Pre-K Teacher Pay, Benefits, and Intentions to Leave in 2025

Photo by FatCamera/Getty Images

In this report, we describe the status of pre-kindergarten (pre-K) teacher pay, benefits, and intentions to leave. We derived these results from surveys of nationally representative samples of pre-K teachers in U.S. public schools that were conducted in spring 2024 and spring 2025. Steiner, Shapiro, and Levine (2025) provided the first snapshot of public school–based pre-K teacher labor market conditions in spring 2024. In this report, we present updated survey results from spring 2025 and examine aggregate-level changes between 2024 and 2025 in seven types of employer-provided benefits, annual base salaries, and teachers’ intentions to leave their jobs.

Our results in this report are drawn from the 1,427 pre-K teachers who completed our spring 2024 survey and the 1,586 pre-K teachers who completed the spring 2025 survey (Grant et al., 2025a; Grant et al., 2025b). In all our tabulations, we assigned weights to teachers to make their responses representative of public school–based pre-K teachers across the country. The results are not generalizable to pre-K teachers working outside public school settings (e.g., community-based organizations and home-based programs) because teachers in those settings are not part of our sample. Please see the “Data Sources and Methods” section for more details on the technical aspects of the surveys.

Pre-K Teachers’ Base Salaries Rose by About $1,600, on Average, Between 2024 and 2025 in Inflation-Adjusted Terms

In spring 2024 and spring 2025, we asked pre-K teachers to report their base salaries before taxes and deductions and without additional compensation for extracurricular activities, merit pay, or bonuses. Figure 1 shows the average reported salaries before adjusting for inflation (i.e., in nominal dollars) and after adjusting for inflation (i.e., in real dollars) for all pre-K teachers, teachers in part-day and full-day classes, teachers in early childhood education (ECE) or early grade buildings (i.e., buildings with only preschool classrooms or buildings that do not enroll students past grade 3), and teachers in pre-K through grade 12 (pre-K–12) buildings (i.e., all other grade configurations, such as pre-K through grade 5 [pre-K–5] or pre-K through grade 8 [pre-K–8]).

We present nominal dollars because teachers may look at the raw increases in their salaries from year to year when judging the size of their pay raises. We present real dollars because they reflect teachers’ purchasing power and because real-dollar changes better reflect whether teachers can maintain their standard of living as inflation increases the price of everyday goods.

In nominal terms, pre-K teacher salaries grew from around $63,600 in 2024 to around $66,800 in 2025. This $3,200 increase, or roughly 5 percent, is similar to the 4 percent increase K–12 teachers received over the same period (Steiner et al., 2025).

The general price level in the U.S. economy rose by 2.7 percent between the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 school years.⁠^[1] After adjusting for this inflation, real pre-K teacher salaries grew from around $65,300 in 2024 to around $66,800 in 2025, an increase of $1,500 or 2.3 percent. Pre-K teachers’ real salaries grew at a faster pace than real earnings among all private nonfarm employees in the United States, which grew by 1.5 percent from May 2024 to May 2025 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025).

We hypothesized that pre-K teacher salaries might differ by building type or by part-day or full-day status given differences in funding structures and staffing policies. Figure 1 shows that in 2025, pre-K teachers who worked in pre-K–12 buildings earned nearly $3,000 more in base pay than pre-K teachers in ECE or early grade buildings. Pre-K teachers in part-day classrooms earned more than those in full-day classrooms, but this difference is small and not statistically significant when we compare teachers within the same state and control for observable school and teacher characteristics.⁠^[2] Between 2024 and 2025, pre-K teachers in different types of classrooms experienced similar salary growth to that of pre-K teachers overall.

Salary Growth Was Uneven: About One-Half of Pre-K Teachers Experienced an Increase and About One-Half Experienced a Decrease

Although pre-K teachers’ real base salaries grew on average between 2024 and 2025, not every teacher had a higher real salary in 2025. To learn about the distribution of salary changes, in spring 2025, we asked pre-K teachers about their salaries in the 2024–2025 school year and in the previous school year. Using these responses, we investigated the proportion of teachers who reported that their salaries rose, fell, or remained constant. Note, however, that this analysis is likely subject to some measurement error because it relies on teachers accurately reporting their salaries in the previous year.⁠^[3]

Figure 2 shows the distribution of annual salary changes between the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 school years. Before adjusting for inflation (i.e., in nominal terms), only 3 percent of pre-K teachers experienced a salary decrease. Salaries remained constant for 31 percent of teachers, and the remaining 66 percent of teachers saw their salaries increase. This distribution of salary growth is very similar to that of K–12 teachers over this period (Steiner et al., 2025).

