Our Methodology

Data Source

Finance data comes from the NCES Common Core of Data (CCD) F-33 Local Education Agency Finance Survey, collected annually by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), part of the U.S. Department of Education. The F-33 survey collects detailed revenue and expenditure data from every public school district (LEA) in the United States. PlainTeacher uses the FY2023 release (covering the 2022-23 school year), released by NCES as provisional v1a in September 2025.

Salary Calculation Formula

The F-33 finance survey reports teacher salary expenditure separately from other instructional payroll, in four program buckets: Z35 (regular education), Z36 (special education), Z37 (vocational) and Z38 (other). NCES defines these as the base salaries paid to certified teachers and certified substitute teachers. For the matching headcount, PlainTeacher joins a second NCES source, the CCD Staff Universe Survey, which reports each district's full-time-equivalent (FTE) teacher count. For roughly 99% of reporting districts, this gives a real, district-specific denominator:

Both sides of that division cover teachers only. The survey's broader instructional-salary total (variable Z33) also pays instructional aides, paraprofessionals and substitutes, so dividing it by a teacher headcount charges non-teacher payroll to teachers and overstates the result, nationally by about 27% against NEA's published average for the same year. PlainTeacher used that broader numerator until 9 August 2026; every salary figure on this site was recomputed on the teacher-only basis then. See the changelog.

A small number of districts, mostly large consolidated city systems that report staffing through sub-district agency IDs rather than their single aggregate district ID (New York City is the largest example), have no reported teacher-FTE row for the aggregate district. For these, PlainTeacher falls back to an estimate using the national average student-teacher ratio instead:

Every district page states which method was used for that specific district. These are district-level means computed from finance filings, not a survey of individual contracts, so they will not match a contract-salary survey exactly and are best used as a consistent relative measure for comparing districts and states against one another, rather than as an exact classroom-teacher paycheck.

Three states report no teacher-salary breakout at all. Alaska, Illinois and Utah file zero in every one of the Z35-Z38 buckets, so no teacher average can be derived for their districts from this source. Their district and state pages publish the per-pupil spending, revenue and enrollment they do report, and show no salary figure rather than a substitute derived from a different quantity. State salary ranks therefore run 1-48, not 1-51.

Release-over-release % change is a separate series. Multi-year trend pills and “most improved” rankings use an enrollment-ratio estimated-basis panel for every fiscal year (FY2019-FY2023), including a recomputed FY2023 estimate, even when the page's headline salary uses FTE-reported math. Mixing a reported headline dollar with an estimated-basis percentage would invent a false raise. Trend copy therefore names the estimated panel and its endpoints explicitly and must not be applied to the FTE-reported figure above it.

Processing Steps

We transform raw NCES data into searchable district salary profiles through the following stages:

• Download NCES F-33 LEA finance files for FY2023 containing revenue and expenditure data for every public school district.
• Download the NCES CCD Staff Universe Survey (FY2023) and extract the "Teachers" category FTE count per district.
• Filter to government-entity school districts, excluding most charter-only agencies and non-government LEAs that report differently.
• Apply minimum enrollment threshold of 25 students to exclude non-operational entities and reporting artifacts.
• Sum the four teacher-salary program buckets (Z35-Z38) and divide by the district's reported teacher FTE where available, falling back to the 15:1 ratio estimate otherwise, and record which method was used per district. Districts filing no teacher-salary figures get no salary.
• Merge geographic metadata (state, county, city) from NCES CCD universe files for location-based browsing.
• Compute state and national percentile rankings for salary figures, enabling cross-district comparison.

Important Limitations

• These are derived figures, not individual salary records. Individual teacher salary data is not available in this dataset even when a real reported teacher headcount is used.
• Some states fold non-teacher instructional pay into the teacher buckets. How completely a state separates teacher salary from other instructional payroll varies by filing practice: nationally the teacher buckets hold about 85% of instructional salaries, but in Pennsylvania they hold 100%, which lifts its figures relative to states that itemise more carefully.
• Alaska, Illinois and Utah report no teacher-salary breakout, so no salary figure is published for their districts and they are excluded from salary rankings.
• A small minority of districts use the 15:1 ratio estimate instead of a reported headcount, because they report staffing at a sub-district level; the district page states which method applies.
• Specialized service districts (County Offices of Education, Intermediate Service Districts) may show unusually high figures because they serve many more students than they directly enroll.
• Smaller or specialized districts may have incomplete, imputed, or zero values in the underlying NCES data.

For accurate, individual-level salary data, consult your state's public employee salary database or teachers union contracts.

Within-State Pay Dispersion Ranking

State pages that call out unusually wide or narrow pay dispersion compute a top-to-bottom ratio: the highest reliable-salary district's average divided by the lowest reliable-salary district's average, within that state only. States are then ranked against every other state with at least 5 reliable-salary districts (smaller counts are excluded, since too few districts make the ratio noisy). A state in decile 1 (the widest 10% of ranked states) is called out as "notably wide"; a state in decile 10 (the narrowest 10%) is called out as "notably narrow." The middle 80% of states carry no callout, since their dispersion is unremarkable relative to the rest of the country. This is a relative statistical placement, not a claim about pay equity, cost of living, or any individual teacher's actual pay.

Coverage

• 13,000+ school districts across all 50 states and the District of Columbia
• FY2023 data (2022-23 school year)
• Data source: NCES CCD F-33, provisional v1a released September 2025

Data Collection Method

NCES collects F-33 data through an annual survey of all local education agencies in the United States. State education agencies coordinate data collection from districts and submit standardized files to NCES. The F-33 survey captures total revenues by source (federal, state, local), total expenditures by function (instruction, support services, administration), and detailed instructional spending categories. NCES applies quality control checks, imputation for missing values, and validation against prior-year submissions before publishing the final dataset. The F-33 is the most comprehensive source of public school district financial data in the United States.

Update Schedule

NCES publishes F-33 data approximately 24 months after the fiscal year ends. We update our database when new F-33 releases become available. Between releases, district financial conditions may change due to state funding formula revisions, enrollment shifts, and local tax rate changes that are not reflected in our data. Dated corrections and methodology revisions are logged on our data changelog.

Not Affiliated

PlainTeacher is not affiliated with the National Center for Education Statistics, the U.S. Department of Education, or any government agency.

Data Reuse and Licensing

Every page on PlainTeacher carries a stable, citable URL and a "Cite this page" block with a ready-made attribution string, so the figures can be quoted with clear sourcing. Our teacher-salary-by-state dataset is a downloadable CC0 state summary with field definitions and a source link. It is derived from public-use NCES data; it is not a replacement for district salary schedules, a payroll file, or a general bulk export of this site.

Related NCES Data Resources

Beyond the raw F-33 finance survey, these NCES resources let you verify or explore the underlying data yourself:

• NCES CCD F-33 Local Education Agency Finance Survey - the primary source dataset used for salary calculations on this site.
• NCES Elementary/Secondary Information System (ELSI) - NCES's own tool for browsing CCD district staffing and teacher FTE data, including the Staff Universe Survey figures referenced above.

Download the state teacher-salary extract cited on this page: teacher-salary-by-state.csv (CC0). Field notes and methodology live on /data/teacher-salary-by-state.