TEACHER WORKFORCE
The people in front of the classroom
Teacher experience shapes everything else in a school. These maps track how the experience of Missouri’s teaching workforce has shifted by district since 1991. For salaries, see the Teacher Pay page; for every view at once, the full explorer.
CHANGE SINCE 1991
Teacher experience change, 1991–2025
How the average experience of each district’s teachers has changed over three decades — a proxy for turnover, growth, and the pull of retirement waves.
Change in average years of teacher experience by district, 1991–2025.
~9%
of Missouri public-school courses taught by non-certified teachers
2024 · Missouri DESE
~2,000
non-certified teachers statewide, up from the prior year
2024 · Missouri DESE
1991–2025
span of teacher-experience change mapped in this workbook
MSU · Tableau Public
PICK YOUR BASELINE
Experience change from any starting year
Choose a baseline year on the map and the shading recalculates the change in teacher experience from that year to 2025 — a way to see how recent hiring and retirement have reshaped each district’s staff.
Use the Baseline Year control on the map to change the comparison year.
ADVANCED DEGREES
Where teachers hold a master’s degree
The share of each district’s teachers holding a master’s degree or higher. This is partly about who a district can attract — and partly about what it can afford, since nearly every Missouri salary schedule pays more for an advanced degree. The statewide median district sits at 45.9%.
Share of teachers holding a master’s degree or higher, by district, 2025 (Missouri DESE District Faculty Information). Blue = above the statewide median of 45.9%; red = below.
The gap is geographic, and it is large. The median suburban district has
69% of its teachers holding an advanced degree. The median rural district has
42%. Cities sit at 55%, towns at 52%. At the extremes, Clayton reaches 97% and Valley Park 95%, while a handful of small rural districts — Ridgeway R-V, Risco R-II, Cooter R-IV — report none at all. Read this map next to the
Teacher Pay maps: districts that can pay for advanced degrees tend to have them, which is one of the quieter ways that local wealth converts into classroom staffing.