Importantly, these nominal changes do not reflect changes in purchasing power. After adjusting for inflation, real base salaries fell for 55 percent of pre-K teachers, either because nominal salaries did not increase or because nominal salaries increased at a lower rate than inflation. Among these teachers, the average salary decrease was $1,600. Nevertheless, real salaries grew for the other 45 percent of pre-K teachers—by $3,000 on average.⁠^[4] As Figure 2 shows, there was considerable variation across teachers in the size of their salary increases and decreases.

In results not shown, we found that part-day teachers were more likely than full-day teachers to see their real salaries increase, with 57 percent of part-day teachers experiencing an increase compared with 48 percent of full-day teachers. We did not find a difference between teachers in pre-K–12 buildings and those in ECE or early grade buildings.

Nominal dollars:

• 21% increased by $3,001 or more
• 11% increased by $2,001 to $3,000
• 18% increased by $1,001 to $2,000
• 15% increased by $1 to $1,000
• 31% saw no change
• 1% decreased by $1 to $999
• 2% decreased by $2,000 or more

Real dollars:

• 14% increased by $3,001 or more
• 6% increased by $2,001 to $3,000
• 8% increased by $1,001 to $2,000
• 17% increased by $1 to $1,000
• 18% decreased by $1 to $999
• 28% decreased by $1,000 to $1,999
• 10% decreased by $2,000 or more

NOTE: This figure displays the percentage of pre-K teachers who received each pay change amount. In spring 2025, we asked teachers about their pay in the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 school years. We defined pay as a teacher’s “base annual pay, before taxes and deductions, for the entire school year . . . before adding any additional compensation for extracurricular or additional activities, merit pay, or bonuses.” We calculated each pay change as the difference between pay in the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 school years. For the real dollars column, we converted teachers’ 2024 survey responses into real 2025 dollars using the CPI-U from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (undated). n = 1,336. Values may not sum to 100 because of rounding.

Pre-K Teachers Received Fewer Employer-Provided Benefits (e.g., Paid Parental Leave and Overtime Pay) in 2025 Compared with 2024

Figure 3 shows the share of pre-K teachers who reported receiving various employer-provided benefits in the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 school years. Some benefits were highly common, with at least 75 percent of all pre-K teachers receiving paid sick leave, payment for health insurance premiums, paid personal time off, and contributions to a retirement and/or pension plan in the 2024–2025 school year. Other benefits were uncommon: Fewer than 25 percent of all pre-K teachers received paid parental leave or additional compensation for working more than 40 hours in a week. For reference, the share of K–12 teachers who received paid parental leave in the 2024–2025 school year (27 percent) was very similar (Steiner et al., 2025).

Between 2024 and 2025, benefits that were already highly common remained highly common, while the less-common benefits became even less common. For instance, the share of pre-K teachers nationally who received overtime pay decreased by one-half from 24 percent to 12 percent; the share who received paid time for professional learning fell from 58 percent to 49 percent; and the share who received paid parental leave fell from 31 percent to 23 percent (Figure 3). We detected smaller but still statistically significant decreases in the proportion of teachers who received paid sick leave and contributions to a retirement or pension plan. The reasons for these changes are unclear but could be related to the expiration of federal stimulus funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (Public Law 117-2, 2021).

The Share of Pre-K Teachers Who Intended to Leave Their Jobs Fell by Around One-Quarter Between 2024 and 2025

Figure 4 shows that in spring 2025, 14 percent of pre-K teachers reported that it was “somewhat likely” or “very likely” that they would leave their jobs at the end of the school year. This was a marked decrease from spring 2024, when 18 percent of teachers reported the same. We found declining intentions to leave both overall and across various teacher subgroups. It is important to note, however, that intentions may not translate into actual job separations.

Figure 3 shows that pre-K teachers received fewer benefits in 2025 than in 2024, which might be expected to make teachers more likely to leave their jobs. However, Figure 2 shows that nominal pay increased for most pre-K teachers, which might make teachers less likely to leave their jobs. Reduced intentions to leave may also be a response to less favorable labor market conditions in 2025. Previous research suggests that teachers may become anxious about leaving their jobs when alternative job prospects worsen (Davis and von Wachter, 2011; Nagler, Piopiunik, and West, 2020).

Figure 5 shows that, as expected, in the 2024–2025 school year, pre-K teachers with the highest base salaries were less likely to report an intention to leave their jobs. Around 14 percent to 15 percent of pre-K teachers with base salaries less than $80,000 reported that it was “somewhat likely” or “very likely” that they would leave their jobs. This share falls to 12 percent for teachers who earned between $80,000 and $90,000 and to 6 percent for teachers who earned more than $90,000.

