Tennessee ranks 47th in the nation for K-12 student spending, new national report shows

Tennessee’s student spending is dead last in the Southeast. Sen. London Lamar: ‘This report is yet another wake-up call.’

The National Education Association, the nation’s largest professional employee organization, released yesterday the 2025 edition of its annual Rankings and Estimates Report quantifying teacher salary, education support professional pay, and student spending in every state.

Senate Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Sen. London Lamar said the data highlights the misguided priorities of Republican Party lawmakers who underfund schools and students in Tennessee.

“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,” Sen. Lamar said. “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.”

Here are five takeaways from the National Education Association’s annual education funding rankings:

• 47th in K-12 spending per student. Tennessee’s total K-12 education spending, divided by average daily attendance (the same measure the state uses to allocate school funding through TISA), ranks 47th nationally. Even using a more generous enrollment-based calculation, Tennessee only rises to 44th. (Pages 28–29)
• Tennessee ranks dead last in the Southeast for student spending. Tennessee ranked worse than every state in the Southeast as well as all eight of our neighboring states: Alabama (42), Arkansas (41), Georgia (35), Kentucky (34), Mississippi (43), Missouri (40), North Carolina (32), and Virginia (21). The next closest state, Mississippi, spends nearly $1,000 more per student than Tennessee. Our highest ranking neighbor, Virginia, spends $5,220 more per student than the Volunteer State. (Page 29)
• 10th most reliant on federal funding. Republican politicians have flirted with the idea of rejecting federal education assistance for low-income communities, school meals and students with disabilities, but the reality is that Tennessee schools depend heavily on federal dollars: 16.4% of public education funding came from the federal government in the 2023–24 school year, far more than in most states. (Page 25)
• 38th in average teacher pay. One bright-ish spot in the report: The average Tennessee public school teacher now earns $58,630 — an improvement from last year’s 44th-place ranking, but still $20,000 less annually than teachers in top-10 paying states. (Page 19)
• Teacher pay still lags behind inflation. Unfortunately, the increased pay still has less buying power than it used to. After adjusting for inflation, Tennessee teachers earn 4.7% less than they did a decade ago. Instructional staff wages have also declined by 3.9% after a decade of inflation. (Pages 37–38)

This new report highlights the grim reality facing Tennessee’s public schools — a reality made worse by Gov. Bill Lee and Republican lawmakers. Instead of investing in public education, they have pushed a failing private school voucher scam, expanded taxpayer-funded handouts for private schools, censored honest history lessons, demonized teachers and librarians, and continued to underfund the neighborhood schools that serve the vast majority of Tennessee families.

The result is clear: under their leadership, Tennessee students and educators are being shortchanged year after year.