Teacher Salary in Denver — 2026 BLS Data
Salary distribution
Percentile breakdown of Teacher base salaries in Denver.
The $68,000 median base for a teacher in Denver comes from BLS OEWS May 2024 data covering the Denver-Aurora-Centennial MSA — roughly 11 percent above the $61,550 statewide Colorado median and meaningfully above the $62,340 national median for elementary teachers. The range is wide: the P25 sits at $57,000, the P90 touches $98,000. That $41,000 spread is not random noise. It reflects grade level, subject area, years of experience, education lane, and which of the roughly two dozen school districts operate within the metro. A first-year teacher at a small suburban district earns very differently from a veteran Denver Public Schools (DPS) educator at the top of the doctoral lane.
What the median conceals: the P25-to-P90 spread
The four-percentile ladder — $57K / $68K / $84K / $98K — is real, but each rung hides a structure that the BLS number alone cannot explain.
At P25 ($57,000): This is the entry and early-career range. Under the DPS collective bargaining agreement with the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA), the 2024-25 starting salary for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no prior teaching experience is $55,257. A master’s degree at entry adds roughly $2,000–$4,000 to that figure. Teachers at Steps 1–4 in the majority of suburban districts within the metro — Jefferson County, Cherry Creek, Aurora Public Schools — land in the same general band. If you’re entering the profession or switching districts and resetting on the salary schedule, P25 is where most teachers start.
At the median ($68,000): This corresponds to a teacher with roughly 8–12 years of experience and a master’s degree, or 15+ years with a bachelor’s. It’s the working center of the DPS pay scale before the upper lanes kick in. The DPS step-and-grade schedule is the dominant employer in the city proper, but the metro’s suburban districts follow similar schedules. Boulder Valley Re-2 — technically outside the Denver MSA but frequently compared to it — runs considerably higher, with an average teacher salary of roughly $99,700 in 2023-24 according to Colorado Department of Education data. Jefferson County, the second-largest district in the state and firmly within the Denver metro, tracks closer to DPS and the median BLS figure.
At P75 ($84,000): This is the experienced professional range — teachers with 15–20 years of service and graduate-level coursework, or those in positions that carry supplemental pay (department chair, instructional coach, team lead). Special education teachers with licensure in high-need categories earn premium placement on many district schedules. At DPS specifically, the 2024-25 contract allows teachers at the top of the master’s lane with 20 years of experience to approach this range.
At P90 ($98,000): The top decile belongs to veteran educators with doctoral degrees and 18–22+ years of service. Under the 2024-25 DPS contract, the ceiling of the doctoral lane at Step 20 is approximately $120,169 — meaning the true top of the DPS scale exceeds the BLS P90 for the broader metro, which averages across dozens of districts with lower maximum pay bands. P90 in the metro sense is a floor for long-tenured DPS doctoral-lane teachers, not a ceiling.
How Denver teacher salaries compare to other Colorado markets
Denver sits at the upper end of Front Range metro districts on teacher pay, but it’s not the leader.
Boulder Valley Re-2 is an outlier. The district’s 2023-24 average teacher salary was approximately $99,700 — roughly 46 percent above the Denver metro median — reflecting an aggressive schedule that has positioned Boulder as the state’s highest-paying public school district. Their starting salary is correspondingly higher.
Cherry Creek School District, within the Denver MSA, runs a schedule close to DPS with similar minimums and comparable step progression. Teachers who prioritize suburban school conditions over urban district politics often compare Cherry Creek and DPS side by side; the salary difference is narrow.
Jefferson County (Jeffco) is the state’s second-largest district and spans much of the western Denver suburbs. Its schedule has historically tracked slightly below DPS, though recent contract cycles have narrowed the gap. Jeffco’s average teacher salary in recent state data runs approximately $63,000–$68,000 depending on the year, in line with the metro-wide median.
Colorado Springs (El Paso County districts) ranges from about $57,000 to $72,000 depending on the specific district, covering the metro’s P25-to-median range without reaching DPS top-of-scale figures.
Fort Collins (Poudre Re-1): Average teacher salary around $65,000–$68,000 — comparable to Denver’s median, though Fort Collins benefits from a meaningfully lower cost of living.
The practical implication for Denver teachers considering relocation within Colorado: DPS and Cherry Creek offer the strongest combination of salary scale depth and urban benefits access. Boulder offers higher raw pay if you can secure a position there. The suburban Jefferson County, Aurora, and Douglas County districts offer competitive starting salaries with lower COL in some communities.
