Teacher pay: Which states pay teachers the most?

The average public school teacher salary for 2017-2018 was $60,477, according to the National Education Association, the largest teacher's union in the United States. That number was up from $59,660 in 2016-17. The NEA estimated that the average salary for this school year (2017-18) will be $61,730.

In the report, average teacher salaries ranged from a high in New York ($84,227), California ($80,680), and Massachusetts ($80,357), to a low in Mississippi ($44,926), West Virginia ($45,642) and Oklahoma ($46,300).

The study showed that while salaries for classroom teachers went up an average of 11.5 percent from school year 2008-2009 to the estimated salaries for school year 2017-2018, when adjusted for inflation, overall teacher salaries decreased by 4.5 percent during that time period.

One-fifth of new public school educators leave the profession by the end of their first year of teaching, according to the NEA. Nearly half will leave within five years.

Low starting wages and pay increases that fail to match others in jobs that require similar education and experience is often cited as a reason for leaving the job.

In no state are teachers paid more than comparable college graduates, according to the Economic Policy Institute. The EPI reports that, on average, teachers make 77 percent of what other college graduates make.

While several organizations track teacher salaries by state, the numbers can be a bit different depending on the criteria used to gather the information. Some organizations include private schools in the calculation and some do not, for instance.

Here is a list of teacher salaries for 2017-2018 from the NEA: