Failing Grade: Maine is one of the Worst States for Teachers

Well, here's a study that Maine should definitely not write home about. Apparently, the state continues to be a brutal mess for teachers.

Wallethub.com, a personal finance website, recently published a report of the best and worst states for teachers. Maine ultimately can be found near the bottom of the list.

Maine came in as the 4th worst state for teachers in Wallethub's annual report. That's not exactly making the grade. It's also a decline from 2022, when the state was listed as the 8th worse. I guess things aren't looking up.

Maine finished with a score of 36.72 on the survey's 100-point scale. The scoring falls under two major categories, Opportunity & Competition and Academic & Work Environment. These two were broken down to 24 subcategories to further aide with detail and accuracy. You can read about the methodology here.

Maine actually had a very respectable score in the academic & work environment, coming in with a 15th ranking. That's just a slight drop from 2022 ranking of 13th.

However, its ultimate downfall was the near dead last ranking of 50th for opportunity and competition. One of the major reasons for this is Maine's incredibly ridiculous cost of living issues. In this case, Wallethub found that only Hawaii and Colorado have worse cost of living for teachers. It also seems like an issue that will only continue to worsen. Anyone in the housing market certainly knows what I'm talking about.

Thankfully, there is some good news with academics and specifically work environment. Maine finished strongly in student-to-teacher ratio, only scoring behind Vermont. I guess it's good to live in a relatively remote state.

According to Wallethub, the top state for teachers is Virginia. The Old Dominion rolled in with a 60.56. The rest of the top 5 include New York, Utah, Washington, and Florida. New England only had one state in the Top-10, with Massachusetts finishing in 7th.

The worst state listed is New Hampshire. What happened there?

You can see the full list of states here.