We also found (in results not shown) that the share of pre-K teachers who reported an intention to leave their jobs was lower among those who received certain benefits. Twelve percent of teachers who received payment for health insurance reported intending to leave compared with 20 percent of teachers who did not receive payment for health insurance; 11 percent of teachers who received paid parental leave reported intending to leave compared with 15 percent of teachers who did not receive paid parental leave.

Summary

In this report, we examined pre-K teacher pay, benefits, and intentions to leave their jobs in the 2024–2025 school year. These survey results update those from the 2023–2024 school year (Steiner et al., 2025) and were used to explore trends in labor market conditions between the two school years.

Our findings paint a mixed picture for pre-K teacher pay and benefits. First, we found that the share of pre-K teachers who received certain employer-provided benefits—such as paid time for professional learning, paid parental leave, and overtime pay—decreased between 2024 and 2025. We also found that 55 percent of pre-K teachers had lower salaries in 2025 after accounting for inflation. But salaries grew for the other 45 percent of teachers and by a larger amount on average. Consequently, inflation-adjusted salaries grew overall by around $1,600.

Despite this mixed salary picture, pre-K teachers’ intentions to leave their jobs fell sharply, from 18 percent in 2024 to 14 percent in 2025. This decrease is consistent with responses from K–12 teachers who also reported being much less likely to leave their jobs in 2025 than in 2024 (16 percent versus 22 percent) (Steiner et al., 2025). Although their exact reasons are unclear, we suspect that the reduced share of pre-K teachers with intentions to leave could be related to broader changes in the economy. Between spring 2024 and spring 2025, when our surveys were conducted, the U.S. labor market became more uncertain, which may have caused both pre-K and K–12 teachers to be more hesitant about leaving their jobs (Davis and von Wachter, 2011; Nagler, Piopiunik, and West, 2020).

Data Sources and Methods

RAND researchers fielded the spring 2024 American Public School Pre-K Teacher Survey (PKTS) to 1,427 public school–based pre-K teachers in March and April 2024. RAND randomly sampled pre-K teachers across the United States and invited them to enroll in the American Teacher Panel (ATP). Among the 1,815 enrollees, 1,494 were eligible for and directed to the survey focused on pre-K teachers. Of those, 1,427 individuals completed the survey, for a survey completion rate of 95.5 percent.

RAND researchers fielded the spring 2025 PKTS to 1,586 public school–based pre-K teachers in April 2025. This wave of the PKTS included pre-K teachers who joined the ATP in spring 2024 and a newly recruited cohort of pre-K teachers. Invitations were sent to 1,795 existing ATP members and 802 pre-K teachers who were recruited to the ATP survey as part of the PKTS. Together, these groups completed 1,586 surveys that were assigned a weight and included in the final data file. The completion rate was 62.7 percent after we removed screened cases from those we invited and surveys that were completed by ineligible respondents (e.g., respondents who did not teach pre-K anymore).

We assigned each PKTS respondent a weight to ensure that our estimates reflected the national population of public school–based pre-K teachers. Our weighting process accounted for both individual-level characteristics (e.g., age, race, or ethnicity) and school-level characteristics (e.g., school size, locale). For more information on the PKTS recruitment process and weighting approach, see Grant et al., 2025a, and Grant et al., 2025b.

In this report, we compare teacher responses across subgroups defined by various classroom and school characteristics to test whether average responses for certain subgroups differed from a specified reference subgroup. We do not report exhaustively on all subgroup estimates on all survey items because the purpose of this report is to provide readers with figures that highlight a selection of substantively important findings. The subgroups we discuss in this report were defined using information that was self-reported by teachers in the survey. These subgroups are teaching in a part-day or full-day classroom and working in an ECE or early grade building or a pre-K–12 building.

We defined part-day teachers as those who reported that 75 percent to 100 percent of their students were enrolled for fewer than five hours per day. We defined full-day teachers as those who reported that 75 percent to 100 percent of their students were enrolled for more than five hours per day. We defined teachers as working in ECE or early grade buildings if they worked in school buildings that had only early grades (pre-K to grade 3) or only early childhood classrooms (serving children ages five and under). We defined teachers as working in pre-K–12 buildings if they worked in other building configurations (e.g., pre-K–5 or pre-K–12). These definitions are based on respondent survey reports. We anticipated that intentions to leave might differ between part-day and full-day pre-K teachers because the experience of teaching two part-day classes is different from teaching one full-day class and because Steiner et al. (2025) found differences in job-related stress and total hours worked. We anticipated potential differences between pre-K teachers in ECE or early grade buildings and pre-K–12 buildings because of the differing workplace environments and differences in job-related stress found in Steiner et al. (2025). We also anticipated that teacher compensation might differ by part-day or full-day status or building type because these designations might be correlated with a pre-K program’s funding structure or staffing policy.

