You know how a burger costs $2.75 in Kansas (yes, we checked) but at least $15.99 in Brooklyn? Just like the cost of living (a.k.a. burgers), teacher salaries vary from region to region.

Even within a single district—or within a single school building—salaries can vary further according to a teacher's level of education, professional development achievements, and (of course) years on the job.

 

See that look on my face? Yeah, that's how I feel about teacher pay.

But there's got to be at least some sort of baseline, right?

First Things First: Starting Salaries by State

The first thing you're going to want to take a look at are average starting teacher salaries by state, which are kindly provided by the National Education Association. The national average as of the 2012-2013 school year was $36,141. Not bad—unless you compare it to the average starting salary for doctors. Or you're living in any major metropolitan area.

(In case you're curious—we know you are—the lowest averages in medicine are for general practitioners in pediatrics and family medicine, who start at around $160,000 a year, while the highest paid—neurosurgeons—squeak by on just over $500,000 in their first year (source). Then again, they have all that med-school debt to deal with, so it probably evens out, right? …Right?)

Okay, back to teachers. List toppers in terms of starting teacher salaries include:

• District of Columbia: $51,539
• New Jersey: $48,631
• Federal Education Association: $45,751
• Alaska: $44,166
• New York: $43,839
• Wyoming: $43,269
• Maryland: $43,235
• Connecticut: $42,924
• Pennsylvania: $41,901
• California: $41,259

And the bottom ten? Yeah, we figured you'd want to know:

• Arizona: $31,874
• Maine: $31,835
• Oklahoma: $31,606
• Mississippi: $31,184
• Idaho: $31,159
• Nebraska: $30,844
• North Carolina: $30,778
• Missouri: $30,064
• South Dakota: $29,851
• Montana: $27,274

Does D.C.= Double Cost?

But of course, your mortgage, your clothes, your groceries, and your very necessary nights out are going to cost you a lot more in Washington, D.C. than they are in say, Baker, Montana, so you might want to plug your community into one of the following websites that analyzes the cost of living in various places to see just how far that starting salary will take you. For your convenience:

• Area Vibes 
• CNN Cost of Living Calculator

Local Factors

Once you've figured out how your cost of living stacks up against the average starting salary in your state, you can dig deeper by looking at the varying pay rates between individual districts in your state, too.

And if you want to know which district is the huckleberry in your state, check out this list of the 50 highest paying school districts (one per state) for first-year teachers. You could come in above the D.C. average if you take a job in the right district in New York, Arkansas, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, or New Jersey.

Education and Experience

But don't think picking the right spot will put you on the road to millionaire-dom. The degree you hold and how many years you have on the job will affect your salary as well. Many teacher contracts include automatic increases in pay with each added year of experience, and educators with Masters degrees tend to start higher on the pay scale than those entering the profession with a Bachelors degree.

Continuing education credits (CEUs) may also qualify you for a bigger paycheck. As you can see from this explanation of teachers' pay in New York (courtesy of the United Federation of Teachers), there are pay increases at various milestones such as 30 credits beyond a Bachelors degree, a certain level of professional development coursework, or national certifications.

So be sure to read your contract carefully and check in with your superintendent's office to make sure you know where you stand.

Reality Check

Finally, for those of you who are already earning a teacher's salary (and happen to be gluttons for punishment), take a look at the NEA's Real Wage Calculator to help determine what you're really making—in terms of an hourly wage, that is.

To make things interesting, there are two calculations offered: one that will give you your contracted hourly wage, and another that reflects what that wage comes down to after you adjust for all of the extra time you put in grading, planning, communicating with parents, and offering extra help to students after hours.

We'll cross our fingers you'll be happy with what you find out here, but a word to the wise: sometimes it's better not to know this kind of information (unless, of course, you're getting ready to renegotiate your contract).

The eternal debate in education: whether ignorance is bliss.