After North Dakota falls in national report, teacher's union says falling pay ranking is dire for teacher retention
May 1—GRAND FORKS — The union representing North Dakota's teachers is raising the alarm about a new report showing continued declines in North Dakota's teacher pay relative to other states.
North Dakota
ranked 40th among U.S. states and Washington, D.C.
for average teacher salaries last school year, according to a report released this week by the National Education Association, a national labor union representing K-12 educators and college faculty and staff.
That's the lowest ranking for the state in at least four years, based on prior NEA reports.
"North Dakota is going backwards," said Nick Archuleta, president of statewide teachers union North Dakota United. "If we're serious about recruiting and retaining the very best teachers, we're going to have to invest in their salaries too."
Last year, North Dakota teachers made an average of $58,581 while the average starting salary came out to $43,734.
Average teacher pay has climbed in North Dakota by nearly 7% since 2020-21, when the state ranked 34th in the nation, but that hasn't kept pace with nationwide growth of around 10% over the same period.
Last year, average salaries in North Dakota grew by 3.2%, compared to 3.8% nationwide.
Starting teacher salaries in North Dakota have dropped from 26th nationwide in 2021-22 to 34th last year.
The state is suffering from a particularly acute case of the teacher shortage that's being felt nationwide.
The state Educational Standards and Practices Board in February declared a "critical shortage" of teachers in all content areas ahead of the 2025-26 school year, the sixth year running that it found deficits in all teaching areas.
North Dakota has been looking to fill open teaching positions with its Department of Labor-funded teacher apprenticeship program, ESPB Director Becky Pitkin said.
So far, "we haven't had as many calls of desperation as we have in the past," she said, but noted the board won't have a complete picture of teacher demand until the Department of Public Instruction compiles its Teacher Shortage Report from school districts in the fall.
Archuleta says legislators have to get serious about increasing teacher pay if they want to keep teachers in North Dakota, pointing to states like Idaho, which boosted its teacher salaries by 9.1% to $61,516 last year — passing North Dakota in average pay.
House and Senate lawmakers appear poised to approve a 2.5% year-over-year increase in the student per-pupil payment for the next biennium, a figure Archuleta points out struggles to keep pace with current inflation.
The Consumer Price Index climbed 2.4% over the last 12 months; Midwestern states saw slightly higher inflationary increases to consumer goods, up to 2.7%.
"We understand that we're probably not going to pay an average salary of $101,000 or whatever it is in California," Archuleta said. (It's $101,084, the highest in the nation.) "We get that. But we can certainly do better than No. 40."
The NEA notes that even with record-level increases in some states, average teacher pay has still fallen short of inflation over the last decade. Teachers are making on average 5% less in real wages than 10 years ago, per the NEA's report.
Adam Tescher, DPI's school finance director, says addressing the teacher shortage is about more than just salaries, pointing to the quality of schools and supportive administrators as other important factors to consider.
He did say, however, that the 2.5% per-pupil increase fell short of DPI's own hopes of a minimum 3% increase.
"School districts will have to make difficult decisions on where those increases will happen, or where they may have to potentially make reductions for other increases in spending," Tescher said.
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