WalletHub just ranked the best, and worst, states to be a teacher in 2024.
Some of these highly rewarding and critical careers, according to the personal finance platform, are also the most overworked and underpaid. In fact, jobs in education in the United States are among the lowest-paying occupations requiring a bachelor’s degree, per WalletHub, and teacher salaries consistently fail to keep up with inflation.
To capture the best and the worst locales, WalletHub compared the 50 states and Washington, D.C., based on 24 key indicators of teacher-friendliness – including compensation, tenure protections, state spending per student, school-system quality and turnover rates.
The best states in the study were New York, Washington, Virginia, Utah and Delaware’s neighbor Maryland.
The worst? That would be Tennessee, Nevada, New Hampshire, Hawaii and Maine.
Delaware ended up pretty firmly in the middle, at No. 20 overall.
The First State did standout in “Academic & Work Environment” at No. 3, but that carried less than half the weight of the “Opportunity & Competition” ranking. There, Delaware was No. 45.