When Jacob Kirksey began studying the ways Texas trains teachers, he came to see the state as the Wild West.
“It’s the most deregulated teacher preparation landscape in the country by far,” Kirksey, an education policy professor at Texas Tech University, told The Dallas Morning News in 2022.
But over the past several months, he’s watched as state lawmakers pumped oxygen into the issue. A school funding bill, signed Wednesday by Gov. Greg Abbott, represents a “monumental” investment in fixing Texas’ teacher pipeline, he said.
“After this legislation, you can officially say that we don’t have the most deregulated landscape anymore,” Kirksey said. “We patched up just a ton of holes with one big, sweeping piece of legislation that is grounded in research.”
House Bill 2 funnels roughly $8.5 billion into several buckets intended to boost public schools. About half the pot is going toward teacher recruitment and retention.
Doing so could help reverse years of troubling trends: Since the pandemic, the number of uncertified teachers working in Texas classrooms has exploded, and the rate of educators leaving the profession has crept up. State legislators repeatedly said this data is evidence of a crisis.
Lawmakers acknowledged some of these problems are of their own making, in part because they built a system in which districts could hire teachers without proving they’d had robust training.
“The state recognizes that they created a problem and now they are doing a huge part of fixing it,” Kirksey said.
The bill will send about $4.2 billion toward teacher pay raises, with the amount of the salary bump contingent on experience and district size.
It will also devote about $135 million toward teacher preparation and certification programs, with a mandate that districts phase out the employment of uncertified teachers for core classes by 2030.
“Do I think that long-term we would need more if we want to really invest in all of our aspiring teachers across the entire state? Absolutely,” said Stacey Edmonson, dean of the College of Education at Sam Houston State University. “But considering we really have not had any investment in of actual dollars before now, I think it’s a really strong start.”
Money will flow toward funding “teacher residency” programs as well as incentivizing educators to earn their certifications and go through specialized literacy training once on the job.
It requires school districts differentiate teacher pay based on training, so a beginner teacher with a certification must earn more than one who is uncertified.
“We won’t get into a situation where a well-trained, highly prepared teacher enters school in their first year and is making the identical salary of an uncertified teacher,” Kirksey said.
Randy Willis, executive director of the Texas Association of Rural Schools, sees a lot to be thankful for in the massive funding package. But he is concerned the Legislature didn’t address beginner teacher salaries with the same targeted approach as for experienced educators.
“We’re extremely grateful, but there’s still some holes we’re going to need to address,” Willis said.
Teacher pathways
The majority of Texas’ new teachers aren’t going into the classroom directly after graduating from college with an education degree. Many find their way to campuses through alternative certification programs that recruit people in search of a second career and train them through primarily online coursework.
More teachers also are entering with no certification at all. This means the state has no way to know what level of training — if any — they had before taking on a classroom.
Roughly 12% of the state’s teachers have not earned a certification, according to Texas Education Agency data.
During the 2019-20 school year, less than 4% of teachers lacked a state certificate.
The sharp increase was driven by loose Texas regulations and the widespread hiring of first-time educators without previous classroom experience. More than half of brand-new educators last year lacked a state certification.
For a long time, uncertified teachers were tapped to lead career and technical education classes in high schools. Principals would hire people who lacked certification but brought real-world experience to teach students skills such as plumbing, culinary arts and graphic design.
In recent years, though, some district officials desperate to fill vacancies hired more uncertified teachers to teach core classes, including in the formative elementary grades.
Students with new, uncertified teachers lost the equivalent of about four months of learning in reading and three months in math, according to research by Texas Tech’s Kirksey.
That research helped spark change in the Snyder Independent School District.
“When you hear the impact, the negative effect that has is way worse than the benefit of putting an uncertified teacher in front of a student just to have a warm body,” Assistant Superintendent Jessica Gore said.
Over the past few years, the small rural district built up professional development to help educators earn their certifications — and created financial consequences for those who don’t. Leaders there believe the investment from HB 2 will help advance this work.
Last school year, about a quarter of Dallas Independent School District’s new hires were uncertified, according to state data. Those roughly 200 teachers represent a small percentage of the district’s overall workforce. When DISD hires people without certification, officials say, they receive additional training as well as from a mentor teacher.
In rural school districts, hiring uncertified teachers has become more pervasive than in urban and suburban areas.
Willis said that’s because rural school salaries are not as competitive and the districts are drawing from a smaller applicant pool.
HB 2 rewards educators with experience. Teachers with three or four years of experience in school districts with more than 5,000 students will see their pay jump $2,500, while teachers with five or more years of experience will see their pay increase $5,000.
Those raises nearly double for small districts with fewer than 5,000 students, an acknowledgement that rural schools pay less.
Willis said experience-based raises fail to address the biggest problem: Starting salaries.
“If you want to know why we can’t recruit and we have to hire uncertified teachers, it’s because we don’t offer enough for people to come here,” he said of rural schools.
Willis used to run Granger ISD, a district of less than 600 students. The starting salary there was roughly $47,500 last year. In DISD, meanwhile, it was nearly $15,000 higher.
A lower cost of living in rural areas doesn’t totally erase that gap, Willis said.
“Do you think a car in Alpine, Texas, costs any more or less than a car in Dallas, Texas?” he said.
Willis isn’t sure whether all rural districts will be able to phase out the employment of uncertified teachers in core courses by 2030. It will be a challenge, he said.
“A lot of times things look really good on paper and when you’re sitting there in hearing rooms,” he said. “But then when you get to the application of the policy with school districts that are already strapped with personnel issues and finance issues, that’s where the rubber meets the road.”
Willis said rural superintendents and principals spend months recruiting and exhausting every avenue to hire qualified teachers for their students.
What do they need from the state now? “A pool of teachers for us to pull from,” he said.
Sarah Beal, director of the US PREP National Center, said the new law provides school leaders both a sense of urgency and meaningful .
“It gives districts time to create strong transition plans,” she said.
Teacher preparation
Over the past several decades, universities have seen a drop in students who come to college to pursue a teaching career.
HB 2 requires state officials to give information to districts on programs that encourage high school students to become teachers, including through apprenticeships.
It also provides money for rigorous educator training, including through residency programs. This research-backed model gives teacher candidates real-world experience via a paid, yearlong clinical period in a public school classroom — similar to the style in which doctors are trained.
Kenedi Barbre spent a residency year at DISD’s Maple Lawn Elementary. She said she couldn’t imagine taking over a classroom of her own without that kind of training.
“It would be so incredibly overwhelming,” she said. But after months of observing her mentor teacher and practicing under her supervision, Barbre said she now feels ready to solo teach.
Research has shown that residency models can increase educator retention and effectiveness, with proponents calling it the “gold standard” of teacher preparation.
But building up teacher residencies can be both expensive and intensive. When the University of Texas at Austin was gearing up to launch its program, officials said it was challenging to find district partners with enough money to cover the teacher residents’ salary.
In its inaugural year, the program will place 14 teacher residents at nearby campuses, where they will earn between $15,000 and $20,000.
Edmonson, with Sam Houston, said the residency model can be scalable with the proper investment.
“Is it easy? No,” she said. “But is it doable? Yes.”
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron and Phyllis Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.