AUSTIN (KXAN) — State lawmakers looked into concerns Tuesday about Texas schools employing more uncertified teachers. Education experts shared how the number of those without proper credentials is growing, as some school districts keep struggling to fill teaching positions.
A day after restarting the debate on private school subsidies, the Texas House of Representatives Committee on Public Education held another hearing that focused on what’s causing schools to hire unlicensed teachers and how that’s impacting student outcomes.
The most recent numbers shared by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) from the 2023-2024 school year showed 16,599 new hires in the state had no Texas certification or permit. Kelvey Oeser, the TEA’s deputy commissioner of educator and system support, told lawmakers Tuesday that’s more than a third of all the new hires. She further pointed out how uncertified teachers are less likely to stick with the profession long term compared to those who got their certification through other routes, with the average retention rate for uncertified teachers sitting at only 39% after five years.
Dr. Jacob Kirksey, a professor at Texas Tech University, discussed his research showing students taught by uncertified teachers with no classroom experience lost three months of learning in math and four months of learning in reading compared to those taught by university-certified teachers.
To better address some of these issues, Oeser also ran through a list of recommendations for lawmakers to consider next year when they reconvene for the regular legislative session.
“It will be important to address a continuum of policy solutions within recruitment, consider expanding ‘grow your own’ programs to encourage more high school students and paraprofessionals to become teachers and to get teaching certificates,” she said. “Within preparation, consider restructuring the certification framework to differentiate between higher-quality programs and lower-quality options and providing additional funding incentives to offset the higher costs of the higher-quality programs. Within novice teacher supports, consider expanding the mentor program allotment, and within compensation, consider increasing and differentiating the minimum salary schedule by certification pathway and expanding the Teacher Incentive Allotment.”
She also mentioned how higher pay could help lead to increased interest in the job and more potential teacher candidates. That’s an idea that Democrats on the panel particularly supported. State Rep. Alma Allen, who’s a former teacher from Houston, accused the state of “destroying the profession” over the years by not working to raise pay.
“Pay is important. It’s been important for many years,” Allen said Tuesday. “Nobody’s attracted to the profession anymore. Nobody’s going into the profession, and they’re leaving in droves and they don’t come back.”
State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, D-Austin, argued the state should use its $32 billion surplus to invest in teacher raises. She previously accused the state’s top Republican leaders, though, of reserving that funding to help them set up an education savings account program that would give families public dollars to help pay for their children’s private or home schooling costs.
“If we were to pay all Texas teachers a pay raise of $10,000, it would cost us about $3.8 billion a year. Take that for a biennium two years together, that’s around $8 billion,” Hinojosa explained. “We absolutely have the money. It is money that we have collected for our schools from property tax payers to pay teachers, which is the most important investment we can make in a child’s education.”
Republican State Rep. Brian Harrison of Midlothian suggested a path forward might be to look at making licensing easier.
“From my side, I want to minimize the hurdles of getting good teachers in classrooms, but I’m not saying absolutely no standard,” Harrison said from the dais Tuesday.
All the possible solutions shared during Tuesday’s hearing might appear in legislation introduced next year. The committee’s meeting essentially helps set the stage for what Texas lawmakers could discuss during the regular legislative session that begins on Jan. 14.
Two years ago, at the direction of Gov. Greg Abbott, the Texas Education Agency created a teacher vacancy task force to address staffing shortages. The task force released a report in 2023. Some of the recommendations included calling on lawmakers to increase the amount of per-pupil funding allocated to school districts in the state, which hasn’t been done since 2019, and requiring school systems to spend a larger percentage of that money on teacher compensation.