Teacher Salary in Kansas 2026,
$56,450 Median | BLS Data by City

Kansas teachers earn a median $56,450 a year per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $47,700 at the 10th percentile to $71,730 at the 90th. That is 11.8% below the national median of $63,970. Two qualifications apply: the row is SOC 25-2021, Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education — BLS's anchor row for classroom teaching, not a figure covering every teaching job — and BLS publishes no hourly wage for the occupation, which is reported on an annual basis.

Topeka, at $58,950, narrowly ahead of Wichita $58,640. The surprise is what comes next: Lawrence publishes $50,310 and Manhattan $49,520, nearly nine thousand dollars behind the two leaders. Both are university towns, and both have an unusually deep local pool of education graduates and of people seeking work near a university employer — which means districts there face far less competitive pressure on their salary schedules than Topeka or Wichita do.

Through the Kansas State Department of Education's Teacher Licensure and Accreditation division. The standard route is an approved teacher preparation programme, the required assessments, and application for an initial licence, which becomes a professional licence after successful practice. Kansas also operates restricted and alternative routes designed to move career-changers and out-of-field candidates into classrooms districts cannot otherwise staff, which is a response to the state's long-running teacher shortage.

Kansas taxes income progressively up to 5.7%, which is a heavier marginal rate at this salary than neighbouring Iowa's flat 3.8%. Against that, Kansas eliminated the state sales tax on groceries, which for a household at the $49,090 twenty-fifth percentile of this band is worth more in practice than the income tax comparison suggests. Property taxes fund the districts, as everywhere on this page.

Because district schedules are funded from state aid and local property tax in a state that has kept both comparatively constrained, and because Kansas has no statutory salary floor of the kind Iowa enacted. The result is visible in the shape of the band: the 10th and 25th percentiles sit barely $1,400 apart at $47,700 and $49,090, which is a crowded, flat bottom to the scale. Alternative licensure routes that bring candidates in at the bottom of schedules reinforce it.

Local labour supply. Both are university towns, and a university town produces a steady stream of newly qualified education graduates while also containing many households where one partner's job is fixed at the university and the other looks for work locally. Both effects deepen the pool of candidates who want to teach specifically in that town, and a district facing a deep local pool does not have to bid. Topeka and Wichita, by contrast, compete in genuine metropolitan labour markets where a teacher has alternatives. The result — Lawrence $50,310 and Manhattan $49,520 against Topeka $58,950 and Wichita $58,640 — is a clean demonstration that public salary schedules do respond to supply, just slowly and through bargaining rather than through posted rates.

The usual three for teacher rows, plus one specific to Kansas. The row covers elementary teachers, excludes special education and does not separately identify secondary teaching. It is a school-year annual figure of roughly 190 days, not a twelve-month salary. It omits supplemental pay for coaching and activity sponsorship. And the Kansas-specific point is that restricted and alternative licence holders working in hard-to-staff classrooms appear on this row alongside fully prepared career teachers, which weights the lower percentiles more heavily than a state without those routes would.

District choice, then graduate credit. The nearly nine-thousand-dollar spread between Topeka's $58,950 and Manhattan's $49,520 dwarfs anything an individual teacher can do within a schedule in a few years, so where you teach is the first-order decision. After that, Kansas district schedules pay for accumulated credit hours and years of service, which is what carries a teacher from the $56,450 median to the $61,330 seventy-fifth percentile. Shortage-area endorsements from KSDE — special education, mathematics, science — do not usually change the schedule but decide which districts will actively recruit you, and in a state with a persistent shortage that is real leverage.