Special Education Teachers, Secondary School
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Washington pays this job best, at $101,120. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $73,661 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for special education teachers, secondary school is also the real leader: Washington at $101,120, holding through tax and through price deflation to $73,661. 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$74,260
People doing it
163,930
Highest paid
$101,120
WA
Best off, really
$73,661
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$49,800
Highest tenth
$109,100
Lowest, really
$47,532
HI
States with data
51
National average
$77,260
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 $47,532 up to $73,661.
- About 163,930 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $74,260. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $74,260 in the middle.
- The nominal spread for special education teachers, secondary school approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $47,532 to $73,661, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- With 163,930 workers, special education teachers, secondary 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.
- 51 jurisdictions report special education teachers, secondary school, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Special Education Teachers, Secondary School
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $49,800 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $74,260 |
| Top tenth earn over | $109,100 |
| This salary | $74,260 |
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, Secondary School
The national median for this job
$74,260around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $49,800 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $74,260 |
| Top tenth | $109,100 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Special Education Teachers, Secondary School, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $51,970 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $101,120 |
| Spread | $49,150 |
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 | $64,830 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $66,715 |
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 | $101,120 | $79,968 | $73,661 |
| RI | $92,990 | $71,181 | $70,190 |
| MD | $93,530 | $70,549 | $67,859 |
| NM | $76,940 | $60,507 | $66,943 |
| OH | $76,180 | $61,044 | $66,488 |
| DC | $99,670 | $73,444 | $66,283 |
| CA | $101,060 | $74,619 | $66,280 |
| MI | $78,050 | $60,672 | $64,418 |
| AK | $80,580 | $65,518 | $64,413 |
| VT | $79,360 | $61,532 | $63,675 |
| NY | $89,310 | $67,431 | $62,653 |
| PA | $77,000 | $60,636 | $62,190 |
| IL | $79,890 | $61,223 | $61,932 |
| DE | $78,490 | $60,098 | $60,551 |
| CT | $81,710 | $62,569 | $60,343 |
| MN | $76,600 | $59,033 | $59,982 |
| GA | $74,150 | $57,893 | $59,870 |
| NJ | $83,770 | $64,616 | $59,344 |
| MA | $83,890 | $63,972 | $59,103 |
| ND | $61,210 | $51,362 | $57,989 |
| WY | $62,750 | $52,600 | $57,898 |
| NE | $63,460 | $50,986 | $56,416 |
| TX | $64,830 | $54,271 | $55,849 |
| TN | $61,360 | $51,483 | $55,648 |
| IA | $60,780 | $49,319 | $55,560 |
| MT | $62,310 | $50,074 | $55,488 |
| AL | $62,210 | $49,484 | $55,001 |
| NH | $69,560 | $57,765 | $54,835 |
| WI | $63,520 | $50,902 | $54,676 |
| LA | $59,100 | $48,280 | $54,649 |
| OR | $77,400 | $57,059 | $54,486 |
| OK | $59,660 | $47,933 | $54,292 |
| KY | $60,730 | $48,969 | $54,128 |
| SC | $62,150 | $50,312 | $53,997 |
| IN | $61,130 | $49,524 | $53,723 |
| UT | $64,210 | $50,915 | $53,594 |
| AR | $57,000 | $46,329 | $53,555 |
| VA | $68,400 | $53,777 | $53,377 |
| KS | $60,700 | $47,854 | $53,192 |
| CO | $67,240 | $53,883 | $53,149 |
| ID | $60,700 | $48,589 | $53,146 |
| NV | $60,810 | $51,041 | $52,630 |
| SD | $54,810 | $46,220 | $52,466 |
| AZ | $64,300 | $52,640 | $52,065 |
| ME | $61,710 | $48,919 | $50,381 |
| WV | $55,390 | $45,014 | $50,143 |
| FL | $61,510 | $51,603 | $49,881 |
| MO | $55,920 | $45,421 | $49,498 |
| NC | $56,770 | $46,038 | $48,905 |
| MS | $51,970 | $41,951 | $48,058 |
| HI | $65,980 | $51,624 | $47,532 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $74,260.
- 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 $79,968.
- 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 $47,532. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for special education teachers, secondary school, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $74,260, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for special education teachers, secondary 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 $79,968, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms figures for special education teachers, secondary 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.