All estimates presented in this report are sample-wide or subgroup-specific estimates that are unadjusted for statistical controls. Estimates are produced using cross-sectional survey weights designed specifically to provide nationally representative estimates at the time that the survey was administered. We used linear regression models to test whether estimates for a particular subgroup differ at the p < 0.05 level from estimates for the reference subgroup in that category without the use of any statistical controls. We allowed responses within an individual to be correlated over time, conceptually similar to the rotating panel design of many U.S. Census Bureau surveys (Cantwell, 2008). This approach tends to increase statistical precision because within-person responses tend to be positively correlated. Subgroup estimates that are statistically significantly different from reference group estimates are denoted with an asterisk (*) throughout the report. Because the intent of this report is to provide exploratory, descriptive information rather than to test specific hypotheses, we did not make statistical adjustments for multiple comparisons. Readers should not interpret subgroup differences that are statistically significant as evidence of an effect of any specific teacher or school characteristic because there is substantial evidence that many teacher and school characteristics of interest are correlated with one another (Hansen and Quintero, 2018). Rather, our results are intended to highlight differences in reported experiences across subgroups of teachers and encourage additional research on the sources and causes of these differences.

Figure 2 shows the distribution of salary changes based on teachers’ contemporaneous reports of their 2024–2025 salaries and retrospective reports of their 2023–24 salaries. As discussed in note 3, the results in Figure 2 might be subject to measurement error if, in spring 2025, teachers did not accurately report their 2023–2024 salaries—this might occur because of incorrect recall or because a teacher did not check their financial documents. To assess the extent of possible measurement error, we repeated our analysis using the subset of teachers who completed the survey in both spring 2024 and spring 2025. There were 631 repeat respondents, and 531 of these respondents reported their salaries in both years. For these teachers, we computed the distribution of salary changes using only contemporaneous salary reports, which reduced measurement error.

The results from the subsample of repeat respondents are broadly similar to the full sample results (see Figure 6). The main difference is that the share of pre-K teachers with nominal or real salary losses is smaller in the subsample analysis. Although the subsample analysis reduces measurement error, the results might not be representative of all public school–based teachers because the subsample is not a random sample; it includes only teachers from the spring 2024 sample who we invited to complete the spring 2025 survey. Nevertheless, the subsample is very similar to the full sample when we compare teachers’ observable characteristics (e.g., gender, full-day or part-day status, educational attainment, working in a majority White school, and working in a state pre-K program) and average salary growth. Thus, although caution is warranted, we view the results as informative for the full sample.

Nominal dollars:

• 45% increased by $3,001 or more
• 7% increased by $2,001 to $3,000
• 9% increased by $1,001 to $2,000
• 9% increased by $1 to $1,000
• 13% saw no change
• 1% decreased by $1 to $999
• 3% decreased by $1,000 to $1,999
• 13% decreased by $2,000 or more

Real dollars:

• 36% increased by $3,001 or more
• 7% increased by $2,001 to $3,000
• 6% increased by $1,001 to $2,000
• 11% increased by $1 to $1,000
• 8% decreased by $1 to $999
• 13% decreased by $1,000 to $1,999
• 20% decreased by $2,000 or more

NOTE: This figure displays the percentage of pre-K teachers who received each pay change amount. In spring 2024 and spring 2025, teachers were asked the following question: “This school year, what is your base annual pay, before taxes and deductions, for the entire school year? Your base annual pay is your pay before adding any additional compensation for extracurricular or additional activities, merit pay, or bonuses.” The sample is limited to teachers who completed this question in both years. We calculated each pay change as the difference between pay in the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 school years. For the real dollars column, we converted teachers’ 2024 survey responses about into real 2025 dollars using the CPI-U from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (undated). n = 531. Values may not sum to 100 because of rounding.

Acknowledgments

We are extremely grateful to the educators who agreed to participate in the panels. Their time and willingness to share their experiences were invaluable for this effort and for helping us understand how to better support their hard work in schools. We thank Brian Kim for serving as the survey manager for this survey. We thank Julie Newell and Tim Colvin for programming the survey, and Roberto Guevara for programming the enrollment survey. We thank Ruolin Lu and Gretchen Swabe for serving as data managers for these surveys. We thank Dorothy Seaman and Claude Setodji for serving as the statisticians for these surveys. We also greatly appreciate the administrative support provided by Tina Petrossian. We are grateful to colleagues at the Gates Foundation for their support and collaboration. We also thank Sy Doan and Lindsay Weixler for helpful feedback that greatly improved this report. We also thank Valerie Bilgri for her editorial expertise and Babitha Balan for overseeing the publication process for this report.

