In 2018-19, public schools in the United States employed a full-time equivalent of nearly 3.2 million teachers, according to figures from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Even though it has fewer students than California, Texas has nearly 68,000 more teachers. That’s because the pupil-teacher ratio in California is much higher—23.08 students per teacher compared with 15.11 in Texas.
Here are the 10 states with most public school teachers (FTE) in 2018-19:
State Teachers Pupil-teacher ratio
Texas 359,575 15.11
California 271,805 23.08
New York 212,156 12.73
Florida 164,398 17.31
Illinois 132,423 14.97
Pennsylvania 123,350 14.03
Georgia 117,159 15.08
New Jersey 116,188 12.05
Ohio 101,739 16.67
North Carolina 100,220 15.49
