Every spring, the National Education Association publishes “Rankings and Estimates,” an annual publication whose centerpiece is a ranking of average teacher salaries by state. For decades, it has inspired ominous headlines in every media market in America, warning that public schools in states that don’t pour money into teacher salaries are doomed. Don’t waste your time reading it. 

One notable feature of the report is that NEA researchers offer few details about how they arrive at their figures. This is a clear violation of basic professional standards in education research. The American Educational Research Association Code of Ethics directs researchers in the field to “permit the open assessment of data and other relevant materials and verification of findings” once findings are publicly disseminated.