National Education Association report finds Tennessee has improved its ranking in K-12 spending but still lags most states

Image of $20 bills (Photo by Kaboompics.com/Pexels)

In recent years Tennessee lawmakers have touted major educational investments including a historic teacher pay raise and the billion new education dollars provided by the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA).

A new report from the National Education Association (NEA) finds those investments appear to be making an impact, but not one that’s large enough to vault the state to the head of the class for education spending just yet.

The report ranks Tennessee 44th in the nation for per student spending at $12,616 in the 2023/24 school year. That’s up one spot from the prior year.

The state is also the tenth most reliant on federal funding, with more than 16 percent of education revenue coming from federal sources in 2023/24. That’s down from the nearly 19 percent federal revenue percentage Tennessee received in 2022/23, but the ranking could still be beneficial to opponents of future efforts to reject federal education dollars as lawmakers considered last year.

The volunteer state is seeing a more noticeable ranking move in average teacher pay, improving from 44th in the country in 2022/23 to 38th in 2023/24 at $58,630 a year. The state’s average starting teacher salary ranks even higher, at 29th in the nation.

Senator London Lamar (Photo by the Tennessee General Assembly)

Tennessee Democrats released a statement to the Tennessee Firefly about the report, saying its findings illustrate the “misguided priorities” of the Republican supermajority.

“This report is yet another wake-up call. Tennessee ranks near the bottom in what we invest in our public school students, and our teachers are still earning less than they did a decade ago after inflation,” said Senate Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Senator London Lamar, D-Memphis. “It’s time for state leaders to refocus on supporting our public schools — not handing out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private schools.”

The NEA report also estimated future spending, and that analysis found Tennessee may see more noticeable ranking improvements on next year’s report. The state has the fourth highest projected teacher salary improvement in the country for the 2024/25 school year and the 21st largest estimated growth in per-student spending.