Teachers with an advanced degree have acquired a higher degree of content expertise than their certification requires. An advanced degree is any degree above a bachelor's, including master's, advanced, or doctoral degrees. This section is based on March 2012 licensure data.
The percentages in this table only include teacher advanced degrees that have been entered into state records. The state collects information about education-related advanced degrees, but teachers with advanced degrees outside the field of education may not be included here. State records only contain information about teacher non-education advanced degrees when an individual teacher, school, or school district notifies the NC Department of Public Instruction that the teacher holds the non-education advanced degree.
The NC Report Cards allows you to compare the percentage of teachers with advanced degrees 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. Remember that these averages only provide an indication of how favorable the data might be. It would be a mistake to judge a school as "better" or "worse" based only on slight differences in these data. A lack of an advanced degree does not mean a teacher is unqualified.
School similarity for district and state averages is determined based on the grades offered in your school. For more technical information about the data in this table, see the Data Sources & Information Guide.