Uncertified teachers are on the rise in Texas. Lawmakers look to clamp down
As the number of uncertified teachers working in Texas classrooms skyrockets, state lawmakers are looking to tighten rules for new hires and help school districts get their uncredentialed teachers certified.
A pair of bills working their way through the Texas Legislature would require districts to have all their teachers certified within the next two years. The proposals would also provide funding to help districts with the certification process and incentives for teachers to get certified.
More than half of Texas’ newly hired teachers last year lacked state certification, meaning state leaders have no way of knowing what kind of training they’ve received, if any. Education experts say the growing number of uncertified teachers working in Texas schools could undermine efforts to improve student achievement, which continues to lag behind pre-pandemic norms.
Texas bills would tighten uncertified teacher rules
A provision in Texas House Bill 2 would bar school districts from employing teachers without certifications, and give them extra money to certify any teachers who aren’t already certified. Districts would have until the fall of 2026 to certify math and reading teachers in kindergarten through fifth grade, and until the fall of 2027 to certify everyone else.
Separately, a section in Senate Bill 2253 would also bar districts from using uncertified teachers, and offer stipends to teachers who were hired as uncertified in the 2022-2023 or 2023-2024 school year and then earned a teaching certificate by the end of the 2025-2026 school year.
In 2015, state lawmakers passed a bill making it easier for school districts to hire people with no teaching certificate to work as teachers, including in core subjects like reading and math. In the years since the pandemic, school districts across Texas have relied more heavily on uncredentialed teachers to keep their classrooms staffed amid a nationwide teacher shortage.
In 2019, schools served by the Region 11 Education Service Center, which covers the western half of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, hired 225 uncertified teachers, representing about 6% of that year’s new teachers, according to data from the Texas Education Agency. By the 2023-24 school year, that number had grown to 1,001, or about 22% of all new hires across the region.
The Fort Worth Independent School District never pursued waivers allowing it to hire large numbers of uncertified teachers, said Woodrow Bailey, the district’s chief of talent management, so the district has hired relatively few teachers without certifications over the past decade. Most of the uncertified teachers the district has hired were for career and technical education classes, Bailey said. Texas allows districts to issue career and technical education teachers a school district teaching permit, allowing them to teach without a certification.
Since 2010, Fort Worth ISD has hired 183 teachers with no Texas teaching certificate or permit, according to TEA data. By comparison, Dallas ISD hired 1,741 uncertified teachers during the same period.
Although it has about 15,000 fewer students than its neighbor to the west, Arlington ISD hired more than twice as many uncertified teachers as Fort Worth ISD during that same period, TEA records show. Since 2010, the district has hired 399 teachers without a certification. In an emailed statement, Arlington ISD spokesman Ryan Pierce said the district has 56 uncertified teachers in K-5 reading and math roles — the jobs that will be affected first if lawmakers approve House Bill 2 in its current form. All of those teachers are working as long-term or bridge substitutes, he said.
Bridge substitutes are teachers who have a bachelor’s degree and are working toward a teaching credential through an alternative certification program. Once they earn their certification, those teachers will go to work as permanent classroom teachers in the district, Pierce said. The district gives those teachers specialized support, mentoring and time set aside to work on developing their teaching skills, he said.
“We maintain robust curriculum standards and high expectations for all staff, including those working toward certification,” he said. “While the provision in House Bill 2 is currently proposed legislation, Arlington ISD will work to remain fully compliant if it becomes law, while continuing to meet the demands of rigorous instruction and student success.”
Students with uncertified teachers do worse academically
Research suggests that students tend to do better academically when they have a certified teacher. In a study released in September, researchers at Texas Tech University found that students who have uncertified teachers lose out on the equivalent of three months of learning in math and four months in reading compared to students with certified teachers.
Jacob Kirksey, a professor in the College of Education at Texas Tech and the lead researcher on the study, said the effects of uncertified teachers show up in ways other than just test scores. Teachers who lack certification tend to be more likely to overlook students for dyslexia screening, he said. Researchers say students with dyslexia can learn to read if teachers and school leaders spot it early and connect them with proper support and specialized instruction. But without it, they’re more likely to struggle in school and drop out before they graduate.
Students in uncertified teachers’ classes also tend to rack up more absences, Kirksey said. That’s because teachers play a big role in making the school environment warm and engaging for students, he said. If a student’s teacher doesn’t know how to create an inviting learning environment, families are less likely to be engaged, which can lead to students missing too many school days, he said.
Kirksey said it isn’t the credential itself that makes certified teachers more effective than uncertified ones. Rather, it’s the preparation that teachers go through as they work toward certification. Teaching candidates who go through a four-year degree program or a high-quality alternative certification program spend many hours in classrooms watching effective teachers working with students and acting as student teachers themselves.
Those months of classroom experience — “that time spent in the classroom with someone who knows what they’re doing” — can be the key difference between an effective teacher and an ineffective one, Kirksey said. But teachers who start the job without going through the certification process generally haven’t had the chance to get that experience, he said, meaning they haven’t had the opportunity to develop the skills to do the job well.
When school districts rely too heavily on uncertified teachers, it creates a self-reinforcing problem, Kirksey said: Those teachers may offer a short-term solution when schools have vacant positions they need to fill, but they also tend to leave the job more quickly than their better-prepared colleagues. Just over a third of all uncertified teachers were still in the classroom after five years, according to TEA data, compared to two-thirds of those who got their teaching certificates through a college of education. That means principals and district leaders have to keep recruiting new teachers to fill the same jobs over and over.
“You’re just replacing more and more people,” he said.
Policies could improve instruction, reduce turnover
Kate Greer, managing director for policy and state coalition at the Commit Partnership, said the bills working their way through the legislature could provide both a short-term and long-term fix for the issues created by the uptick in uncertified teachers. In the short term, those policies would help districts get those teachers certified. In the longer term, they could help reduce teacher turnover, since better-prepared teachers are more likely to stay.
Having better-prepared teachers would be a big benefit for students, Greer said. Compared to their uncertified colleagues, those teachers are better at instilling knowledge and helping students learn the skills and content they need to master before they move on to more advanced grades. Better teacher preparation also means school districts could soon have fewer rookie teachers in their classrooms, since new hires will be better equipped to take on the challenges of the job, she said.
“It is not just how you teach a kid how to do math,” Greer said. “There’s classroom management procedures, there’s pedagogy. There’s a lot that goes into being a teacher that is very hard work.”
This story was originally published April 14, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
