Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. The District of Columbia pays this job best, at $97,910. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $69,721 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for special education teachers, kindergarten and elementary school is also the real leader: the District of Columbia at $97,910, holding through tax and through price deflation to $69,721. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$65,120
People doing it
260,870
Highest paid
$97,910
DC
Best off, really
$69,721
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$49,350
Highest tenth
$103,010
Lowest, really
$44,156
HI
States with data
51
National average
$72,650
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $44,156 up to $69,721.
- About 260,870 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $65,120. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $65,120. Nothing is missing.
- The nominal spread for special education teachers, kindergarten and elementary school approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $44,156 to $69,721, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- With 260,870 workers, special education teachers, kindergarten and elementary school sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for special education teachers, kindergarten and elementary school is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $49,350 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $65,120 |
| Top tenth earn over | $103,010 |
| This salary | $65,120 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School
The national median for this job
$65,120around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $49,350 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $65,120 |
| Top tenth | $103,010 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $50,380 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $97,910 |
| Spread | $47,530 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $62,330 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $64,142 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $95,040 | $75,691 | $69,721 |
| NM | $76,420 | $60,165 | $66,565 |
| DC | $97,910 | $72,356 | $65,301 |
| OH | $73,970 | $59,550 | $64,861 |
| RI | $84,300 | $65,394 | $64,483 |
| CA | $97,170 | $72,244 | $64,171 |
| AK | $80,230 | $65,272 | $64,171 |
| MA | $91,350 | $68,847 | $63,607 |
| MI | $74,600 | $58,391 | $61,997 |
| CT | $82,950 | $63,373 | $61,118 |
| IL | $77,960 | $59,961 | $60,655 |
| VT | $74,200 | $58,243 | $60,271 |
| PA | $72,680 | $57,729 | $59,209 |
| GA | $72,880 | $57,063 | $59,011 |
| MD | $78,850 | $60,919 | $58,596 |
| NY | $81,260 | $62,205 | $57,798 |
| CO | $74,290 | $58,533 | $57,735 |
| AL | $64,520 | $51,239 | $56,951 |
| TN | $62,560 | $52,447 | $56,690 |
| WY | $60,930 | $51,137 | $56,289 |
| NV | $65,110 | $54,496 | $56,193 |
| NE | $62,420 | $50,198 | $55,543 |
| ID | $63,610 | $50,773 | $55,535 |
| IA | $60,440 | $49,059 | $55,267 |
| NJ | $76,660 | $60,067 | $55,167 |
| ND | $57,950 | $48,743 | $55,032 |
| OR | $77,700 | $57,243 | $54,663 |
| LA | $58,800 | $48,048 | $54,387 |
| MN | $67,620 | $53,326 | $54,184 |
| SC | $62,360 | $50,468 | $54,163 |
| TX | $62,330 | $52,262 | $53,781 |
| KY | $60,060 | $48,454 | $53,559 |
| WI | $61,520 | $49,414 | $53,078 |
| VA | $67,740 | $53,351 | $52,954 |
| KS | $59,970 | $47,308 | $52,585 |
| DE | $65,990 | $52,079 | $52,471 |
| NH | $65,160 | $54,536 | $51,769 |
| IN | $58,760 | $47,690 | $51,733 |
| MT | $57,630 | $46,534 | $51,564 |
| UT | $61,290 | $48,699 | $51,261 |
| AR | $54,290 | $44,252 | $51,154 |
| MO | $57,260 | $46,435 | $50,603 |
| ME | $61,880 | $49,044 | $50,510 |
| NC | $58,260 | $47,176 | $50,113 |
| SD | $51,090 | $43,231 | $49,073 |
| FL | $58,850 | $49,466 | $47,815 |
| MS | $50,570 | $40,882 | $46,834 |
| OK | $50,630 | $41,083 | $46,534 |
| WV | $50,380 | $41,200 | $45,894 |
| AZ | $56,030 | $46,202 | $45,697 |
| HI | $60,940 | $47,957 | $44,156 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $65,120 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Washington, at $75,691.
- The price adjustment for this job uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $44,156. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for special education teachers, kindergarten and elementary school are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $65,120. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for special education teachers, kindergarten and elementary school model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $75,691, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms figures for special education teachers, kindergarten and elementary school deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.