Public school teacher pay follows a published salary schedule: a base amount for your years of experience, set by the school board each year, plus stipends for certain roles and add-ons for advanced degrees. The schedule is a public document on the district's website, so you can know your pay to the dollar before you apply, even when the posting leaves it out.
This guide is for teachers and career changers comparing offers or deciding where to apply. The examples are Texas districts, with national figures for context, as of October 2026.
The salary schedule turns your experience into a number
Every Texas independent school district (ISD) publishes a teacher salary schedule, usually inside a compensation manual approved by the board each summer. Read it in three parts.
Steps. The rows are years of creditable experience. State law moves teachers one step a year on the state minimum schedule until step 20; district schedules often continue to 30 or beyond, and a district can hold steps in a lean year. Your service record from previous districts, on the official Texas Education Agency (TEA) form, is what sets your step when you are hired, so request it from each former district before you apply. Non-teaching experience usually does not count toward a teacher step, except that career and technical education teachers may count up to two years of industry work.
Days and installments. A 10-month contract is at least 187 days of service under state law, so a schedule's annual figure is for 187 days unless it says otherwise. That amount is paid in 10, 11 or 12 installments depending on the district, which is why the same salary can show up as $3,396 a month or about $2,830 a month. Twelve installments mean a paycheck in July; ten mean budgeting for the summer yourself.
Degree and role add-ons. The districts below add a flat amount for an advanced degree rather than running separate bachelor's, master's and doctorate columns: $1,500 at Northside ISD in San Antonio and a $2,000 master's stipend at College Station ISD. Stipends by role are listed on the same plan.
| District (schedule year) | New teacher, 0 years | Top of the new-hire schedule |
|---|---|---|
| Austin ISD (2026-27) | $58,069 ($57,969 without a certificate) | $73,844 at 30 or more years |
| Northside ISD, San Antonio (2026-27, contingent on a November 2026 tax election) | $61,000 | $77,990 at 34 or more years |
| College Station ISD (2026-27) | $53,250 | $75,930 at 35 years |
| Centerville ISD, rural Leon County (2025-26) | $45,000 | $77,250 at 30 years |
Source: each district's published compensation plan or board-approved salary schedule, read October 26, 2026. Figures exclude stipends; College Station's plan says 10-month employment, the others 187 days.
Read the fine print before you compare districts
Two things to check before you compare districts. First, whether the new-hire schedule caps the years it credits or flattens the early steps: Northside's tops out at $77,990, Austin pays 0, 1 and 2 years the same $58,069, and Austin moves teachers off the new-hire schedule after their first year and pays them on its points-based system instead. Second, whether the figure includes the House Bill 2 (HB 2) retention money, which some districts show as a separate line.
Texas sets a floor, and House Bill 2 raised pay above it
The state minimum salary schedule is a floor, not a market rate. The latest table TEA has posted, for 2025-26, starts at $33,960 for a teacher with no experience and reaches $55,030 at 20 years, on a 10-month contract; the four districts above start $11,000 to $27,000 higher. Districts may not pay a classroom teacher, librarian, counselor or nurse less than the step for their years. TEA's minimum salary schedule page (opens in a new tab) has the full table.
House Bill 2, signed June 4, 2025, added a Teacher Retention Allotment on top of whatever a district pays. The amounts depend on district size and your experience.
| District size | At least 3, fewer than 5 years of experience | 5 or more years |
|---|---|---|
| More than 5,000 students | $2,500 a year | $5,000 a year |
| 5,000 students or fewer | $4,000 a year | $8,000 a year |
Source: Texas Education Code §48.158; TEA letter on HB 2 implementation, June 12, 2025.
The money had to go into base salary in 2025-26, and the statute requires districts to maintain those increases in 2026-27 and every year after. You become eligible as you enter your fourth year, and the larger amount applies as you enter your sixth. Out-of-state public school experience counts, and TEA's guidance says you do not need to be certified to receive it. TEA's HB 2 teacher compensation FAQ (opens in a new tab) covers the edge cases, including a district that once qualified as a small district keeping the higher amounts.
