside of school but still related to their teaching assignment. For example, a chemistry teacher may be credited with additional years of experience for prior work as a chemist. This section is based on March 2012 data.
Look at the distribution of teaching experience in your school. Are the majority of teachers new, or very experienced, or are experience levels well balanced? Teaching experience is often associated with professional expertise, but it is best to consider this data in the context of additional information. By talking to your school's principal, you may learn that many of the less experienced teachers in your school are the most active with students, or that they have the most current knowledge of educational research and new teaching practices. You might also want to know why teaching experience is distributed as it is in your school. Have a number of experienced faculty members retired in the last couple of years? Is your school newly opened, requiring a large number of new hires to staff the school? Has the school changed leadership accompanied by teacher transfers?
Percentages in the three experience categories may not total 100 percent due to rounding.
The school Report Card also allows you to compare the teaching experience of teachers in your school with averages from similar schools at the district and state level. Use the district and state averages as reference points in reading school level data. It would be a mistake to judge a school as "better" or "worse" based only on differences in this data. Be sure to discuss the differences that you see with your school's principal before drawing conclusions about your school's overall quality.
School similarity for district and state averages is determined based on the grades offered in your school. For technical information about when and how these data are collected, see the Data Sources & Information Guide.