Florida Ranked Among the Worst States for Teachers

The personal finance social network WalletHub put together a comprehensive study of the best and worst states for teachers and concluded that Florida is not good.

In fact, Florida comes in as the eight worst state for teachers, with places like Arizona, South Carolina and Mississippi ranking worse.

Basically, if you're a teacher, you'll get better career opportunities in places like Arkansas, Alabama, and Louisiana before you do in Florida, according to WalletHub.

See also: Rick Scott To Ask For More Money For Public Schools

WalletHub confirms pretty much what we all already knew: teachers across the country are overworked and vastly underpaid. This has resulted in a high turnover rate in the field.

In fact, according to a National Education Association study, a fifth of all new public school teachers bolt for a whole other career before the end of their first year. About half of new teachers that stick it out never last more than five years anyway.

More than salary, though, teachers say that being overwhelmed is one of the chief reasons for abandoning their careers for other ways of making a living.

WalletHub dug deeper, and looked at several factors, such as starting teacher salaries, average class sizes, per-student spending, wage disparity, and unemployment rates to put together their ranking of best and worst across the state.

They then provided this handy-dandy interactive map with rankings and comparisons:

According to their findings, the top 5 best states for teachers are Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Massachusetts and Virginia, with the bottom five being North Carolina, Mississippi, West Virginia, South Dakota and Hawaii.

Florida comes in ranked 44th, making it the eight worst state for Teachers.

Where the state did rank high was in the Lowest Competition bracket (or, Least Teachers per Capita), where it came in 5th just below California, Alaska, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Florida ranked among the worst when it comes to Lowest Public School Spending per Student.

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