The explosion of uncertified teachers is a problem — that’s the message Texas’ education chief brought to lawmakers this week.

More than half of brand-new educators last year lacked a state certification, meaning it was impossible to know what kind of training they received.

“We are setting these folks up for a very rough ride,” Education Commissioner Mike Morath told lawmakers during a recent House committee hearing.

He ticked through data illustrating the myriad ways teachers without formal training can impact learning. A state analysis, for example, found that schools with lower academic accountability scores hired higher rates of uncertified teachers.

A decade ago, the Legislature created a system that empowered district administrators to loosen hiring requirements. Now, faced with the repercussions, lawmakers want to fix it.

Rep. Gina Hinojosa acknowledged this dynamic while calling the volume of uncertified teachers unacceptable.

“We need to take responsibility for some of that because we’ve made it easier to get into a classroom without certification,” the Austin Democrat told her colleagues. “That is a policy decision that we have made.”

Rep. Diego Bernal, D-San Antonio, put it more bluntly: “We opened the floodgates.”

School administrators can waive certain requirements by applying for a “District of Innovation” designation. This ability, which began with a 2015 law change, is among the factors driving the spike in uncertified educators in public schools.

The law change gave traditional public schools some of the flexibility already afforded to charter schools. District leaders can exempt themselves from a wide array of rules related to school start dates, class sizes or teacher certification requirements.

More than 980 school districts have District of Innovation status, according to the Texas Education Agency. That’s the majority of the state’s public schools systems.

While agency officials log innovation plans, they don’t have power to approve or reject them, effectively giving them no oversight over how many schools open their classrooms to uncertified educators.

Texas’ reliance on uncertified new teacher hires shot up – hitting a historic high – after the pandemic exacerbated educator shortages and left administrators scrambling to fill classrooms. Meanwhile, the state’s largest teacher preparation program was under state scrutiny.

An omnibus school finance bill from Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Salado, includes attempts to rein in the system that allows teachers to skirt certification.

The proposal would limit which classes uncertified educators can teach in the future. To encourage certification, it would give to districts a $1,000 allotment for every recently hired uncertified teacher who earns a standard certificate by the end of next school year.

Buckley’s proposal encourages district leaders to pay beginning teachers with certifications higher salaries than those who are not. Districts of Innovation could also not opt-out of notifying parents if their children are assigned to an uncertified teacher.

Kate Greer, managing director for policy and state coalition at The Commit Partnership, said the proposal reflects that “the more training a teacher can have … the better off those kids are.”

Texas must deal in the short-term with the fact that many students in uncertified teachers’ classrooms aren’t learning as much as children paired with educators who have extensive training, she said.

“And longer term, how do we incentivize what the data shows is really good for kids, which is having highly qualified, highly prepared teachers in front of students,” Greer said.

Impact of certification

To become a certified teacher in Texas, candidates must earn a bachelor’s degree, complete an educator preparation program, pass related exams, submit a state application and go through a background check.

The road to the classroom without state certification is less clear.

Some uncertified educators may be switching careers from the corporate world or the military. Others may have worked as teachers in other states and didn’t want to apply for a Texas certificate when they moved.

Others could be recent graduates who saw open positions in their local district.

The level of training these educators begin with is wide-ranging, officials say, from years in schools to essentially nonexistent.

That stands in contrast to educators who come from high-quality preparation programs where they must spend copious time learning how to manage student behavior, plan lessons and serve children with disabilities.

An emerging body of research examines the potential negative effects of uncertified teachers who lack previous experience in the classroom.

Students with new uncertified teachers lost the equivalent of about four months of learning in reading and three months in math, according to a Texas Tech University study.

Such educators also identified elementary school students for dyslexia services at a lower rate than their certified counterparts.

Roughly two-thirds of uncertified teachers left the profession after five years compared to about one-third of those who are traditionally certified, according to Texas Education Agency data.

And finally, a state analysis found that schools that saw decreased academic accountability outcomes since 2019 also saw an increase in the percentage of uncertified teachers.

When schools gained District of Innovation flexibility a decade ago, many officials initially used the certification waiver to hire career and technical education teachers. They looked for industry professionals who lacked a certificate but brought real-world experience to teach students about plumbing, culinary arts, graphic design and other industries.

These days uncertified teachers lead a much broader array of classrooms.

In elementary school, roughly 10% of those who taught English, social studies, math and science were uncertified last year.

Meanwhile, in high school, one in five career and technical education teachers was uncertified as was roughly one in 10 science teachers.

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 support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, 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.