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Over the last two years, Texas’ public education system has been through the wringer, from shifting to online classes and debates about making masks mandatory to the ongoing tensions over how race and sex should be taught in schools to, most recently, the renewed discussion over school safety in the aftermath of the mass shooting in Uvalde where 19 elementary school students and two teachers were killed.
Teachers have been at the front lines of all of these issues — and it’s taken a toll on them. Texas has long had a teacher shortage, but the consensus is that the pandemic has made it worse, pushing teachers to their limits and out of the job.
Issues like receiving low pay, being overworked, having bad benefits, worrying about their health during COVID-19 and being caught in the middle of Texas’ culture wars have had a negative effect on the workforce.
To top it all off, Texas ranks as one of the worst states for teacher retirement. Retired Texas teachers have not received a cost-of-living raise since 2004, and it’s getting worse as inflation rises.
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Rural Texas districts struggling to attract teachers are switching to four-day school weeks
The combined effect of all of the above is that educators are leaving the field in droves. Most of them are new, early-career teachers.
So what exactly does the teacher shortage mean for Texas? How does the state estimate the optimal number of teachers needed, and how does the shortage affect the public education system? And what is being done to fix it?
Here’s what you need to know about the state’s teacher shortage.
What does the teacher shortage in Texas look like?
The Texas Education Agency says there is no statewide definition for what constitutes a teacher shortage, but its acknowledgement that teacher vacancies are hard to fill statewide points to one.
The agency collects data every year about how many teachers get certified, how many are employed and how many leave their jobs.
A major indicator that points to a shortage now is the state’s attrition rate, which tracks the number of teachers who have left the field in any given year. The rate suggests that retaining teachers has become difficult and schools are having to refill positions on a yearly basis.
“We have a lot more teachers leaving the profession, which is creating a lot of additional vacancies,” said Kelvey Oeser, TEA’s deputy commissioner of educator and system support.
Since the 2011-12 school year, Texas’ attrition rate has hovered around 10%. That number dipped to about 9% during the 2020-21 school year but is going back up — rising to almost 12% during the 2021-22 school year.
“We saw teacher attrition go up,” Oeser said. “What we don’t know is [if] it’s going to level out again, or are we going to see it continue to go up?”
Teacher retirement is up as well. About 8,600 teachers retired in fiscal year 2021, an increase of about 1,000 teachers from the previous year. The data for 2022 is not yet available, so it remains to be seen if teacher retirements will level off. Texas has been averaging about 7,500 retired teachers since the 2018 fiscal year.
For the 2021-22 school year, Texas employed 370,431 teachers — the most it has ever had. The state certified almost 26,000 new teachers in 2020-21.
But not everyone who is getting certified ends up going into teaching, TEA data shows. And while Texas is producing teachers, Oeser said it is also losing them at a high rate. Schools are struggling with open positions that they have to fill year after year.
Oeser also said most of Texas’ educators get certified through alternative programs and are more likely to leave than teachers who went to more traditional four-year schools.
In Texas, people who want to become teachers but did not get a degree in education can do so in about a year through the state’s alternative certification program. They are placed in a classroom under an intern certificate before getting fully certified as a teacher.
It is unclear why teachers who become certified through alternative programs leave the profession at higher rates — some have speculated they do not receive the same amount of support as educators who go through four-year programs — but during a State Board of Education meeting on June 15, TEA data showed that “if teachers prepared in alternative certification programs were retained at the same rate as teachers prepared in traditional programs, over 3,700 fewer new teachers would have been needed last year.”
“We are really thinking about how we improve the preparation of our new teachers so that those new teachers are more likely to stay and we will have fewer new teachers that we need to replace year over year,” Oeser said.
Why are teachers leaving?
Over the last year, The Texas Tribune has spoken to several teachers and reported about why they’ve decided to leave the profession.
The main themes are health and safety concerns during the pandemic and being overworked and underpaid. For some, the pandemic and Texas’ ensuing culture wars were the breaking point.
In a Charles Butt Foundation poll of 919 Texas teachers last year, 68% said they seriously considered leaving the profession in 2021, an increase of 10 percentage points compared with the year before.
In the same poll, teachers said they felt undervalued and underpaid. The average pay for teachers did not increase between 2010 and 2019; instead, it decreased from $55,433 to $54,192, according to a University of Houston report released this year.
In 2019, Texas lawmakers mandated raises for teachers in a $11.6 billion overhaul of public school finance. The bill also included a merit raise system aimed at helping rural and high-need school districts attract talent. In rare cases, the program rewards Texas’ highest-rated educators with hefty pay raises that could balloon to six-figure salaries.
