Teacher Salary in Iowa 2026,
$60,580 Median | BLS Data by City

Iowa teachers earn a median $60,580 a year per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $47,260 at the 10th percentile to $77,400 at the 90th. That is 5.3% below the national median of $63,970. Two qualifications matter: the row is SOC 25-2021, Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education — BLS's anchor row for classroom teaching, not a figure for all teachers — and BLS publishes no hourly wage for the occupation, since teaching is reported on an annual basis.

Ames, at $62,430, narrowly, with Sioux City $62,270, Davenport-Moline-Rock Island $61,650, Des Moines-West Des Moines $61,650 and Cedar Rapids $61,430 immediately behind — a spread of barely a thousand dollars across the whole table. All five sit above the state median of $60,580, which tells you the statewide figure is pulled down by Iowa's many small rural districts rather than by any low-paying city. Note also that the Davenport-Moline-Rock Island metro crosses into Illinois, so its figure is not purely an Iowa number.

Iowa's legislature enacted a statutory minimum salary for full-time public school teachers, phased up to $50,000. It applies to full-time teachers in public districts, which is why the published 10th percentile of $47,260 sits below it — the OEWS row also includes part-time positions and non-public school teachers, who fall outside the statute. For anyone entering a full-time Iowa public classroom, the floor is the more relevant number than the bottom of this band.

More than they did before the reform. Iowa moved to a flat individual income tax of 3.8%, replacing a graduated schedule that had topped out at 5.7%, so the $60,580 median is taxed at a low and predictable rate. Iowa's property taxes are comparatively high — and they are, of course, what funds the districts — but on the income side the state is now one of the friendlier ones in the Midwest for a teacher's salary.

Through the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners. The route is completion of an approved teacher preparation programme, the required assessments, and application to the board for an initial licence, which converts to a standard licence after a period of successful practice. The board also issues the subject and grade-level endorsements that determine what a teacher may be assigned — and picking up an endorsement in a shortage area is one of the few things that gives an individual Iowa teacher genuine bargaining leverage.

Because two different mechanisms govern the two halves. At the bottom, a statutory minimum salary plus standardised district schedules leave almost nothing to negotiate — which is exactly why the 10th and 25th percentiles, at $47,260 and $48,620, sit so close together. At the top, Iowa district schedules pay for accumulated graduate credit hours and years of service, and a teacher who spends a career in one larger district collecting both ends up at a very different place from one who does not. The $77,400 ninetieth percentile is a schedule outcome, not a market one, and reaching it takes decades rather than performance.

The row is elementary teachers, not all teachers, and it is annual. SOC 25-2021 excludes special education and does not separately capture secondary teaching, so this page is an anchor for classroom teaching rather than a complete answer for every teaching job in Iowa. The annual basis also means the figure covers a school-year contract, typically around 190 days, and it does not include supplemental pay for coaching, activity sponsorship or summer school — all common in Iowa districts and, in smaller ones, a meaningful share of a teacher's actual annual income.

Three things, in a defined order. Graduate credit hours, because Iowa district schedules pay explicitly for them and the movement is automatic rather than discretionary. Endorsements in shortage areas, which do not usually change the base schedule but make a teacher hireable in districts that will otherwise pay above their norm to fill a vacancy. And district choice — the metro table spans barely a thousand dollars, but individual districts within those metros differ more than the metro medians suggest, and the difference between a large suburban schedule and a small rural one compounds over a career.