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Research / Teacher Compensation

Top 10 US Public School Districts by Average Teacher Salary

NCES CCD data ranking 6,873 public-school districts by average instructional-staff salary, filtered to 1,000+ enrollment to exclude small administrative entities.

$179,503
Top district avg salary
6,873
Districts in dataset
Palo Alto Unified
#1 district
Compiled by PlainTeacher Editorial on 2026-07-26

Research question

Among the 13,138 US public-school districts, which districts report the highest average teacher salaries (filtering to districts with enrollment of 1,000+ students to suppress single-school administrative entities and small special-purpose districts whose ratios reflect headcount mechanics rather than salary policy)?

Methodology

Every number on this page is pulled live from PlainTeacher's current dataset at the moment you load it, ranked from highest to lowest and limited to the top 10. Nothing here is a hardcoded or cached figure: when the underlying NCES Common Core of Data (District-level instructional salary and enrollment) dataset is refreshed, this page reflects the new numbers automatically.

Values are shown in the units and precision published by the National Center for Education Statistics. Where the source reports figures in thousands or millions, we scale them for readability; where the source reports raw counts, we preserve them with standard thousand-separators. Records with a missing or suppressed value on the ranking metric are excluded rather than shown as artificial zeros.

The National Center for Education Statistics publishes the NCES Common Core of Data (District-level instructional salary and enrollment) on its own release schedule; when a new release lands, PlainTeacher updates this ranking automatically without any change to this page. If the agency later revises a published value, the revision flows through the same way. See the methodology page for the full source vintage and refresh history.

Top 10 US Public School Districts by Average Teacher Salary

Live data, filtered to districts with 1,000+ enrollment

Est. avg salary

What this shows Top-paying districts cluster in wealthy Northeast and West Coast suburbs, where local property-tax capacity and collective-bargaining agreements support significantly above-average salaries.

Source NCES CCD F-33 Finance Survey, FY2022 As of FY2022

The ranked top 10

Every row below reflects PlainTeacher's current dataset (10 rows shown). When the source is refreshed, this table updates automatically.

#DistrictAvg teacher salaryEnrollment
1Palo Alto UnifiedCA$179,50310,463
2Saint Helena UnifiedCA$177,0701,144
3Middle Country Central School DistrictNY$176,1629,345
4Port Chester-rye Union Free School DistrictNY$175,4564,532
5Perth Amboy Public School DistrictNJ$174,76210,184
6Kern County Office of EducationCA$174,4642,067
7Scarsdale Union Free School DistrictNY$174,0714,605
8Rockville Centre Union Free School DistrictNY$173,5053,453
9Bellmore Union Free School DistrictNY$173,4041,040
10Copiague Union Free School DistrictNY$172,9724,695

Source: National Center for Education Statistics -- NCES Common Core of Data -- District-level instructional salary and enrollment. Figures are pulled from PlainTeacher's current dataset and update automatically when the source is refreshed. National Center for Education Statistics -- NCES Common Core of Data -- District-level instructional salary and enrollment. Figures are pulled from PlainTeacher's current dataset and update automatically when the source is refreshed.

Findings

Top entity in the ranking

The top-ranked record in this dataset is Palo Alto Unified, with a value of $179,503 on the Avg teacher salary column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. No number on this page is hardcoded, when the source agency publishes a revision, the ranking and the prose around it update automatically.

Distribution shape

The gap between the top-ranked record ($179,503) and the 10th-ranked record ($172,972) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.

Aggregate context

Across the full districts population, this analysis reflects the following summary statistics. These anchors situate the top-10 ranking against the underlying population: how many records exist in total, what the sum of the ranking column is across all qualifying rows, and what the mean per-record value looks like. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking column are excluded).

Source provenance

The records in this ranking originate from National Center for Education Statistics, specifically the NCES Common Core of Data District-level instructional salary and enrollment dataset. PlainTeacher ingests the source vintage published by the agency and serves it from its current dataset, there is no static export carrying stale numbers, and a newly published source vintage propagates to this page automatically.

Why this ranking matters

Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records.

What this analysis cannot tell us

District-level averages reflect total instructional salary divided by full-time-equivalent instructional staff and are sensitive to staffing-pattern artifacts: a district with a high ratio of veteran teachers near top step will report a higher average even if its salary schedule matches a neighboring district's. The filter to enrollment >= 1,000 excludes single-school districts and small special-purpose entities (charters, alternative-program districts) whose ratios often reflect headcount mechanics rather than policy. The filter to salary between $30,000 and $250,000 excludes mathematical artifacts (very small denominators producing improbably high or low ratios) without claiming that any specific excluded value is incorrect -- those rows are simply unreliable for ranking purposes. Geographic clustering of high-salary districts in the Northeast and West Coast suburbs reflects collective-bargaining law, regional cost of living, and local-tax-base capacity rather than any single policy lever. District names use the NCES local-education-agency naming convention which is sometimes longer or differently capitalized than the district's marketing name. F-33 fiscal year lags two years; this table reflects the most recent published year only.

Top 10 Large Districts by Average Teacher Salary (10,000+ Enrollment)

Restricted to comparable-scale operations to control for district-size effects

Est. avg salary

What this shows Restricting to large districts (10,000+ enrollment) shifts the comparison toward mega-district systems, where union contracts and cost-of-living adjustments often produce the highest nominal salaries.

Source NCES CCD F-33 Finance Survey, FY2022 As of FY2022

What drives district-level pay

District pay diverges far more sharply than state averages suggest. The dominant driver is the local property-tax base: wealthy suburban communities fund negotiated step-and-column schedules, longevity stipends, and advanced-degree differentials that smaller rural systems cannot match. Staffing composition matters too, since special-education ratios, instructional-aide headcount, and the proportion of veteran teachers near the top of the salary lane all inflate the per-teacher estimate. Enrollment scale shapes administrative overhead and bargaining leverage. Because the figure divides instructional expenditure by an estimated teacher count, districts with unusual staffing patterns or generous fringe structures appear higher even when base contracts resemble their neighbors.

Related data

Sources