One reason schools may have more trouble recruiting and keeping teachers, particularly teachers of color: They just don’t get paid enough.
While two-thirds of U.S. teachers report receiving a pay raise in the past year, most say their base pay isn’t adequate, according to the 2024 State of the American Teacher survey, an annual gauge conducted by the research group RAND Corp. On average, teachers earned $70,464 in 2023-24, up from $68,409 the prior year.
Black teachers, in particular, made less on average than other teachers, were more likely to have unpaid responsibilities, and had greater financial pressures—all of which could explain why Black teachers are more likely to say they plan to leave teaching at the end of the school year than white teachers.
The annual survey, released Wednesday, asked a nationally representative sample of K-12 teachers about their pay, benefits, expenses, and intention to stay in their jobs. Their results were compared with a separate sample of similar working adults who were workers ages 18-65, who held at least a bachelor’s degree, and worked at least 35 hours per week.
On average, teachers’ work weeks were about nine hours longer than similar workers, yet they earned about $18,000 less per year in their base salaries, the survey found. Teachers did pick up on average $3,000 annually for additional work in their districts and $6,000 for work outside their districts.
The findings highlight both the pay and the financial pressures on teachers that could drive them to leave the profession.
Pay did play a key role in whether teachers planned to stay in their classes: About 1 in 4 teachers who received a 3 percent raise or less said they planned to leave the profession at the end of the 2023-24 school year. That’s more than double the share of teachers whose pay rose 5 percent to 10 percent who plan to stop teaching.
Teachers who received raises earned about $2,000 more in 2023-24 than in 2022-23, the survey found. That figure was significantly lower than the raise teachers said they needed to secure an adequate income, at a price tag of $16,000.
Salaries differed significantly by race; Black teachers who got raises in 2023-24, for example, still earned less on average than white teachers did the previous year. The racial pay gap for teachers comes in part because Black teachers are more likely than other groups of teachers to live in states that bar collective bargaining for schools, according to RAND analysts Elizabeth Steiner, Ashley Woo, and Sy Doan.
While teacher salaries rose due to several factors, including changes in state funding and collectively bargained contracts, 65 percent of teachers only saw raises based on additional experience.
A majority of teachers also reported doing additional work for their schools beyond the classroom—mentoring other teachers, coaching sports, advising student groups, and so on—sometimes without additional pay. Black teachers, again, were the most likely to do extra work without pay.
Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers’ union, said she wasn’t surprised by the findings.
“The reality is that our teachers of color, particularly our Black and Native [American] teachers, tend to go back to their communities to teach or to other communities where they know there’s a great need, Pringle said. “When you teach in communities and in schools that have been historically marginalized and underresourced, ... if they don’t have the resources to be able to hire those coaches or paid mentors, [teachers] end up standing in those gaps.”
Teachers reported having roughly similar health-care and retirement benefits to other working adults. They were significantly more likely to receive paid sick leave than similar workers but less likely to have parental or personal time.
(Teachers often say they have difficulties using the time off they’re allotted, according to Education Week’s own internal survey data.)
Teachers’ expenses, including student loans and housing, add up
Teachers, particularly those of color, increasingly see low pay as a “top source of job-related stress,” the study found.
About 40 percent of teachers said they are still paying off student loans, averaging just over $340 a month. That’s slightly below other working adults, who pay about $40 more per month in student loans.
While only about 1 in 10 teachers said they are paying for housing, child care, and student loans at the same time, Black teachers were twice as likely as white or Hispanic teachers to do so.
Teachers with their own children, particularly those in single-earner families, reported spending larger shares of their incomes on housing, child care, and student-loan debt than workers in similar single-earner families in other professions.
For teachers who were their family’s sole breadwinner, 46 percent of their income went to housing, student loans, and child care. With the help of other family income, the combined expenses still accounted for 38 percent of their household pay.