Notes

1. We calculate inflation by comparing the average value of the CPI-U from September 2023 to August 2024 with the average value of the CPI-U from September 2024 to August 2025. Specifically, we extracted Series CUUR0000SA0 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in September 2025 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, undated). Return to content ⤴
2. After controlling for teachers’ educational attainment, school locale, and the state a teacher works in, the difference in 2024–2025 school year salaries between part-time and full-time pre-K teachers falls from around $4,500 to around −$100 and is no longer statistically significant. Return to content ⤴
3. To assess the extent of measurement error, we compared the retrospective salary reports from our spring 2025 teacher sample with reports from our spring 2024 sample (which includes only some overlapping respondents). Reassuringly, the retrospective responses mimic the salary differences across subgroups that we observe in the contemporaneous responses. However, the average retrospective estimate is statistically significantly higher (p < 0.05) than the average contemporaneous estimate ($64,900 versus $63,600 in nominal dollars), which may cause Figure 2 to overstate real salary losses and understate real salary gains. We also compared salary reports from spring 2024 and spring 2025 for the subset of teachers who completed the survey in both years. This subsample might not be representative of all public school–based teachers, but it is not subject to measurement error in the same way as the full sample. As we discuss in the “Data Sources and Methods” section and show in Figure 6, the results are broadly similar to those in Figure 2. Return to content ⤴
4. In the previous section, we reported an average overall increase in real salaries of around $1,600 between 2024 and 2025. In this section, the average salary increase ($3,000) and decrease ($1,600) amount to an overall average increase of only around $400. This difference exists because the two analyses use different survey items to estimate average salaries in 2024, as we discussed in note 3. Return to content ⤴

References

• Cantwell, Patrick J., Rotation Designs and Composite Estimation in Sample Surveys: Part 1, Motivating Their Use, Statistical Research Division, U.S. Census Bureau, Research Report Series Statistics #2008-06, September 30, 2008.
• Davis, Steven J., and Till M. von Wachter, “Recessions and the Cost of Job Loss,” National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 17638, December 2011.
• Grant, David, Phoebe Rose Levine, Anna Shapiro, Elizabeth D. Steiner, Ashley Woo, Jill S. Cannon, Christopher Joseph Doss, Lynn A. Karoly, and Emma B. Kassan, American Public School Pre-K Teacher Survey: Spring 2025 Technical Documentation and Survey Results, RAND Corporation, RR-A3279-6, 2025a. As of September 29, 2025: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3279-6.html
• Grant, David, Anna Shapiro, Elizabeth D. Steiner, Ashley Woo, Jill S. Cannon, Christopher Joseph Doss, and Lynn A. Karoly, American Public School Pre-K Teacher Survey: Spring 2024 Technical Documentation and Survey Results, RAND Corporation, RR-A3279-2, 2025b. As of September 29, 2025: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA3279-2.html
• Hansen, Michael, and Diana Quintero, “Teachers in the US Are Even More Segregated Than Students,” Brookings Institution, August 15, 2018.
• Nagler, Markus, Marc Piopiunik, and Martin R. West, “Weak Markets, Strong Teachers: Recession at Career Start and Teacher Effectiveness,” Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 38, No. 2, April 2020.
• Public Law 117-2, American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, March 11, 2021.
• Steiner, Elizabeth D., Phoebe Rose Levine, Sy Doan, and Ashley Woo, Teacher Well-Being, Pay, and Intentions to Leave in 2025: Findings from the State of the American Teacher Survey, RAND Corporation, RR-A1108-16, 2025. As of September 29, 2025: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1108-16.html
• Steiner, Elizabeth D., Anna Shapiro, and Phoebe Rose Levine, Pre-K Teacher Well-Being, Pay, and Intentions to Leave in 2024: Findings from the American Pre-K Teacher Survey, RAND Corporation, RR-A3279-5, 2025. As of September 29, 2025: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject,” webpage, Series ID CUUR0000SA0, undated. As of October 30, 2025: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUUR0000SA0
• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Real Earnings—May 2025,” USDL-25-0956, June 11, 2025. As of September 29, 2025: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/realer_06112025.htm

Topics

• Early Childhood Education
• Educator Well-Being
• Teachers and Teaching
• United States