Full-time public school teachers reported working an average of 52.0 hours during a typical full week in the 2020-21 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Their contracts required 38.4 hours. That leaves 13.6 hours a week (52.0 minus 38.4) beyond what the contract spells out.
The figures come from the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), a federal survey of teachers in public and private schools. Its 2020-21 round is the latest with published hours data, and it was collected during the pandemic school year. The 52-hour total counts time during the school day, before and after school, and on weekends.
Teaching itself fills about half of that week. Of their contracted hours, public school teachers spent 25.2 hours delivering instruction to students, NCES reported. That figure leaves out planning, lunch, recess, arrival and dismissal, and any other time a teacher isn't instructing. So 25.2 of 52.0 hours, or about 48%, went to instruction, and the other 26.8 hours covered everything else the job requires.
Those teaching hours are spread across a lot of students. Public schools that reported both figures counted 47.7 million students and about 3.1 million full-time-equivalent teachers in 2024-25, or 15.2 students per teacher, according to allk12's analysis of NCES data. That ratio divides all students by all teachers, so it isn't the same as class size. State numbers are in our student-teacher ratios by state.
Newer surveys land in the same range. The RAND Corporation's State of the American Teacher survey reached 829 K-12 public school teachers from late January to late February 2026. Teachers reported about 50 hours a week of teaching and school-related work, plus an average of 4 hours at jobs outside their school systems. About 30% held an outside job, and those teachers spent about 13 hours a week on it.
RAND set aside answers from about a quarter of respondents in 2026 whose total hours came in below their contract hours, because their answers suggested they had misread the question. In RAND's 2025 survey, teachers reported 49 hours a week, which the authors said was ten hours more than the average number of hours teachers were contracted to work. Hours are also a source of strain: 32% of teachers in 2026 ranked spending too many hours working as one of their top three job stressors, up from 27% in 2025.
RAND has also compared teachers with other workers. In its 2024 survey, teachers reported working 53 hours a week, compared with 44 for comparable working adults, a gap of nine hours.
International data show a similar pattern. In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Teaching and Learning International Survey, known as TALIS, full-time U.S. lower-secondary teachers reported 45.3 working hours in their most recent complete week of 2024. Lower secondary is the international term for the middle grades. The average across 27 OECD systems with data was 41.0 hours. U.S. teachers spent 28.1 of their hours teaching, compared with 22.7 for the OECD average. Among all the education systems in the survey, only teachers in Costa Rica, Chile, and Brazil reported more weekly teaching time.
| Weekly hours, 2024 | United States | OECD average |
|---|---|---|
| Total working hours | 45.3 | 41.0 |
| Teaching | 28.1 | 22.7 |
| Planning or preparing lessons | 7.2 | 7.4 |
| Marking student work | 4.6 | 4.6 |
| Counseling students | 3.6 | 2.6 |
| Extracurricular activities | 3.3 | 1.7 |
| General administrative work | 2.9 | 3.0 |
Source: OECD, TALIS 2024 Database, Table 3.10. Full-time lower-secondary teachers, most recent complete calendar week. OECD average covers 27 systems. Teachers were asked about each task separately, so task hours don't add up to the total.
TALIS asks about a single recent week and covers only lower-secondary teachers, so its numbers aren't directly comparable with the NTPS totals.
Teacher hours by state
NCES also published the 2020-21 numbers by state. Total weekly hours ranged from 48.2 in Rhode Island to 54.7 in Texas. Teachers in every state reported at least 12 hours a week beyond their contract. The gap was smallest in Montana, at 12.2 hours, and largest in Maryland, at 15.6 hours.
Contract hours vary too. Texas teachers were required to work 40.5 hours a week, the most of any state, while Rhode Island contracts called for 34.9. These are survey estimates, so differences of a few tenths of an hour between states may not be meaningful.
