Tennessee K-12 student spending sinks to dead last in the nation, report shows

NEA rankings put Tennessee 51st in per-student spending as Republicans pour hundreds of millions more into private school vouchers

NASHVILLE — The National Education Association released this month the 2026 edition of its annual Rankings and Estimates Report, quantifying teacher pay, student spending and education investment in every state.

The findings for Tennessee are an indictment of one-party Republican governance: the Volunteer State has fallen to dead last in the nation — 51st out of 51 — for expenditures per student in average daily attendance, dropping three spots from 48th the year before.

Senate Democratic Caucus Chairwoman Sen. London Lamar, D-Memphis, said the results expose the reckless priorities of Republican Party lawmakers, who this year expanded a taxpayer-funded private school voucher program while public school students fall further behind every child in America.

“Tennessee just hit rock bottom — dead last in the country for what we spend on our public school students,” Sen. Lamar said. “While Gov. Lee and Republicans were busy shoveling hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into their private school voucher scam, they left nearly a million kids in Tennessee’s public schools with less funding per student than anywhere else in the nation. This isn’t an accident — it’s a choice. And Tennessee families are paying the price.”

Here are five takeaways from the NEA’s annual education funding rankings:

• Dead last — 51st — in per-student spending. Tennessee spent $12,147 per student in average daily attendance in the 2024–25 school year, ranking 51st nationally — last among all 50 states and the District of Columbia. That’s a three-spot collapse from the prior year’s 48th-place ranking. The national average is $19,393 per student — more than $7,200 above what Tennessee invests. (Per NEA Rankings of the States 2025; page 30)

• $1.9 billion needed to catch closest neighboring state. At dead last, Tennessee also ranks worse than every state on its borders. Virginia spends $19,168 per student — roughly the national average and more than $7,000 above Tennessee. Even Mississippi, the closest neighboring state in per-student funding, spends approximately $2,000 more per student than Tennessee. To only catch up with Mississippi’s per-student investment, Tennessee’s student funding formula would need to generate an additional $1.9 billion.

  

• 40th in average teacher pay — and teachers are earning less in real terms. The average Tennessee public school teacher earned $61,222 in the 2024–25 school year, ranking 40th in the nation. After adjusting for inflation, Tennessee teacher pay has fallen 6.5% over the last decade — meaning teachers are being paid less today in real dollars than they were 10 years ago. (Page 20)

• 10th most reliant on federal funding. Tennessee schools depend heavily on federal dollars, with 12% of the K–12 budget coming from the federal government. That’s a glaring vulnerability as congressional Republicans in Washington threaten sweeping cuts to Medicaid and federal education programs that Tennessee communities rely on. (Page 26)

• 937,000 public school students left behind. Nearly a million Tennessee students in 147 public school districts are being shortchanged year after year. Average daily attendance — the same metric the state of Tennessee uses to allocate school funding through TISA — stood at 937,000 in 2024–25, while per-student investment hit its lowest national ranking on record.

This catastrophic fall to last place in the nation is the direct result of the choices Gov. Bill Lee and Republican supermajority lawmakers have made — and keep making. Instead of investing in the nearly one million children enrolled in Tennessee’s public schools, they have expanded a taxpayer-funded private school voucher program that funnels hundreds of millions of dollars to unaccountable private schools, whose students have performed poorly on state tests.

They have censored honest history, inserted political propaganda into curriculum, demonized teachers and librarians, and year after year refused to make the investments that would give Tennessee students and teachers equitable resources.

The result: Under Republican control, Tennessee is now last. Dead last.

Public school expenditures per student in average daily attendance can be found on page 30 of the 2026 edition of the NEA Rankings and Estimates report.