Advertisement

newsEducation

Texas must pay teachers more, train them like doctors, task force finds

Teacher residency programs – similar to those for doctors – could bolster training for educators and stem turnover.

Along with boosting teacher pay and working conditions, Texas should take a cue from medical professions by funding a residency program that helps new educators prepare for the classroom.

These ideas — and several others — were proposed by the state’s Teacher Vacancy Task Force in its long awaited analysis, published Friday. The group said Texas should take multiple approaches to stem the loss of educators and to recruit new ones.

While the group did not set a price tag on their asks, they urged the Legislature to allocate additional funding needed to ensure “successful implementation.”

Advertisement

Texas education Commissioner Mike Morath said he expects the task force’s recommendations to “land on very receptive ears.”

The Education Lab

Receive our in-depth coverage of education issues and stories that affect North Texans.

Or with:

“I’ve heard from the governor, from the lieutenant governor, from the speaker that there’s a pretty significant appetite to increase teacher pay,” he said.

Some of the recommendations would be up to local districts’ discretion in how to implement them.

Advertisement

The task force pushed for meaningful action to ensure every child is placed in a classroom with an effective teacher. The group said the work can’t be done in an isolated way.

“Compensation, working conditions and teacher training must be addressed in tandem to see real results,” said chair Josue Tamarez Torres, a Dallas ISD teacher.

Advertisement

Tackling the teacher shortage problem means understanding how dire it is, according to the task force report. Texas does not provide statewide data on teacher vacancies, making it harder to target recruitment plans and to get a full picture of the need.

The Legislature should fund a statewide web application that gives real-time data on teacher vacancies and job availability across Texas, the task force recommended.

The state had 376,086 classroom teachers in the 2021-22 school year, according to Texas Education Agency data. Nearly 12% of them left the profession that year, up from about 10% in other recent years.

The overall number of Texas teachers has continued to go up, though student enrollment declined after COVID-19 disruptions. Still, schools grappled with filling holes.

Public education advocates are sounding the alarm about a potential exodus of teachers, who report high levels of stress as they deal with pandemic-triggered learning loss, low pay and culture war attacks from hardline conservatives.

Teacher pay

To slow teacher losses and recruit new candidates, Texas must “fund a significant increase in overall teacher salaries,” the task force noted.

Advertisement

The state should do so by increasing the base amount of money the state provides schools and requiring districts to invest more in educator compensation, they wrote.

Based on the current minimum salary schedule, Texas teachers start at just under $34,000. It can take two decades to reach $54,540. Many school systems pay far above the minimum, but small and rural districts often lag behind, creating massive disparities in pay based on where a teacher works.

“The minimum salary schedule should be raised to reflect the impact of teachers and should be differentiated by factors that positively impact student outcomes such as tenure and certification pathways,” the task force writes. “Additionally, the new salary schedule should encourage school systems to reward and retain effective teachers.”

Advertisement

That can be done by offering districts more assistance in developing and sustaining the Teacher Incentive Allotment, a relatively new mechanism in Texas designed to give pay raises to educators who show they are effective at their job and who work in high-need areas.

The task force also recommended reducing the cost of teachers’ health insurance, providing subsidized housing and childcare options to educators, and allocating extra funding for incentives to encourage special education and bilingual teachers to work in schools. These roles are often particularly difficult to fill.

Educator training

First-year teachers serve at least half a million Texas students, according to the report. That’s roughly equivalent to the overall student population in Nevada.

Advertisement

Students placed with novice teachers are more likely to come from poor families and be children of color. New teachers also tend to achieve less academic growth with their classes, according to Texas Education Agency analysis.

Additionally, state data from last year showed that roughly 40% of newly hired teachers in Texas either came from an alternative certification program or lacked state certification entirely, indicating they could be less prepared to take on the job.

To change this, the task force recommends establishing — and funding — a Teacher Residency pathway.

Advertisement

This would be a paid, yearlong clinical training period in a public school classroom, a la the medical field’s model. Residents would be paired with mentor teachers.

“With strong teacher preparation via a teacher residency model, a system could be built in which there were no more first-year teachers,” the report reads.

Morath said he’s supportive of such a pathway, which some educator preparation programs have already embraced. To scale it up, he said, it would require changes in policy and funding.

“We have already adopted this philosophy in the field of medicine, where we invest pretty heavily in people who are fixing to operate on brains,” Morath said. “And brain surgeons get the benefit of one patient at a time and anesthesia. It stands to reason that we should similarly invest in the preparation of our teachers.”

Advertisement

The state should also invest in “grow your own” teacher training programs by tapping paraprofessionals already working in districts as well as by building interest among high school students. Those teenagers could train as future educators via career and technical education courses.

The group also urged the state to bolster programs designed to connect new teachers with trained mentors.

Respecting teachers

The task force pulled research from other high-performing countries and found that there, teachers are often in front of students between three to four hours a day. Here, educators averaged six hours daily.

Advertisement

Fewer hours in front of students opens up teachers to more time for planning and collaboration.

Lawmakers should consider funding a network that would help school administrators design “strategic schedules” that reduce the amount of time teachers spend on noninstructional tasks, such as doing paperwork. Time could instead be maximized by doing peer-to-peer collaboration and data analysis, the group wrote.

“Additionally, reimagined master schedules could allow for required training, such as Reading Academies, to be incorporated into the school day,” the report reads.

Advertisement

Teachers also need more staffing support, the group determined, citing the high ratio of students to counselors in Texas.

To illustrate why, the task force included a quote from a longtime Texas elementary school teacher, explaining how students in her class cry every day.

“I have the number of students crying in a week that used to cry in a year,” she wrote in a survey. “My kids have never had a normal school year. They are experiencing severe emotional and social repercussions from the pandemic, and that affects behavior, which is not good at all. .... I feel like a correctional officer most days. Or a therapist. And I cannot do it anymore.”

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.

Advertisement

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, 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.