| State | Total hours | Contract hours | Hours beyond contract | Hours delivering instruction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 52.0 | 38.4 | 13.6 | 25.2 |
| Texas | 54.7 | 40.5 | 14.2 | 26.9 |
| District of Columbia | 54.3 | 39.8 | 14.5 | 23.8 |
| Georgia | 53.7 | 40.1 | 13.6 | 25.2 |
| North Carolina | 53.5 | 39.6 | 13.9 | 24.2 |
| Colorado | 53.4 | 39.2 | 14.2 | 24.2 |
| Kansas | 53.4 | 39.6 | 13.8 | 26.7 |
| Delaware | 53.3 | 38.9 | 14.4 | 24.4 |
| Iowa | 53.2 | 39.8 | 13.4 | 26.6 |
| Mississippi | 53.2 | 40.0 | 13.2 | 26.8 |
| Nebraska | 53.1 | 39.8 | 13.3 | 27.2 |
| Arizona | 52.9 | 39.3 | 13.6 | 26.2 |
| Maryland | 52.9 | 37.3 | 15.6 | 23.1 |
| Wisconsin | 52.9 | 39.8 | 13.1 | 25.4 |
| Louisiana | 52.8 | 39.1 | 13.7 | 27.0 |
| Arkansas | 52.7 | 39.4 | 13.3 | 26.3 |
| South Carolina | 52.7 | 39.6 | 13.1 | 24.2 |
| Alabama | 52.6 | 39.1 | 13.5 | 27.7 |
| Oregon | 52.4 | 39.6 | 12.8 | 22.6 |
| Missouri | 52.3 | 38.7 | 13.6 | 26.0 |
| West Virginia | 52.3 | 39.3 | 13.0 | 25.8 |
| Wyoming | 52.3 | 39.4 | 12.9 | 26.5 |
| South Dakota | 52.2 | 39.7 | 12.5 | 26.4 |
| Tennessee | 52.1 | 38.8 | 13.3 | 24.7 |
| Alaska | 52.0 | 38.2 | 13.8 | 25.2 |
| Kentucky | 52.0 | 38.8 | 13.2 | 26.8 |
| North Dakota | 52.0 | 39.4 | 12.6 | 25.9 |
| Virginia | 52.0 | 38.2 | 13.8 | 23.6 |
| Florida | 51.7 | 38.5 | 13.2 | 26.5 |
| Hawaii | 51.7 | 36.9 | 14.8 | 24.9 |
| Illinois | 51.7 | 37.7 | 14.0 | 24.8 |
| Michigan | 51.7 | 37.5 | 14.2 | 26.7 |
| Minnesota | 51.7 | 39.2 | 12.5 | 25.0 |
| Utah | 51.6 | 39.0 | 12.6 | 25.3 |
| Indiana | 51.5 | 38.3 | 13.2 | 26.2 |
| New Mexico | 51.5 | 37.2 | 14.3 | 26.0 |
| Idaho | 51.4 | 38.7 | 12.7 | 25.4 |
| California | 51.3 | 36.8 | 14.5 | 24.6 |
| Vermont | 51.3 | 38.5 | 12.8 | 24.2 |
| Ohio | 51.2 | 38.1 | 13.1 | 25.5 |
| Nevada | 51.1 | 37.2 | 13.9 | 25.1 |
| Pennsylvania | 51.1 | 38.1 | 13.0 | 24.8 |
| Montana | 50.9 | 38.7 | 12.2 | 25.6 |
| Oklahoma | 50.9 | 38.5 | 12.4 | 25.0 |
| New Hampshire | 50.4 | 36.9 | 13.5 | 22.6 |
| Connecticut | 50.3 | 36.7 | 13.6 | 23.5 |
| New Jersey | 50.3 | 36.3 | 14.0 | 23.9 |
| Washington | 50.3 | 37.9 | 12.4 | 24.2 |
| Massachusetts | 49.9 | 35.8 | 14.1 | 24.2 |
| New York | 49.7 | 36.1 | 13.6 | 23.1 |
| Maine | 49.6 | 36.9 | 12.7 | 22.7 |
| Rhode Island | 48.2 | 34.9 | 13.3 | 24.7 |
Source: NCES, National Teacher and Principal Survey, 2020-21. Regular full-time public school teachers, typical full week. Hours beyond contract is total hours minus contract hours. Sorted by total hours.
Contract days, summer work, and pay
Those weekly numbers cover the school year. Teachers in 148 large districts tracked by the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) are contracted for an average of 191 days a year, counting days with and without students, according to a March 2025 analysis. Tulsa and Anchorage had the shortest contract years at 180 days, and districts in North Carolina required 215. NCTQ found most teachers in its sample are contracted for 7.5 to 8 hours a day.
Students get fewer days. In 2023-24 calendars, NCTQ found the average district in its sample held 177 days of school, and 180 days was the most common length. The most common state minimum is also 180 days. Our post on how long a school year is covers the rules by state.
Rough math puts the two sources together. A 191-day contract is about 38 weeks of work (191 divided by 5 is 38.2). At 52 hours a week, that comes to about 1,990 hours a year (38.2 times 52), before any summer work. A 40-hour job with two weeks off works out to 2,000 hours.
Summer isn't fully off for many teachers. In 2020-21, 17.1% of full-time public school teachers had a supplemental school-system contract during the summer, which includes teaching summer sessions, and earned an average of $2,840 from it, according to NCES. Some 16.1% worked a nonschool job over the summer, averaging $3,550. During the school year, 16.8% held a job outside the school system, averaging $6,090.
Full-time public school teachers averaged a base salary of $61,600 in 2020-21, NCES reported, and $65,400 in total earned income from school and nonschool sources. State-by-state pay is in our look at the states with the best teacher pay.
RAND's newer survey puts base pay higher. Teachers in its 2026 survey reported an average base salary of $75,599, about $6,300 a month spread across 12 months. Similar working adults, whom RAND defines as ages 18 to 65 with at least a bachelor's degree and working at least 35 hours a week, reported average base salaries of slightly more than $105,000.
Sources
NCES: Average weekly hours for teachers, 2020-21 (NTPS)
NCES: Average weekly hours for teachers by state, 2020-21 (NTPS)
NCES: Digest of Education Statistics, Table 211.10, teacher income sources, 2020-21
RAND: Teacher Well-Being, Pay, and Intentions to Leave in 2026
RAND: Teacher Well-Being, Pay, and Intentions to Leave in 2025
RAND: Teacher Well-Being and Intentions to Leave in 2024
OECD: Results from TALIS 2024, Chapter 3 data tables
NCTQ: Every minute counts: How districts govern teacher time
NCTQ: How long is your school year? It depends a lot on where you live
Student and teacher counts from allk12's analysis of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data, 2024-25.