In February, a Texas American Federation of Teachers survey of 3,800 of its members found that 66% of educators throughout Texas said they have recently considered leaving their jobs.
“Teachers have been working through this pandemic for like a year and a half, had to make the switch to virtual and then come back [in person],” Oeser said. “It was a really difficult time and the economy heated up, so there’s a lot of additional opportunities outside of teaching that were options for folks.”
Gordon Mock, a former teacher, left the profession after just two years on the job. He taught elementary in the Spring Independent School District, near Houston, until 2018. He thought teaching was his dream job.
But he was disillusioned. He left because of big and unwieldy class sizes, high insurance costs for his family that were eating up his paycheck, and lack of support for teachers like him who had come from alternative certification programs and had no guidance on how to face the challenges of working in disadvantaged schools.
“Why am I going to worry about 25 or 30 kids when I have my own family to worry about?” Mock said. “The existential anxiety there is really kind of what drove me away.”
Mock said he remembers kids coming into his classroom with no shoes, some of whom hadn’t eaten a meal all day. Circumstances like these made teaching and learning hard, and it was demoralizing.
“The classroom is really a microcosm of what’s going on outside,” he said.
Mock said he would have benefited from having a veteran teacher by his side during his first two years of teaching.
What are some possible solutions?
State officials are looking for ways to retain teachers and make education a more lucrative career choice.
In March, Gov. Greg Abbott announced the formation of the Teacher Vacancy Task Force, made up of teachers and school administrators, to make recommendations on how to make the profession better.
The task force has met twice so far, Oeser said. Members of the task force have been split up into groups to tackle concerns such as educator preparation, pay, staffing and improving the teacher experience.
The task force will meet again in August with a more defined plan and will have a final report in February, Oeser said.
Before then, the State Board for Educator Certification, which sets the standards for teacher certifications, will continue to hold talks about the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment, know as edTPA, a more rigorous teacher certification exam developed by Stanford University.
Teachers now take a multiple-choice certification test called the Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities exam. Critics say the test is easy and not a true measure of what a teacher can do in the classroom.
On the other hand, the edTPA requires prospective teachers to film themselves teaching, submit lesson plans and reflect on how they help their students grow academically. The edTPA exam has been on a pilot run for the last three years in about 40 educator preparation programs across the state.
The State Board of Education, a partisan elected board that sets curriculum standards for the state, initially rejected the exam after concerns were brought up. Teacher groups had been against the test, and it was scrapped in some states where it had been adopted.
But the SBOE did not want to forgo the test altogether and instead sent it back to SBEC to see if that group can iron out the kinks or if there are other test options on the table. SBEC had a workshop on edTPA on Thursday and will return with options and feedback for its September meeting.
For the TEA, SBEC and some educators, edTPA is a way to better support and retain new teachers because it allows teacher preparation programs and hiring school officials to see where teachers are lacking and how school administrators can better support them.
School districts are also looking for ways to get and keep teachers in the classroom.
Bigger districts like the Houston ISD are able to provide raises and monetary incentives to its employees. Houston, the largest district in the state, has raised the starting salary for teachers to $61,500 for this school year, up from $56,869 in the 2021-22 school year.
As of July 5, there were approximately 854 openings for certified teachers in the district. The number isn’t significantly different from previous years, but it speaks to the hiring gaps that the state is seeing.
“We’ve attracted hundreds more candidates for teaching positions this year than last year. At the same time, HISD is not immune to the national impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on teachers and other educators,” the district said in a statement.
Smaller districts that can’t compete with bigger districts’ salary increases have instead tried to lure teachers with four-day school weeks. Some rural districts have been losing teachers to other schools that are switching to the shorter week model.
“Anybody that had eyes or ears knew that this impending teacher shortage was coming, and our view was it was only going to get worse for the foreseeable future,” said Chico ISD Superintendent Randy Brawner. “You can’t just go out and throw money at your problems. You have to think outside the box and think creatively.”
Disclosure: The University of Houston and Texas AFT have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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FAQs
Why are so many teachers quitting in Texas? ›
That number dipped to about 9% during the 2020-21 school year but is going back up — rising to almost 12% during the 2021-22 school year. Teachers point to low pay, lack of respect from both the community and elected officials, excessive workloads and pandemic school disruptions as reasons they want to leave.
How many teachers have quit in Texas in 2022? ›Whereas 1,291 teachers retired or resigned in 2022, the district lost an average of 1,344 teachers between 2018-2021 -- meaning their numbers actually saw a four percent decline. Still, as of early August, Houston ISD had more than 800 teacher vacancies it needed to fill. On Aug.
