Morale champs: Did your state make one of these teacher top 10 lists?

A recent survey found Washington to be the best state for teachers overall, but drilling down a little deeper, places such as New Jersey and Oklahoma landed in the top spots on a series of single-subject teacher top 10 lists.

States were ranked on compensation, work benefits and environment, and student performance by Scholaroo, a college scholarship search website that regularly assesses the K12 landscape with surveys and a lot of number crunching. Here is the teacher top 10 list for pay in 2023:

1. New Jersey
2. Rhode Island
3. Alaska
4. Washington
5. California
6. New York
7. Massachusetts
8. Hawaii
9. Maryland
10. Connecticut

And here are the bottom 10 for salary (starting with the lowest): West Virginia, Louisiana, Indiana, Arizona, Tennessee, Mississippi, Michigan, Arkansas, Missouri, and South Carolina.

But many superintendents and other administrators know that the work environment is as or more important than compensation. Here is where the states stand when it comes to climate for educators—and note that a few of the bottom 10 for salary made this teacher top 10 list:

1. Oklahoma
2. Montana
3. Illinois
4. Kentucky
5. Louisiana
6. Washington
7. California
8. New York
9. Utah
10. Oregon

Here are the bottom 10 for work environment (again, starting with the lowest): Indiana, North Carolina, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, Nebraska, Rhode Island, Virginia, North Dakota, and New Mexico.

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Scholaroo also ranked states for career accessibility based on the existence of teacher mentorship programs, rates of enrollment growth, performance assessments and a few other factors:

1. Idaho
2. Arizona
3. Wisconsin
4. Arkansas
5. Illinois
6. Colorado
7. Maine
8. North Dakota
9. Virginia
10. Minnesota

Here are the bottom 10 for career accessibility: Florida, West Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, California, Oregon, and Washington. Scholaroo also ranked state education systems in several other, even more granular (but no less important) categories, such as “collegiality within schools.” Here are the top five:

1. Missouri
2. Louisiana
3. Oklahoma
4. Utah
5. Delaware

And “student behavior”—as in, where students are the best behaved:

1. South Carolina
2. Louisiana
3. California
4. West Virginia
5. Illinois

And finally, where teachers are least worried about their jobs based on standardized testing results:

1. Nebraska
2. Arkansas
3. California
4. Minnesota
5. Vermont