Turnover rates for teachers in Texas school districts rose by 7 percentage points from 2020-23, data from the Texas Education Agency shows.
“Teachers all over the state and the country are feeling overworked; in some cases, underappreciated; in a lot of cases, unheard and uncared for by those in power,” said Tricia Cave, a lobbyist for the Association of Texas Professional Educators and former Houston-area teacher.
School districts, including Clear Creek ISD, are seeing an increase in uncertified teachers looking for jobs.
The overview
Experts and officials locally and across the state said there are several factors that may cause teachers to leave the profession.
Some include low pay, having to complete an abundant amount of tasks, paperwork and spending time working while at home, which all lead to burnout, Cave said.
Diving in deeper
While turnover rates have increased, Britani Moses, CCISD’s director of human resources, said the district has been able to maintain student-teacher ratios despite the district being under a District of Innovation plan—meaning it’s not bound by ratios provided by the state.
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Moses said CCISD aims to have around 23 students per teacher for kindergarten through fourth grade.
For secondary levels, which are grades five through 12, Moses said the district aims to be at 27 students per teacher.
To maintain ratios, Moses said district officials connect with every campus principal beginning in February to discuss projected student enrollment numbers for the upcoming school year.
These February discussions also include projections of new housing additions—and therefore potentially new students—near schools in the district, Moses said.
What they said
“[CCISD] is a place where employees want to work. Teachers want to work at [the district] because they’ve heard of all of the great things that are happening, and all of our administrators work really diligently," Moses said.
“We have a long way to go just to keep up with the national average [for teacher pay]. We’re having a hard time in Texas not only keeping teachers but attracting them to the profession as well," said Bob Popinski, senior policy director, Raise Your Hand Texas, which is an education policy nonprofit.
What else?
Popinski said while retaining certified teachers has become a challenge for the state, he believes the main reason for teacher shortages right now is low pay.
He said a “driving force” to low pay for teachers is inflation increasing about 22% since 2019.
Texas has not raised student allotment funding for school districts, which is $6,160 per student, since 2019. That in part is causing budget shortfalls for several Texas school districts, including for FISD, which is looking at a possible $1.4 million shortfall for the 2024-25 fiscal year.
Money from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER, funding that Texas public schools received in 2020 and 2021 to address pandemic-related learning loss also expires in September.
“We are ranked ... at $400 [per year] below the national average in teacher pay,” Popinski said.
There has also now been a rise in uncertified teachers becoming employed in school districts, according to the TEA. The percentages of uncertified teachers newly hired by CCISD surged by nearly 12 percentage points from 2020-23, TEA data shows.
Moses verified this and said there are more applicants who were not “traditionally trained through a university program.”
Individuals in different professions who now want to teach, as well as fewer colleges offering education degrees and unpaid student-teacher programs, could be the root causes of the rise in uncertified applicants, Moses said.
What's next
Several institutions and organizations are looking to help bring more teachers into the profession.
San Jacinto College in Pasadena launched in spring 2024 its second bachelor’s degree with an emphasis in early childhood education, college officials said.
Meanwhile, education advocates are hoping the next state legislative session, which begins Jan. 14, includes passing solutions recommended in the Teacher Vacancy Task Force, which was created in 2022.
The task force is composed of teachers and school system leaders in public education across Texas. It proposed eight solutions for the Texas Legislature to consider in 2023 that revolved around increasing compensation, providing more support and training for new teachers, and helping teachers balance their time. Just one of the solutions passed during the 2023 session.
Public education advocates such as Cave and Popinski said they believe passing the task force’s recommendations could help lessen the state’s teacher shortage.
“Resources are not being allocated fairly to districts to help them with mitigating the shortage,” Cave said. “I wish that we would treat our teachers like the professionals that they are, and trust their word and allow them to do the good work that they do.”
