In Meredith Hattan’s 23rd year of teaching, she will make $58,000. With extra duties—keeping the books at every middle and high school basketball game, officiating volleyball matches, working a summer job—she’ll clear $60K.
Teachers in her rural Illinois district start at $44,593 per year. Their “saving grace” is that some are still on their parents’ health insurance. “Rent here is like $850, so that’s probably a whole paycheck,” says Hattan, a second-grade teacher in Lacon, Ill., and president of the Midland Education Association.
Who wants to do this job, for that money? Two decades ago, 50 people applied for a single position at Midland Elementary School. Now, school officials are hiring uncertified teachers and saying they don’t have a choice. “We just take whoever we can get,” says Hattan, who has a master’s degree and notes that she has done “everything” to get as far along the salary scale as possible.
The shortage of teachers is a national problem—but some Illinois lawmakers think they have a solution. What if they gave those new teachers a $15,047 raise?
About a half-dozen states considered new minimum-salary bills in 2026, ranging from Minnesota to West Virginia. In Ohio, a bill proposed by former teacher, Rep. Joe Miller, to set the bar at $50,000 is still pending.
Last year, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced federal legislation, the “Pay Teachers Act,” to set a national minimum salary for teachers at $60,000. “The situation has become so absurd that just four hedge fund managers on Wall Street make more money in a single year than every kindergarten teacher in America combined,” said Sanders, in a media statement.
‘Will I be able to stay?’
This past spring, Lewiston, Maine, high school teacher Cam Bigelow traveled to the State House, over and again, to spread the word: Find the money to pay teachers more.
“I’m only 26,” he told lawmakers—and the future is dim. How will he ever buy a house? How will he afford children? “I’m the young teacher you say you need to avoid the teacher shortage you say you want to avoid,” he says, and yet, a few years ago, his starting salary was $43,000.
Raising the minimum sends a message to the future early-childhood educators inside Lauren Remington’s classroom, at St. Croix Regional Technical Center, in rural Calais, Maine. “My students are passionate about working with children, but they’re also asking practical questions: Can I afford college? Will I be able to stay in Maine? Will I ever be able to buy a home or support a family as a teacher?”
In Maine, lawmakers agreed to an incremental approach: By 2029, every teacher will get at least $50,000. In Maryland, the law also provided a runway. Passed in 2021, the required $60,000 minimum didn’t go into effect until July 1, 2026. The law includes an additional $10,000 for teachers with National Board Certification and an extra $7,000 for board-certified teachers who opt for lowperforming schools.
Now, after 10 years working in public schools, in Frederick, Md., pre-K special education teacher Zoe Haughwaut will finally make $60,000—and quit the part-time job at Starbucks that she’s had for 11 years.
“Everybody is so excited for the $60K! And yet, people also are upset about $60K,” she says. Yes, it’s a victory. At the same time, a single adult with two kids in Frederick County needs twice that amount to pay their bills, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator.
Rents here “are insane,” Haughwaut says. She also pays $800 a month for her family’s health insurance. The new minimum is a “good step forward,” she notes, but it’s not the end of the journey.
By setting a minimum, Maine legislators “demonstrated [the state] values educators,” Remington notes. “But … it’s important to recognize that $50,000 is still a baseline. It was never meant to be the finish line.” States still need to reduce the cost of becoming a teacher, she says, and invest in experienced teachers.
Many educators point to New Mexico’s approach. Not only did that state raise the floor to $55,000, it raised pay for veteran teachers to at least $75,000. Notably, in Maine, Maryland, and New Mexico, educators continue to bargain for salary scales with regular steps that go beyond the minimum, avoiding the “salary compression” trap that raises pay for new teachers and ignores midcareer and experienced educators.
Bigelow's advice? Get involved in your union and participate in its lobbying days. Tell lawmakers your personal story, but also explain how educators’ low pay affects current and future students. “It’s very much about having personal, one-on-one conversations with lawmakers,” he says.
Minimum Teacher Salaries across the U.S.
Be Careful!
