Gains in Teacher Pay May Not be Enough to Ease Shortages

In 2022, Mississippi educators were thrilled when state legislators approved the largest pay increase in the state’s history, providing teachers with an average salary increase of about $5,100—a jump of more than 10 percent. The bill also included a $2,000 increase for teacher assistants.   

The increases, which went into effect in the 2022-23 school year, promised to lift the state out of the basement in national rankings of teacher pay.    

“It was historic and has made a big difference in our teachers’ lives,” said Erica Jones, president of the Mississippi Association of Educators. “I think more educators will stay. We’re finally competitive with some of our neighboring states.”  

Mississippi is just one of many states that, thanks to the tireless activism of educators, have significantly raised teacher pay. These efforts have helped increase the average teacher salary nationwide, according to reports by the National Education Association released this week. 

The new 2024 NEA Rankings and Estimates report finds that the national average public school teacher salary increased to $69,544 in 2022-23, a 4.1 percent increase over the previous year. This represents the largest year-over-year teacher pay increase in more than a decade.  

The largest increases were in New Mexico (17.2 percent), Mississippi (11.4 percent), and Alabama (8.2 percent). 

Meanwhile, the NEA Teacher Salary Benchmark report finds that the national average starting teacher salary increased 3.9 percent to $44,530—the largest increase in the 14 years that NEA has been tracking teacher salary benchmarks.  

Despite this undeniable progress, NEA’s data (in addition to the benchmark and Rankings and Estimates reports, NEA also released two related reports on higher education faculty pay and education support professionals earnings) presents a sobering national picture.  

While teacher salaries are heading in the right direction, the growth has not yet made up for many years of underinvestment in educator pay. When adjusted for inflation, teachers are making 5 percent less than they did 10 years ago and 9 percent less than they did in 2009-2010, when average teacher salaries peaked. Starting teachers are making $4,273 below 2008-2009 levels.  

As prices have grown faster than paychecks, the benefits of salary increases have been neutralized. To boost standards of living, increases in pay need to consistently exceed the rate of inflation.  

Most educators are still accustomed to at best marginal raises. Making ends meet continues to be a challenge and teachers are often forced to take on extra jobs. Sometimes they move to better-paying districts. Frequently they may decide to exit the profession altogether, their dissatisfaction compounded by a lack of support and poor working conditions.   

“While some elected leaders are doing what is right,” said NEA President Becky Pringle, “too many students remain in schools where decision-makers have driven away quality educators by failing to provide competitive salaries and support, disrespecting the profession, and placing extraordinary pressure on individual educators to do more and more with less and less.” 

Chronically Low Salaries

According to the Rankings and Estimates report, the highest average teacher salaries are found in California ($95,160), New York ($92,696) and Massachusetts ($92,307). The lowest salaries are in West Virginia ($52,870), Florida ($53,098), and South Dakota ($53,153).   

The Salary Benchmark Report, which provides information from over 12,000 local school districts on starting teacher salaries and salaries at other points of the teaching career continuum, reveals that on average, the top of the teacher pay scale is $81,026. But reaching that level usually requires a Ph.D. or 15 to 30 graduate credit hours beyond a master’s degree, and often requires 25 to 30 years of professional teaching experience.

Teacher salaries top out over $100,000 in only 16.6 percent of U.S. school districts. 

In most districts, new teachers will have to climb a tall ladder to get anywhere near the top of the salary schedule. A staggering 77 percent of school districts still pay a starting salary below $50,000 and 28.6 percent start out teachers at less than $40,000. 

Education support professionals (ESPs)—school bus drivers, cafeteria workers, paraeducators, custodial workers, clerical staff and others—are facing even greater financial pressures. Almost 38 percent of all full-time K-12 support professionals earn less than $25,000 annually. Again, skyrocketing cost of living has nullified any gains in their wages.  

According to the NEA ESP earnings report, average earnings for support staff rose from $31,223 in 2013‐14 to $35,995 in 2022‐23. However, when adjusted for inflation, the average earnings for ESP fell from $31,223 to $28,149 in constant 2014 dollars.  

Paying the Price  

For classroom teachers, choosing the profession means incurring what is known as the “teacher pay penalty”—the percentage by which public school educators are paid less than comparable workers. According to the Economic Policy Institute, this gap has reached an all-time high—26.4 percent in 2022, an increase from 23.5 percent in 2021.  

In 2022, teachers on average earned 73.6 cents for every dollar that other professionals made—significantly less than the 93.9 cents on the dollar they made in 1996. 

Until this gap is significantly closed, recruiting and retaining educators will be a steep challenge for many school districts.  

“Over the past two decades, teacher pay has fallen further and further behind similarly qualified professionals,” said report author Sylvia Allegretto, a senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research and research associate at EPI.  “These worsening trends have become a significant and growing challenge for the teaching profession. Providing teachers with compensation commensurate with that of other similarly educated professionals is necessary to retain and attract qualified workers into the profession.” 

In his fourth year of teaching in Jefferson County, Colo., Collin Ferraro says that even though classroom teachers face a variety of challenges, higher pay—including the ability to live independently in the communities where they work—is the foundation for a successful and satisfied educator workforce. 

“The Denver area is very expensive and surrounding districts pay more,” he explains. “For early career educators, it’s a constant struggle. Across-the-board pay increases are needed now.” 

What Makes a Difference

NEA data show that the "union advantage" in getting higher wages can be substantial. The fact is educators who work in states with collective bargaining laws make more money.  

According to the new reports, teachers earn 26 percent more, on average, in states with collective bargaining, and education support professionals earn 16 percent more. The starting salary of teachers in these states is $1,653 more than in states without a bargaining law.

Increasing educator pay has been a top priority for state legislatures since 2022. The public stands firmly behind teachers making larger salaries. But for every New Mexico, Mississippi, and Alabama, where lawmakers approved major pay raises with no strings attached, educator pay in some other states has become a stalking horse for a destructive anti-public education, anti-union agenda. 

In 2023, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law the LEARNS Act, which increased beginning teacher salaries from $36,000 to $50,000. In addition to establishing a private school voucher program, however, the law also erased state-guaranteed minimum salary steps. So districts that want to reward experience and graduate degrees must do that on their own dime.  

Since the law passed, teachers with decades of experience are now paid the same as new teachers in one-third of Arkansas school districts. “On average, the top of the salary schedule for the highest degree is only $6,000 more than what teachers with a bachelor’s degree and zero experience are paid,” the NEA Teacher Salary Benchmark report notes. 

Contrast that law with the historic salary increases that went into effect in New Mexico and Mississippi in 2022. The 17 percent boost in the average teacher salary in New Mexico was the largest one-year increase in the nation. As the state faces a wave of retirements, potentially exacerbating already deep staffing shortages, education leaders hope this significant in pay will help keep new teachers in the profession and attract new ones. 

Even as salary gains in many states have been watered down by the high cost-of-living, Erica Jones in Mississippi says that without the increases, an already tough economic climate would have been exponentially worse for many educators.  

“After the pay raise went into effect,” Jones recalls, “I was hearing from younger teachers who didn’t have to worry about getting a second job anymore.” 

But keeping educators in Mississippi, she adds, means more work must be done. 

“We’re not letting up. Inflation does have an impact, and that’s why we’ll always advocate for pay raises for educators every year.”