The average salary of a public school teacher rose from $72,000 to $74,500 in the 2024-25 academic year, the National Teachers Association reported Monday.
However, the country’s largest teachers’ union warned that the 3.5% average increase from 2023-24 was only “nominal” due to rising living costs.
Adjusted for inflation, the union projected that real earnings for K-12 teachers dropped 5% from a decade earlier.
“Educators are the foundation of our public schools, yet too many are overworked, underpaid, and unable to keep up with the cost of living,” NEA President Becky Pringle said in a statement.
The group cited a recent Gallup poll that found 71% of U.S. teachers hold down at least one additional job to make ends meet.
The picture was even bleaker for non-teaching support staff: The NEA estimated they earned an average salary of $38,494 in 2024-25, up $1,400 from the previous year. Adjusted for inflation, however, they earned 8.9% less than a decade earlier.
The union based its estimates on an analysis of data from 12,000 public school districts.
The NEA counted 2,023,971 active members, including 415,992 active support staff, in the 2023-24 academic year, the most recent available.
According to the Department of Education, 19,183 districts enrolled roughly 49.3 million students in 99,073 public schools during the 2024-25 academic year. That’s down from 50.1 million students enrolled in the 2014-15 school year.
Conservative analysts interviewed by The Washington Times blamed the NEA for years of lobbying to increase hiring rather than salaries.
They pointed to declining birth rates and increased private school enrollment during COVID lockdowns. They also noted that school districts spent billions in pandemic relief money to add staff rather than increase wages.
“Declining enrollment is putting pressure on district budgets, yet districts continue to hire additional teachers and staff,” said Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank in New York. “That’s why they can’t afford higher salaries.”
Sheri Few, president of U.S. Parents Involved in Education, said it’s hard to justify salary hikes when “only a third of students are proficient in reading and math” after suffering historic learning losses during union-endorsed campus lockdowns.
“Teachers work only about 180 days a year and earn roughly $72,000 with full benefits, a great job by any standard for such a short calendar,” Ms. Few said in an email. “With achievement at historic lows, accountability — not automatic raises — should come first.”
In the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal exam administered in every state, 31% of fourth-graders and 30% of eighth-graders were reading proficiently in 2024 — both down by 5 percentage points from 2019.
Mathematics proficiency was confirmed for 39% of fourth-graders and 28% of eighth-graders in 2024 — down by 3 percentage points and 8 percentage points, respectively, from 2019.
The NEA insists that teacher burnout, turnover and shortages have grown inside the widening chasm between stagnant wages and rising living costs.
The union estimated Monday that full-time faculty on nine- and 10-month contracts earned an average of $105,657 during the last school year. That was up 3.6% from 2023-24, but 5.9% below pre-pandemic levels after adjusting for inflation.
“In education, as in all other things, you get what you pay for,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania education history professor.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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