A Sioux Falls School District educator teaches students reading at Lowell Elementary during the 2024-2025 school year. (Courtesy of the Sioux Falls School District)
If South Dakota’s average teacher salary matched the state’s target teacher salary, the state would have ranked 38th in the nation this year for average teacher pay.
Instead, it ranked 46th at an average salary of $56,328, according to the 2025 National Education Association teacher salary report.
The target teacher salary isn’t actually the state’s goal for average teacher pay. In reality, it’s a basis for the state’s public education funding formula. Funding determined by the formula goes not just toward teacher salaries, but also toward overhead costs and salaries for other school workers.
In recent years, the gap between the target teacher salary and the average teacher salary in South Dakota widened. The target teacher salary for the 2023-24 school year, which is what the latest rankings are based on, was $59,659.
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In addition to climbing the ranks in teacher pay if the target salary was reached, South Dakota would have risen above neighboring states Montana and North Dakota.
Members of the state Teacher Compensation Review Board learned more about the rankings during their Monday meeting in Pierre. The group is required to meet each year by law to review teacher compensation compared to surrounding states and report the findings to the governor and Legislature.
Going forward, lawmakers hope to see progress in teacher pay due to a law passed by the 2024 Legislature that sets a minimum teacher salary and mandates increases in average teacher compensation in school districts nearly equal to increases in state education funding. About 95% of South Dakota school districts met the state’s mandated minimum $45,000 salary last school year.
Board member Sen. Taffy Howard, R-Rapid City, said she wants to see the new legislation “play out” before the board recommends further changes to adjust or improve teacher compensation.
Board turns its attention toward teacher retention, student behavior
Howard and other board members called for ways to improve teacher job satisfaction and address one of the leading reasons teachers leave the profession: behavior problems among students.
South Dakota Department of Education data presented by Caitlin Scott of Marzano Research showed that the teacher turnover rate in South Dakota is higher than most surrounding states. About 16% of teachers in April 2024 reported that they no longer taught at the same school. North Dakota was the only surrounding state with higher numbers at 23% turnover.
Elementary and music teacher vacancies were higher than average at the beginning of the 2023-24 school year, according to the data. Ahead of the 2024-25 school year, math and science teachers were revealed as having high vacancy numbers. Overall vacancies as of June of this year stood at the second lowest number since 2019 at 144 vacancies throughout the state, according to the Associated School Boards of South Dakota.
Board members discussed student-teacher ratios, funding for schools and incentives for school districts and teachers to better address student proficiency and behavior problems.
Howard told board members she’d prefer to see a list of recommendations from local school districts, rather than “unfunded mandates” from the Legislature, especially as the state faces a $24.5 million shortfall in projected revenue.
“I would like us, if it’s a purview of this committee, to try and focus more on how we can make the teacher’s life better in the classroom and in the school,” Howard said. “Because we don’t necessarily have a lot of money to throw at this.”
Howard told South Dakota Searchlight after the meeting that finding ways to address teacher retention and student behavior is a form of compensation.
“Does it always have to be a monetary form of compensation?” Howard said. “Or can we do other things to compensate them by making their life better in the classroom in general?”
South Dakota Department of Education Secretary Joseph Graves said he plans to follow up with board members on their concerns and prepare recommendations for the board’s next meeting in August.
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