What has caused the teacher shortage? ›The national teacher shortage is rooted is the longstanding lack of respect for teachers and their craft, which is reflected by decades of low pay, hyperscrutiny and poor working conditions. This disrespect to the profession is what is driving teachers away.
How many Texas teachers have quit? ›Approximately 11.5% of teachers left their jobs at Texas public schools before the 2021-22 school year, according to a report from the Texas Education Agency. That is over 42,000 teachers, which was the highest attrition rate since the 2007-08 school year, when TEA began collecting annual data.
Why are teachers leaving the profession 2022? ›The tension and responsibility that educators like Gillum faced during the pandemic — combined with long-standing issues plaguing the profession, plus the coarsening of debates about classroom control, teacher pay and respect — have caused many to make the tough choice to leave the classroom.
Can you teach in Texas without a teaching certificate? ›Since 1995, Texas law has allowed school districts to issue a school district teaching permit (SDTP) to someone who does not hold a teaching certificate (Texas Education Code §21.055). A teacher employed on a school district teaching permit is not certified by the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC).
What states require teachers? ›In Florida, there are about 8,000 teacher vacancies, up from 5,000 at the start of school last year. The shortage is reportedly also dire in other states, including Nevada, California, Illinois, Arizona, and Missouri.
Is there a teacher shortage in Texas? ›Student enrollment has dipped in some school districts, many others in the state also face severe teacher shortages. Districts have been scrambling to fill vacancies, oftentimes hiring educators who lack state certification.
What percentage of teachers quit? ›44% of teachers quit in the first five years.
While this statistic is alarming, it's nothing new, as for almost two decades now, experts have estimated that almost half of teachers quit within their first five years on the job.
Increase Funding for Teachers and Schools
Federal or state grants might draw more prospective teachers to preparation programs in academic areas where there is a scarcity of teachers. Federal programs for college loan forgiveness might encourage more teachers to look for jobs in high-needs schools.
Which states have the highest teacher shortages? ›
Mississippi saw the highest teacher-to-student vacancy rate in the 2021-22 school year. The state reported having nearly 69 missing teachers per 10,000 students. In comparison, Utah had less than one missing teacher per 10,000 students.
What are the effects of shortage of teachers? ›The Impact of Teacher Shortages. Teacher shortages can significantly depress student achievement, as schools often cancel courses due to vacancies or staff classes with substitutes and underprepared teachers who are not certified to teach their subject matter.
Will Texas Retired teachers get a raise in 2023? ›At its September meeting, the Board unanimously voted to approve a 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) increase for eligible retirees and beneficiaries in 2023.
How do I become a teacher with a bachelor's degree in Texas? ›- Obtain a Bachelor's Degree. You must earn a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university. ...
- Complete an Educator Preparation Program. ...
- Pass Certification Exams. ...
- Submit a State Application. ...
- Complete Fingerprinting.
This means that someone who enters teaching before age 25 with a bachelor's and accumulates 30 or more years of service can usually retire sometime between age 55 and 60. In most states teachers are eligible for retirement without penalty once they turn 60 even with less than 30 years of service.
Why is teaching so exhausting? ›One of the reasons that teachers feel so worn out is because of decision fatigue. Research has found that teachers make more minute-by-minute decisions than brain surgeons, and that's extremely tiring.
Why are teachers so poorly paid? ›A number of factors contribute to how far a teacher's salary goes—family structure, caregiving responsibilities, health issues, and student loans among them. While many teachers in the U.S. must work second jobs to live comfortably, plenty do not. Some of them live in states that pay better than others.
How much do teachers in Texas get paid? ›How much does a Public School Teacher make in Texas? The average Public School Teacher salary in Texas is $54,445 as of September 26, 2022, but the range typically falls between $45,471 and $66,384.
What is the fastest way to become a teacher in Texas? ›- Obtain a Bachelor's Degree - You must earn a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university. ...
- Complete an Educator Preparation Program - You must complete an Approved Educator Preparation Program.
Costs range from $10,000-$20,000 depending on the program requirements. The third option universities can provide is a Master's Degree in Education that includes certification. This will require a significant investment as well ranging from $20,000-$60,000.
What type of teacher is most in demand? ›
Which teaching subject is most in demand? While specific needs vary by institution, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are subjects that are always in high demand.
Which state has the best teaching jobs? ›- Washington. Washington's overall score of 56.28 makes it the best state in the U.S. for teachers, ranking second for Opportunity & Competition and tenth for Academic & Work Environment. ...
- Utah. ...
- New Jersey. ...
- Delaware. ...
- Pennsylvania. ...
- North Dakota. ...
- Virginia. ...
- Maryland.
