Shelley McClellan, an English teacher at Allen High School, helps juniors Emerson Bowdish (left) and Caroline Ruby with a lesson on the American Dream in Allen, Texas, on Feb. 3, 2026.
Anja Schlein/Special Contributor
Last year, state lawmakers passed new rules clamping down on the number of uncertified teachers working in Texas schools and created programs designed to help districts put more well-prepared educators in classrooms.
A year later, new data suggests those efforts are beginning to pay off.
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The state saw more experienced teachers returning to the classroom after leaving the profession years before and a small but substantial decline in the number of uncertified teachers hired for the current school year, according to data released by the Texas Education Agency.
Nearly half of the roughly 44,000 teachers hired to teach in Texas public schools this year were experienced educators, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath said at a State Board of Education meeting in March. About 42% of those teachers were coming back to the classroom after leaving earlier in their careers, and another 6% were teachers who came to Texas from out of state.
The number of teachers returning to the classroom is a good sign for Texas schools, Morath said. Those teachers aren’t untrained new hires, he said, but skilled veteran educators who are “maybe a little rusty.” They may be teachers who spent years in the classroom when they were in their 20s, then switched careers or dropped out of the workforce to raise a family, and then decided to return to teaching years later, he said.
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In 2015, state lawmakers loosened teacher certification requirements to help school districts deal with teacher shortages in career and technical education programs. A post-pandemic teacher shortage led more school leaders turned to uncertified teachers to fill the gap. In two years, the number of new uncertified teachers hired in Texas schools more than tripled, climbing from 4,285 in the 2020-21 school year to 14,170 in the 2022-23 school year. By the 2023-24 school year, about a third of all newly hired teachers in the state lacked certification, according to TEA data.
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Last year, Texas lawmakers re-tightened those rules and provided funding to help. By the beginning of the 2027-28 school year, districts must have no uncertified teachers working in math, science, social studies or reading, although districts may apply for a two-year extension.
Related: A challenge but ‘worth it’: Texas schools push to certify teachers even with extension
Although the deadline is still more than a year away, Texas school districts hired about 10% fewer uncertified teachers this year compared with last year, according to figures from TEA. At the same time, the number of teachers returning to the classroom climbed by 10%.
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A positive shift in teacher hiring
The number of teachers coming into Texas also grew slightly compared with last year. That growth is a part of the broader pattern of people moving to Texas from elsewhere, Morath said.
Related: Texas kids lose up to 4 months of learning with new uncertified teachers, study finds
“Texas is a great place to live, so we attract a lot of people to the state, and some of those people are teachers from other states,” he said.
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Ryan Franklin, managing director for policy and advocacy at the Waco-based nonprofit Philanthropy Advocates, said the numbers represent the first positive shift in teacher hiring data Texas has seen in several years.
The growth in the number of returning teachers is a good sign, he said, in part because experienced teachers have more of an impact on student learning. The fact that those teachers were willing to come back after leaving the profession is also a good sign for how Texas’ teacher retention efforts are playing out, he said.
Texas lawmakers haven’t taken any recent policy steps to entice former teachers to return to the classroom. But, Franklin said, the increase in returning teachers may be a side effect of other efforts. Last year, in the same bill that laid out the new deadline for getting uncertified teachers certified, the Legislature created the Teacher Retention Allotment, which gives pay increases to teachers with three years of experience, and another pay bump when teachers reach the five-year mark. Although the program was designed to keep experienced teachers in the classroom, Franklin said it may also have led some former teachers with years of experience to consider returning to teaching.
Related: Staff cuts are coming to Fort Worth ISD. Here’s which schools and staff will be impacted
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Education advocates are hopeful Texas’ teacher workforce picture will continue to improve over the coming years as new policies and programs come online. Another major change lawmakers made last year was creating the PREP Allotment, which gives school districts extra funding for partnership programs designed to help prepare early-career teachers for the classroom. The effort includes funding for structured mentorship programs, paid teacher residency programs for novice educators and grow-your-own programs districts use to get non-certified employees certified to teach. The program begins with the 2026-27 school year.
Opportunity for growth
Chelsea Valdez, managing director for educator development at the Dallas-based Commit Partnership, said the program has the potential to be hugely beneficial for school districts — but only as far as it goes.
The allotment prioritizes teacher preparation pathways that have a track record of producing effective educators, Valdez said. The problem, she said, is that the program’s rules limit districts to 40 teachers per pathway, regardless of the size of the district. For big urban districts like Dallas ISD that hire hundreds of teachers per year, that may not be enough to make much of a difference, she said.
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Valdez said she’d like to see the state scale the program up in the coming years so that districts will have broader options for getting well-prepared teachers into their classrooms. Research indicates that when teachers are better prepared before they start work, they’re less likely to resign, and their students tend to do better academically.
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“Imagine what that would look like, if every classroom had a highly effective and certified teacher,” Valdez said. “It could be transformational.”
The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
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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, Judy and Jim Gibbs, 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.