What drives the spread: district, grade level, and subject
Unlike most private-sector professional roles, teacher compensation in Denver (and everywhere in public education) follows salary schedules rather than individual negotiation. The spread isn’t driven by your negotiating skills at the offer stage — it’s driven by four structural factors:
Years of experience (steps). Every district uses a step schedule. Each year of verified teaching experience typically advances you one step, which is worth roughly $1,000–$2,500 per year depending on the district and your current position on the scale. At DPS, the 2025-26 contract provides for a 2.97% average increase from steps and lanes plus a flat $1,000 COLA, per the tentative agreement reached in June 2025. The cumulative effect of 20 years on steps is the single largest driver of compensation growth across a teacher’s career.
Education lane (lanes). Every additional graduate credit hour or degree moves you into a higher lane. A teacher with a bachelor’s only stays in the BA lane throughout their career. A master’s degree — or the equivalent in graduate credits, typically 45 hours past bachelor’s — shifts you to the MA lane, adding $3,000–$6,000 annually at most metro districts. A doctorate adds another $4,000–$8,000 over the master’s. Since lane advancement happens when you complete coursework, it’s one of the few levers you can actively pull to increase salary without changing employers.
Grade level and subject area. BLS OEWS data for May 2024 shows high school teachers nationally earning a median of $64,580 versus $62,340 for elementary teachers — a 3.6% premium. Within Denver, the spread is similar. Middle and high school teachers in shortage specialties — mathematics, special education, bilingual education, career and technical education (CTE) — frequently qualify for signing bonuses or premium placements on the salary schedule. DPS has at times offered $5,000–$10,000 signing incentives for hard-to-fill positions in high-need schools. Charter schools within the metro vary widely; some pay above the DPS schedule, others significantly below.
District of employment. Which of the metro’s two dozen-plus districts you work for matters more than any other single variable at the early-career stage. DPS is the largest, has the strongest union contract, and offers the widest range of schools and student populations. Jefferson County and Cherry Creek offer more predictable suburban conditions. Smaller districts (Englewood, Sheridan, Westminster) have smaller pay scales with lower ceilings, which matters for long-tenured teachers far more than for those starting out.
Total compensation: base, benefits, and PERA
BLS OEWS captures base salary only. For Denver teachers, the full picture includes components that substantially change the value of the package.
Base salary: $68,000. This is the working median for a mid-career teacher in the Denver metro. It reflects Steps 8–12 on a mid-range district schedule with a master’s degree, or Steps 15–18 with a bachelor’s.
Supplemental pay: ~$1,500. Supplemental pay at DPS covers assignments like department chair, instructional coach stipend, extracurricular sponsorship, or coaching. Not every teacher receives supplemental pay; for those who do, it typically adds $500–$5,000 annually. The $1,500 figure here represents a rough population-weighted average, because roughly half of DPS teachers hold at least one supplemental assignment.
PERA pension (employer contribution): ~$10,600 annualized equivalent. This is the largest non-salary benefit and the most underappreciated. Colorado’s Public Employees’ Retirement Association (PERA) is a defined-benefit pension. Teachers contribute 8% of their salary; their employer (the district) contributes approximately 15.65% of payroll to PERA on their behalf. At a $68,000 base, the employer’s PERA contribution is roughly $10,640 per year — essentially invisible to the teacher at hire but a substantial employer cost. For a 25-year career teacher, a PERA benefit can provide lifetime monthly income that would require a private-sector worker to accumulate $800,000–$1,200,000 in a 401(k) to replicate.
Health insurance: DPS and most Colorado school districts cover a meaningful portion of health premiums. DPS covers 100% of individual health coverage for teachers under the base plan; family coverage requires employee contributions. The district’s health benefit alone is worth $8,000–$12,000 annually in employer-paid premiums.
Summer schedule: The 10-month contract structure is real income flexibility for some teachers — it allows for summer employment, curriculum work, or family schedule alignment. It is not additional cash, but it’s a structurally different work arrangement than most full-year professional roles.
All-in, a mid-career DPS teacher at the $68,000 base earns closer to $90,000–$95,000 in total employer-paid compensation (base + PERA + health + supplemental), though most of that “back-loaded” value in PERA only materializes as income at retirement.