Answer: To become a high school teacher in Texas, you need to earn a bachelor's degree from an accredited school and also finish a teacher preparation program that is approved by the state. You also need to pass the state's certification exam(s) for the subject areas you will be teaching.
What is the highest paid school district in Texas? ›- Mansfield ISD.
- Crowley ISD.
- Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD.
- Lackland ISD.
- Deer Park ISD.
- Grady ISD.
- Draw Academy.
- Academy for Academic Excellence.
Thursday, October 27, 2022
Currently, there are more than 10,000 job openings to teach in Texas.
| Years of teaching experience and grade level taught | Total | Rural |
|---|---|---|
| Remote | ||
| Average number of years | 14.2 | 15.3 |
| Years of teaching experience | ||
| Total | 100.0 | 100.0 |
HR positions make great second careers for teachers because they utilize the systems analysis, evaluation and problem-solving skills you gained as an educator. Most HR management positions seek candidates with a bachelor's degree in human resources, business management, education or a related field.
Why is teaching so hard? ›The Workload is Too Much
The stress and pressure that comes from the job have become increasingly overwhelming. Long gone are the days of just teaching content. Teachers are expected to do more with less time and less financial support. Each year something more is added to our plates, but nothing is taken away.
Florida leads the nation with nearly 4,000 unfilled teaching positions for the 2021–22 school year, followed by Illinois with 1,703 and Arizona with 1,699. The remaining states in this group are Utah, Missouri, Nebraska, Minnesota, Colorado, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma.
Will Texas teachers get a raise 2022? ›
Under the amended 2022-23 compensation plan, the starting salary for new teachers will see a $3,100 increase from the 2021-22 school year. Officials noted the additional pay for new teachers will be funded by the roughly $98,000 surplus included in the 2022-23 budget.
Are teachers quitting in droves? ›According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 44 percent of public schools will report teaching vacancies at the start of this year, with more than half due to resignations.
Is the teacher shortage getting worse? ›Recently, the teacher shortage has gotten worse across the United States. According to Economic Policy Institute graphical data, by 2025 there will be an estimated 100,000 decrease in the supply of teachers, and 100,000 increase in the demand for teachers that are qualified in every aspect.
What type of teacher is most in demand? ›Which teaching subject is most in demand? While specific needs vary by institution, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are subjects that are always in high demand.
Is there a teacher shortage in Texas? ›Student enrollment has dipped in some school districts, many others in the state also face severe teacher shortages. Districts have been scrambling to fill vacancies, oftentimes hiring educators who lack state certification.
How can we fix the teacher shortage? ›Increase Funding for Teachers and Schools
Both state and federal governments need to invest in incentives to attract the best and brightest to the teaching profession. Federal or state grants might draw more prospective teachers to preparation programs in academic areas where there is a scarcity of teachers.
- Mansfield ISD.
- Crowley ISD.
- Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD.
- Lackland ISD.
- Deer Park ISD.
- Grady ISD.
- Draw Academy.
- Academy for Academic Excellence.
How much does a Public School Teacher make in Texas? The average Public School Teacher salary in Texas is $54,445 as of September 26, 2022, but the range typically falls between $45,471 and $66,384.
How much do teachers make an hour in Texas? ›| Years of experience | Per hour |
|---|---|
| 1 to 2 years | $12.60 |
| 3 to 5 years | - |
| 6 to 9 years | $14.69 |
| More than 10 years | $16.87 |
This means that someone who enters teaching before age 25 with a bachelor's and accumulates 30 or more years of service can usually retire sometime between age 55 and 60. In most states teachers are eligible for retirement without penalty once they turn 60 even with less than 30 years of service.
Why do teachers want to quit? ›
Teachers often cite working conditions, such as the support of their principals and the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues, as the top reason for leaving. More than 1 in 4 teachers who leave say they do so to pursue other career opportunities.
When should you quit teaching? ›- Teaching leaves you more exhausted than it leaves you energized/excited.
- Your personal life is suffering due to the stress of the position.
- You are certain that switching grades, schools, or districts will not help you.
Mississippi saw the highest teacher-to-student vacancy rate in the 2021-22 school year. The state reported having nearly 69 missing teachers per 10,000 students. In comparison, Utah had less than one missing teacher per 10,000 students.
Why don't they pay teachers more? ›A number of factors contribute to how far a teacher's salary goes—family structure, caregiving responsibilities, health issues, and student loans among them. While many teachers in the U.S. must work second jobs to live comfortably, plenty do not. Some of them live in states that pay better than others.
Where are teachers going after they quit? ›Leadership roles in community service are often a good fit for people who've left the teaching profession. Many youth organizations and retirement communities have positions for people skilled at planning, coordinating, and leading fun recreational or educational activities.