Diving Into Occupation-Level Data: A Focus on Teaching

The end of the fall semester also brings a close to our current blog series, where we have been examining the connection between the demands for human capital in the workforce and the supply of human capital through higher education. In our previous posts in this series, we have looked at broad trends in terms of projected growth occupations, as well as reviewing supply-and-demand gaps in the projected highest growth occupations (numeric and percentage). Our last two posts have focused on selected occupations in the fields of engineering and nursing. In this final post of the series, we turn our attention to the field of teaching, specifically looking at the K-12 educational space in Texas.

Examining the supply and demand landscape across k-12 TEACHING Occupations

Examining supply and demand within the field of K-12 teaching in Texas provides a number of challenges from a data perspective. One of the more difficult aspects is the variety of avenues that someone can take to enter the classroom as teacher of record. Historically, university-based educator preparation programs (EPPs) served as the main pathway for teachers to acquire the requisite knowledge and skills to become a licensed classroom teacher in Texas. However, the past decade has seen an exponential increase in the number of newly-hired teachers who entered the classroom through routes other than university-based, traditional EPPs.

The first visualization below provides one of the best representations of this shift in alternative pathways into the field of teaching. Using Texas Education Agency (TEA) data, the “New Hires by Pathway” chart shows that the category with the highest growth in the past few years has been the “No Texas Certification/Permit” group, which is defined as “Newly hired teachers who do not hold a certification issued by the State Board of Educator Certification” (TEA). Based on the definitions for all of the pathway categories (provided at the end of the blog post), this “No Certification/Permit” group is distinct from other alternative pathways that do not require an earned teaching license at the time of hire (e.g., emergency permit and intern certified).

As shown in the chart below, the number of new hires without a certification or permit has increased by 437% since 2015 when there were fewer than 3,200 “No Certification/Permit” new hires across Texas public schools. This timeframe coincides with the passage of H.B. 1842 of the 84th Session of the Texas Legislature that created “Districts of Innovation.” This designation exempts school districts from certain sections of the Texas Education Code, including the fact that TEA staff “do not provide guidance related to nor approve district hiring decisions as they pertain to a district’s innovation plan.” At present, 82% (987 out of 1,207) of public school districts in Texas are designated as Districts of Innovation.

• The data above show that almost 35% (17,053 out of 49,390) of new teacher hires at public schools in Texas in 2023-2024 were in the “No Certification/Permit” group when they were hired. This means the “No Certification/Permit” category was the largest group of new hires in 2024, slightly outpacing licensed teachers who were re-entering the classroom (16,608 or 34%) after experiencing a break in their teaching employment.
• Discussions of alternative licensure for teachers typically have focused on EPPs that provide teacher preparation coursework before entering the classroom, with teacher licensure then being completed while they are serving as the teacher of record in the classroom. Shown as “Intern Certified” in the chart above, this alternative pathway has experienced a precipitous drop since 2021, falling 64% from a high of 13,710 new hires in 2021 to just under 5,000 in 2024.
• The traditional, university-based pathway into teaching, defined as “Standard Certified, Direct Entry”, has seen a steady decrease in new hires since a peak of 8,438 in 2014. The 4,938 new hires in 2024 who earned teacher licensure through a traditional EPP that involved clinical teaching experience represented a 42% drop in the past 11 years of new hires across Texas public schools.
• On the “Newly-Certified” tab, we can see that Texas has experienced an annual drop of more than 10,000 (from 28,057 to 17,722) newly-certified teachers since 2017, representing a 37% decrease overall. In 2021, “Intern Certified” teachers accounted for almost 54% of all newly-certified teachers, a percentage that dropped to 39% of the total in 2024.

So What?

The third tab of data above highlights the primary concern related to the teaching workforce in Texas: the demand for classroom teachers far exceeds the supply of newly-certified teachers. With new hires in Texas doubling from 2012 to 2024, the number of newly-certified teachers in Texas has decreased by more than 36% since 2016. In 2024, there were almost 32,000 fewer newly-certified teachers in Texas than there were new hires. While the data above (New Hires by Pathway) show that one-third of those new hires were licensed teachers re-entering the teaching workforce, there were almost as many new hires who were “No Texas Certification/Permit” (17,053) as there were newly-certified teachers (17,722) total in 2024, regardless of certification pathway.

If these input metrics were not problematic enough, Texas public schools are seeing worsening retention rates of new teachers through the first five years of service. Overall, just over one-half (53%) of all first-year teachers entering the classroom in 2018-19 remained in Texas public schools by 2023-24, down from 57.6% in the 2013-14 cohort (TEA). First-year teachers who had a traditional undergraduate educator preparation experience had the highest retention rate for the 2018-19 cohort at 63%, while less than 39% of first-year teachers from 2018-19 who were in the “No Certification/Permit” group remained in the teaching profession after 5 years.

Similar to the challenges facing the field of nursing presented in our previous blog post, the field of K-12 teaching in Texas is not singularly a supply-side issue. With school districts facing an almost 20% attrition rate annually of teachers transferring to another district or leaving Texas public schools completely, not to mention accounting for population growth in certain parts of the state, hiring decisions for classroom teachers can be complex, challenging endeavors. These data highlight the ongoing need for increasing collaboration between policymakers, leaders within the broader educational community, and workforce to seek solutions that keep the students in classrooms across Texas as the central focus.

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