Cost-of-living adjusted view
Denver’s COL index of approximately 111 (based on C2ER composite data, where the US average equals 100) means everyday goods, housing, and services cost about 11% more than the national average. The main pressure point is housing: the median home price in Denver is approximately $580,000 as of 2025, and a one-bedroom apartment averages around $2,100/month.
On a COL-adjusted basis, Denver’s $68,000 teacher median has roughly the same purchasing power as $61,250 in a US-average-cost city. Flipped: to match Denver’s purchasing power in a 111-index city, a teacher in a lower-cost market like Columbus, Ohio (COL index ~95) would need only about $58,000. That’s one reason Colorado teacher pay looks strong in raw numbers but teachers still report housing affordability stress — the salary premium over the national median (+$5,660) doesn’t fully cover Denver’s cost-of-living premium.
Fort Collins provides a useful comparison: nearly identical teacher salaries to Denver (average around $65,000–$68,000) but with a meaningfully lower COL index near 103. A Fort Collins teacher at $66,000 is, on a purchasing-power basis, equivalent to a Denver teacher making roughly $71,000. That cost-of-living argument is one reason some teachers choose suburban or exurban districts over DPS despite the lower maximum pay scale.
Three-lever negotiation playbook for Denver teachers
Teacher compensation is more constrained than private-sector negotiation, but there are three specific levers that can meaningfully move your career trajectory.
1. Negotiate step placement when you’re hired. Every district has discretion about which step to place an incoming teacher on, based on verified prior teaching experience. If you have 5 years of out-of-state teaching experience, a district may place you at Step 4 (one year’s experience uncounted) rather than Step 5 — that’s a $1,500–$3,000 annual difference compounding for the rest of your career at that district. Push for full credit placement with documentation. Colorado requires districts to verify experience before denying credit, but the burden is often on the teacher to submit proper paperwork from former employers. This is the highest-ROI negotiation you’ll do.
2. Advance your education lane before you accept the offer — or in year one. If you’re 6 credit hours from the MA+30 lane and can complete a summer course before the hire date or early in your first year, the lane advancement is permanent and worth $2,000–$4,000 annually. At a 20-year career trajectory, that’s $40,000–$80,000 in additional earnings. Many new teachers delay graduate coursework because it’s expensive and time-consuming — but the return on investment for lane advancement at a Colorado school district is usually 3:1 or better over a full career.
3. Target districts with the deepest salary scales, not the highest starting salary. It’s tempting to optimize for the highest year-one salary, but the top-of-scale ceiling matters more for long-run earnings. DPS’s doctoral lane Step 20 ceiling ($120,169 in 2024-25) is meaningfully higher than most suburban districts. If you plan to stay in K-12 education for 20+ years and complete graduate work, a district with a higher ceiling will outperform a district with a modestly higher starting salary by $30,000–$60,000 over the back half of your career. The flip side: if you’re unsure about long-term teaching and may leave in under 10 years, starting salary matters more, because you won’t reach the point where scale depth compounds.
Data caveats
BLS OEWS is the most rigorous public salary database — statistically sampled employer surveys covering millions of workers — but it has specific limitations for teachers.
The SOC codes separate out kindergarten and elementary (25-2021), middle school (25-2031), and high school teachers (25-2051), and the BLS publishes separate medians for each. The Denver metro medians used here reflect the weighted average across those categories, consistent with how the $68,000 figure emerged from cross-referencing BLS metro estimates, Colorado CDLE OEWS press releases, and DPS contract data. National BLS May 2024 data puts the elementary median at $62,340 and high school at $64,580; Denver runs meaningfully above both.
The BLS figure excludes PERA pension contributions, health insurance premiums, and supplemental stipends — all of which are real employer costs and real employee benefits. When comparing teacher compensation to private-sector roles, the omission of PERA pension value significantly understates the total package.
Finally, the data reflects May 2024 survey conditions. The DPS tentative agreement of June 2025 (covering 2025-26) increases starting salary to $57,666 and raises the doctoral-lane ceiling to $124,233. The P25-to-P90 figures above are likely to shift upward by 3–5% when BLS OEWS May 2025 data is released for the Denver metro, expected in late 2026.
For anyone tracking a Denver teaching job search — comparing offer letters, monitoring open positions across Cherry Creek, DPS, Jeffco, and Aurora districts, or timing your lane advancement against open posting cycles — managing those applications in one place pays off at negotiation time, when you need to know exactly where every offer stands against the market.