Published: February 1, 1996

Salaries By State

In Louisiana, the average teacher made $26,811 last year, an annual salary lower than almost anywhere else in the nation. Low pay has become such a perennial sore point there that the new governor, Mike Foster, says he'll cut his own pay if teachers' salaries don't reach the regional average within two years.

The average Connecticut teacher, on the other hand, earns almost twice as much--$50,598, according to the American Federation of Teachers. The state's teachers are among the best-paid in the nation, and top candidates compete fiercely for infrequent job openings.

Salary averages and state rankings are of keen interest to administrators, policymakers, and especially teachers themselves, but a growing number of researchers caution that the numbers can be misleading. Cost of living, education and experience, time spent on the job, and desirability of the locale all influence the size of a teacher's paycheck, and some recent studies have tried to take...