Research & Publications

Rankings & Estimates is an annual report that the National Education Association’s Research Department has produced for 70 years. The report consists of two parts:

1. Rankings, which shows how states compare on a variety of education and funding measures, such as average teacher salaries, enrollment, student-teacher ratios, general financial resources, and revenue and expenditures for the most recent school year; and
2. Estimates, which shows how education funding in each state has changed over time, plus presents projections of public school enrollment, personnel employment and compensation, and finances for the school year that is underway.

NEA collects the data for Rankings & Estimates from state affiliates and state departments of education.

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
• Population trends to help identify patterns of growth or decline for each state and the implications for staffing and financing public education

Check out the downloads below to see the Rankings and Estimates reports, and email RankingsEstimates@nea.org for more information.