‘We have to increase teacher quality.’ Texas House advances bill on educator retention

One of Texas’ signature efforts to boost teacher recruitment and retention received initial approval from the House on Wednesday.

Rep. Harold Dutton’s bill would provide free pre-K classes for the children of school teachers, increase stipends for a subset of high-quality educators and waive some certification fees for candidates, among other changes.

“To increase student outcomes, we have to increase teacher quality,” the Houston Democrat said as he explained the bill.

Lawmakers pledged to tackle Texas’ leaky teacher pipeline this session. Public education advocates are sounding the alarm about a potential exodus of educators, many of whom felt pushed to the breaking point by the pandemic, culture wars and other stressors.

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Among the provisions in the wide-ranging legislation is a requirement for the Texas Education Agency to collect data on teacher vacancies, part of an effort to close the information vacuum around just how many open positions exist in the state.

Some teacher groups recently said they’re still waiting on meaningful action from the Legislature, particularly around pay increases.

“While HB 11 make a lot of good improvements, it doesn’t fix everything,” Texas AFT spokesperson Nicole Hill said. Namely, educators are looking for a substantial across-the-board raise.

One bill from the Senate would give a $2,000 boost to all classroom teachers with an additional bump for those working in small districts.

Dutton’s bill, meanwhile, would increase pay out of the Teacher Incentive Allotment, which allows districts to provide big stipends for a subset of high-performing educators in high-poverty and rural parts of Texas.

Parts of his legislation mirror recommendations issued by the state’s Teacher Vacancy Task Force, including the creation of a revamped teacher residency program for aspiring educators. It would come with money that districts can use to help pay its teacher residents.

State officials have said teacher training that is similar to doctors’ — requiring them to study under experienced mentors — could improve outcomes.

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.

“One of the things we’ve been doing is we’ve been throwing teachers into the classroom, without any experience whatsoever,” Dutton said. “We’re going to help them learn how to teach, and we’re going to pay them to do that.”

Tucked into the bill is also a key provision related to literacy efforts.

It would prohibit a school district from providing instruction that uses “three-cueing” in the foundational reading lessons for children in kindergarten through third grade. Educator preparation programs could also not include instruction that incorporates this method.

This type of instruction encourages children to use context or pictures and sentence structure — not just letters — to identify the correct word.

Education Week reported that the strategy is “based on the now disproven theory that reading is a series of strategic guesses, informed by context clues.”

Texas has been moving toward aligning its literacy instruction with the science of reading, which has included requiring teachers to go through “reading academies” to show them the research-backed strategies for how children learn.

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