---
title: "Education Administrator, Kindergarten through Secondary"
description: "Plan, direct, or coordinate the academic, administrative, or auxiliary activities of kindergarten, elementary, or secondary schools."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/education-administrator-kindergarten-through-secondary"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Education Administrator, Kindergarten through Secondary

**Category:** Management · **SOC code:** 11-9032 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 11-9032.00

Plan, direct, or coordinate the academic, administrative, or auxiliary activities of kindergarten, elementary, or secondary schools.

Also advertised as: Athletic Director; Curriculum and Instruction Superintendent; Elementary Principal; High School Principal (HS Principal); Middle School Principal (MS Principal); Principal; School Administrator (School Admin); SPED Director (Special Education Director).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $105,870 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** Not published by BLS
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $76,280 to $167,770, with the middle half between $86,040 and $134,630
- **Total US employment:** 328,330
- **Typical entry education:** Master's
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -1.5% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 20,800 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 54/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 328,330 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $76,280 |
| 25th | $86,040 |
| 50th (median) | $105,870 |
| 75th | $134,630 |
| 90th | $167,770 |
| Mean (average) | $116,100 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| WA | $166,590 | $155,673 | 6,470 |
| CA | $159,950 | $144,464 | 31,370 |
| CT | $156,240 | $150,796 | 4,610 |
| NY | $138,830 | $128,640 | 19,210 |
| DC | $137,470 | $125,085 | 1,930 |
| NJ | $137,440 | $126,318 | 11,450 |
| DE | $132,710 | $132,965 | 1,100 |
| MD | $131,510 | $125,297 | 7,200 |
| OR | $130,050 | $125,821 | 4,160 |
| UT | $128,880 | $130,361 | 2,940 |
| MA | $128,430 | $121,439 | 10,570 |
| MN | $127,000 | $128,776 | 4,120 |
| HI | $126,760 | $115,288 | 1,910 |
| AK | $125,520 | $122,627 | 890 |
| RI | $119,980 | $117,305 | 1,160 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/education-administrator-kindergarten-through-secondary/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/education-administrator-kindergarten-through-secondary.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 333,300 in the 2024–2034 base year to 328,100 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 5,100 jobs, or -1.5%. Declining: -1.5% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 20,800 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Master's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** 5 years or more.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Master's Degree | 60.7% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 23.7% |
| Post-Master's Certificate | 15.6% |

## What the work involves

- Set educational standards and goals, and help establish policies and procedures to carry them out.
- Plan and lead professional development activities for teachers, administrators, and support staff.
- Confer with parents and staff to discuss educational activities, policies, and student behavior or learning problems.
- Collaborate with teachers to develop and maintain curriculum standards, develop mission statements, and set performance goals and objectives.
- Direct and coordinate activities of teachers, administrators, and support staff at schools, public agencies, and institutions.
- Observe teaching methods and examine learning materials to evaluate and standardize curricula and teaching techniques and to determine areas for improvement.
- Evaluate curricula, teaching methods, and programs to determine their effectiveness, efficiency, and use, and to ensure compliance with federal, state, and local regulations.
- Recruit, hire, train, and evaluate primary and supplemental staff.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Education and Training — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Enterprising (E), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 5.72 |
| E — Enterprising | 5.34 |
| C — Conventional | 4.68 |
| I — Investigative | 3.06 |
| A — Artistic | 2.84 |
| R — Realistic | 1.31 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFJ | 78.1 |
| ENFJ | 76.7 |
| ESFP | 69.3 |
| ENFP | 60.3 |
| ESTJ | 60.1 |

Best-fitting types: ESFJ, ENFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Education and Childcare Administrator, Preschool and Daycare](https://nuecareer.com/careers/education-and-childcare-administrator-preschool-and-daycare) — median $59,300
- [Elementary School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/elementary-school-teacher) — median $63,970
- [Special Education Teacher, Secondary School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-secondary-school) — median $74,260
- [Education Administrator, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/education-administrator-postsecondary) — median $104,590
- [Instructional Coordinator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/instructional-coordinator) — median $77,440
- [Special Education Teacher, Elementary School](https://nuecareer.com/careers/special-education-teacher-elementary-school) — median $67,170
- [High School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/high-school-teacher) — median $72,040
- [Education Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/education-teacher-postsecondary) — median $75,350
- [Middle School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/middle-school-teacher) — median $64,370
- [Training and Development Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/training-and-development-manager) — median $133,000

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/education-administrator-kindergarten-through-secondary