Not every law raising teacher salaries is a good one. Some don’t come with adequate funding to help districts, especially rural ones, meet the new bars. Others are laden with poison pills.
Take the 145-page LEARNS Act in Arkansas, which raised starting teacher pay from $36,000 to $50,000 in 2023. Was this a good bill for public schools? Hint: As Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed it, she was flanked by Christian-school students.
LEARNS created a voucher program that directs $310 million a year to families that homeschool their children or send them to private school. And while raising starting salaries for public school teachers, it erased the state’s salary steps for experienced teachers and removed the state’s fair-dismissal act. A federal trial to determine the law’s constitutionality is scheduled for July 2027.
“All public school teachers, regardless of party affiliation, know this bill is bad for us, and worse, it’s bad for our kids,” said Fayetteville High School teacher Jesse Buchanan, during public testimony in 2023. “We’re so certain of it that we’re here to protest our own pay raises—in some cases, up to $15,000 pay raises!”
Arkansas isn’t the only state to offer money to new teachers while tearing down public schools and unions. In Tennessee, in 2023, politicians raised teachers’ pay to $50,000, while also making it more difficult for them to join unions.
Looking back now, Little Rock fifth-grade teacher and union leader Kristy Mosby doesn’t think there was anything she could have said to stop Arkansas lawmakers. he tried, asking them in 2023: “How about we invest in evidencebased interventions that actually work, such as smaller class sizes, …school social workers, … community schools?”
Mosby’s advice? Take a hard look at legislation. “Does it consider all educators? Because to raise teachers’ pay without also giving a raise to [education support professionals] is, well, I can’t think of a word bad enough.” And don’t fall for shiny measures that increase new teachers’ salaries, but doom them to a lifetime at that level. In Arkansas, because of the way the law diverts public money to private schools, many of Mosby’s colleagues with 15 years of experience are also making that same $50K.
What About School Staff?
In Minnesota, the average education support professional (ESP) would need a nearly $30,000 raise to get to a living wage, according to NEA’s ESP Earnings Report.
That’s why Bill Schwandt was so excited to stand next to U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, from Massachusetts, last year, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, as Markey introduced legislation to set a minimum wage of $30 an hour—or $45,000 a year—for instructional aides and other school support staff.
“It’s great to see legislators taking notice and saying these are essential school employees and we need to do better,” says Schwandt, an elementary special ed paraeducator and union president in Bloomington, Minn.
This year, Schwandt talked with state lawmakers about a bill that would have created a $25 per hour minimum wage for Minnesota ESPs who work at least 14 hours a week and regularly interact with students.
Schwandt’s approach to lawmakers relies on a combination of personal stories and facts and figures about the impact of chronically low ESP wages on students and school systems. He tells them about a coworker who works three jobs to support her family “and is just running on empty.” But he also produces data on the ESP turnover rate, for example: “We have roughly 320 specialed para jobs in our district, and 40 of them are open right now.”
In Maryland, a bill that would have required the state to study the cost of a $25 hourly wage for ESPs passed the state Senate this year, but (like Minnesota’s) didn’t get a final vote.
Stacy Tayman, president of the Calvert Association of Educational Support Staff, testified in favor of the bill. Tayman first reminded them of who ESPs are and what they do, and then explained how poor pay has led to a revolving door of custodians, cafeteria workers, classroom aides, and other critical staff.
Recently, Tayman did some quick math with candidates running for local offices. Imagine an instructional assistant with nine years in Calvert County schools, she told them. This person has typical bills: $1,500 a month for housing, $400 for groceries, $350 for transportation, and $250 for utilities. Her balance at the end of the month? Negative $512.
State legislation would help, Tayman says. “If you give districts a choice, they’re not going to choose to invest in their ESPs,” she says.
Tayman’s advice? Lawmakers need to hear over and again what ESPs do—and why their work matters to students. “No matter how many times we say it, it does not penetrate the minds of lawmakers,” Tayman says. “We’re all student-centered. But districts and the state don’t seem to understand that."
