VISUALIZED AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS · MI
Michigan Public Schools
The canvas comes first: every public school district in Michigan, drawn from the federal boundary files. The data layers — enrollment change, funding, teachers, achievement — are built on top of this map, Missouri-style, in phases.
THE DISTRICT MAP
School district boundaries
Hover any district for its name. Boundaries are the 2024–25 school-year files from NCES EDGE / U.S. Census TIGER.
MAP IN PREPARATION
The Michigan district boundary file hasn’t been generated yet.
Run scripts/make_boundaries.sh to rebuild boundaries/michigan.geojson, then redeploy.
Source: NCES EDGE Composite School District Boundaries, 2024–25 (via U.S. Census TIGER/Line). Unified and elementary districts shown.
540 districts are drawn on this map — 513 unified and 27 elementary.
A note about charter schools. Charter schools enroll about 10.8% of Michigan’s public-school students, and they are not represented on this map. In Michigan most charters are authorized by public universities rather than by school districts: they operate outside the district system, are usually their own local education agency, and often enroll students across district lines. So this map describes Michigan’s geographic district system — not its whole public-school population. That distinction matters here more than in most states, and it will matter for every data layer built on top of this map.
TEACHER PAY
What Michigan pays its teachers
A first look, from the National Education Association’s 2024–25 salary benchmarks. These are Michigan statewide averages of district salary schedules; a district-by-district map is the next layer (see the note below).
$43,093
Average starting teacher salary — bachelor’s degree, no experience.
NEA 2024–25 Benchmark Report
450
of Michigan’s 539 school districts had salary data reported (83.5%).
NEA 2024–25 Benchmark Report
Source: National Education Association, 2024–2025 Teacher Salary Benchmark Report (April 2026), state tables ST-1 and ST-4. Figures are unweighted averages of district salary schedules; “starting” = bachelor’s degree with no experience, “top of schedule” = the highest step and lane. NEA reported no average top-of-schedule salary for Michigan this cycle. For reference, the national average starting salary was $48,112.
The district map is the next layer. A district-by-district salary map for Michigan is being built from federal finance data — NCES teacher counts and the U.S. Census F-33 school-finance survey — to show an
average salary per district (a derived measure, and labeled as one). Until it lands, this page carries the verified statewide figures above. For the fully built version of this theme, see the Missouri flagship’s
Teacher Pay page.