Public schools in the state of Texas employ a lot of teachers. In 2020, the number of public elementary and secondary school teachers in the United States was 3.2 million, and Texas schools were home to 365,000 of those teachers (NCES 2021 Digest of Education Statistics). In the 20 years spanning 2001 to 2020, the percentage of America’s public school teachers residing in Texas rose from 9.3% to to 11.4%. This means that 1 out of every 9 public school teachers in America teaches in a Texas public school classroom. With the under-18 population in Texas projected to increase by more than 850,000 (7.6 million in 2021 to 8.5 million in 2030, or 11.3%) by 2030, the demand for more and better-prepared teachers will continue to grow.

Total Teachers Employed

• The visualization below shows the number of employed and certified teachers in Texas during the past 10 academic years (TEA Data).
• As you can see at the top of each stacked bar, the number of Texas teachers employed on a half-time or more basis in 2012-2013 was 328,147, and that number increased by 42,284 to 370,431 in 2021-2022. This represents an almost 13% increase in 10 years.
• During the first nine years of these data, the annual average increase was 5,269. However, the last year saw only 134 more teachers, essentially representing no change from 2021 to 2022.

Certification Routes

• The bar segments are based on the educator preparation program route taken by a teacher to earn their initial teacher certification in Texas.
• The number of teachers who graduated from university-based certification programs fell from 179,460 in 2013 to 158,481 in 2022, representing a 12% decrease in headcount. 
• Teachers completing an Alternative Certification Program (ACP) increased from 84,698 in 2013 to 124,968 in 2022, representing an almost 48% increase in headcount.
• In 2013, almost 55% of all public school teachers in Texas earned their initial certification through the traditional undergraduate degree pathway, with almost 26% of all teachers earning their initial certification through Alternative Certificate Programs (ACP).
• In 2022, under 43% of all teachers in Texas had earned their initial certification from a university-based program, while 34% of teachers had completed an ACP to earn their first teacher certification in Texas.
• Due to teacher shortages, more employed teachers are teaching on a certificate other than a standard certificate (e.g., one-year, intern, probationary, emergency certificates). In 2013, 16,144 teachers were teaching on a non-standard certification. In 2021, that number had risen to 34,214 before falling slightly to 33,805. That increase is more than 110% in a decade, as these non-standard certified teachers comprise just under 10% of the total number of classroom teachers in public schools in Texas.