Research & Publications

Rankings of the States and Estimates of School Statistics (Rankings & Estimates) is an annual report that NEA’s Research Department has published in some form since 1943.

The report consists of three sections of education and financial data including average teacher salaries, enrollment, student-teacher ratios, and revenues and expenditures:

1. Rankings: state comparisons for the previous two years;
2. Estimates: projections by state for the current school year compared with the previous year; and
3. National Trends: summary data for the United States for the past 10 years.

NEA collects the data for Rankings & Estimates from state departments of education through an annual survey, supplemented by data from state affiliates and public federal and state datasets.

2025 Report

A few of the key measures included in this report are:

• Average teacher salaries and how these have changed over time
• Which states had the largest increases, and which had the largest decreases, in average teacher salary over the past year
• Revenues of state and local governments, generated through taxation, which provide insights into governmental financial resources that are available for financing public education
• Current expenditures per student, which are an indicator of state and local government “effort” to fund public education

Check out the downloads below to see the Rankings and Estimates reports, and email [email protected] for more information.