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According to data published by the Texas Education Agency, the number of public school teachers getting their state certification has been tumbling dramatically. In fact, the number of uncertified teachers has tripled over the last five years.
In the 2019–2020 school year, of the 344,129 public school teachers in the state, just under 13,000 were uncertified. During the 2024–25 year, that number had ballooned to just over 42,000—in other words, a full 12 percent of the state’s teachers.
Education policy expert Dr. Carole Haynes says there are a number of clear reasons for this, and one of them is how hard it’s become for good teachers to get certified. “It takes extra money to go through all these extra courses when they already have the knowledge base,” she explained. “They [teachers] don’t want to go through all of this. They just want to teach.”
Dr. Haynes also called out the wokeness that has infested the education industry over the last few years, saying it’s pushing potential teachers away. “People who want to teach just say, ‘I’m hearing all of these things that are in the public schools, and I’m not going there. I’m not going into DEI; I’m not going into LGBT; I’m not going into all of this stuff,’” she said.
She believes it might be better to eliminate state certifications altogether and have school principals decide for themselves who they think is ready to teach. “The state should not be in the business of deciding who gets to teach and who does not,” she said. “It should be the principal.”