The Teacher Incentive Allotment pays designated teachers more
HB 2 also expanded the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA), the designation system that pays top-rated teachers more. From 2026-27 the designations are Acknowledged (the top 50% of Texas teachers, $3,000 to $9,000), Recognized (top 33%, $5,000 to $15,000), Exemplary (top 20%, $9,000 to $25,000) and Master (top 5%, $12,000 to $36,000), with the higher end going to campuses with a high-needs and rural factor, per TEA's September 25, 2025 letter. Texas Education Code §48.112 requires at least 90% of each allotment to go to teacher pay at the campus where the designated teacher works. Not every district has a TIA system, so ask.
Stipends are on the compensation plan, not always in the posting
Stipends reward hard-to-staff roles and extra duties, and they vary more than base pay. Austin ISD's 2026-27 plan lists $7,000 for special education classroom teachers and for bilingual-designated teachers at dual language campuses, $2,000 for English as a second language (ESL), $300 for gifted and talented, and $12,300 for a varsity head football coach on a 202-day calendar. Katy ISD gave first- and second-year teachers a $2,500 stipend for 2025-26, one way to fill the gap HB 2 left for teachers with under three years.
Some stipends come with hours: a coaching stipend usually adds duty days. Some come with conditions: bilingual stipends often require the certificate, not just the language. The compensation plan spells this out, so read the stipend table before you count it.
The schedule is a public document, so you can know your pay to the dollar before you apply.
What comes out before the money reaches you
Three deductions change take-home pay in Texas more than the headline number.
Retirement. Teachers contribute 8.25% of pay to the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS), plus 0.65% to TRS-Care retiree health coverage, in both 2025-26 and 2026-27. That is 8.9% before taxes, matched by the state's 8.25%. TRS publishes the rates (opens in a new tab).
Social Security. Most Texas districts do not participate in Social Security; the Texas Classroom Teachers Association lists a handful that do, including Austin ISD and San Antonio ISD. If you are in a non-participating district, no Social Security tax comes out, and no Social Security credit builds from that job. The Social Security Fairness Act, signed January 5, 2025, repealed the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset, so a TRS pension no longer reduces Social Security benefits you earned elsewhere.
Health insurance. Districts either join TRS-ActiveCare, the state plan, or run their own. For the plan year that began September 1, 2026, the full employee-only premium in Region 12 is $555 a month for the Primary plan, $654 for Primary+ and $570 for the high-deductible plan, before the employer share, and premiums differ by education service center region. State law sets the employer share at a minimum of $900 a year from the state and $1,800 from the district, about $225 a month combined; districts may add more, and Austin contributes up to $505 a month. Your district's benefits office has the exact premiums.
How Texas compares nationally
The National Education Association's (NEA) latest rankings put the 2024-25 national average teacher salary at $74,495 and the average starting salary at $48,112. Texas averaged $63,749, 33rd among the states, and its average starting salary of $49,465 ranked 18th.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics' May 2025 survey gives medians rather than averages: $63,970 for elementary teachers (excluding special education) and $72,040 for high school teachers nationally, and $62,760 and $63,590 in Texas. Those are annualized figures that do not adjust for the 10-month year. NEA also notes that 35% of districts now start teachers at $50,000 or more, up from 30% a year earlier, and that teacher pay has lost about 5% to inflation over the past decade.
Why postings leave pay out, and where to find it anyway
Most school job postings do not state pay. On October 26, 2026, we counted 52,324 live postings from 1,860 employers on our own board; 29% stated pay in any form and 15% gave a numeric range. In Texas it was 27% and 13%. We count a posting as stating pay when it carries a minimum, a maximum or a written pay description, and the figures cover every live posting in our index that day, not a sample.
That is lower than the job market as a whole. Indeed reported in July 2025 that 59% of U.S. postings on its site included salary information as of that May. The gap is not secrecy: district pay is set by the schedule, so many districts see no need to repeat it, and Texas has no statewide law requiring pay ranges in postings as of October 2026, unlike California, Colorado, New York, Washington and about a dozen other states, by Paycor's November 2025 count.
So treat the posting as the start. Find the district's compensation plan, read the step for your experience, add the stipends the role carries, and subtract the 8.9% for TRS and your share of the premium. That number, not the posting, is the offer. Confirm the details with the district's HR office before you sign.
Next step
Pull the compensation plans for the two or three districts you are considering and put your step side by side before you apply. Then search teaching jobs in Texas and set up a job alert for your subject; EduJobs shows pay on a posting whenever the district lists it.
