Houston ISD has 2,097 uncertified teachers out of more than 10,000 teachers for 2024-25, according to district records first provided to and reported by ABC13 KTRK.
About 1 in 5 teachers, out of a district total 10,618 teachers as of Aug. 5, are “working toward certification,” according to records requested by the TV station for the total number of uncertified teachers on staff.
“And then the notion that, well, you have to be a certified teacher to be effective,” Miles said. “Yes, more likely than not you will be more effective than a teacher without a certification. Yes, that’s true. But that doesn’t mean in effect where non-certified teachers will be ineffective. We came in. We changed that concept.”
It is unclear at this time what subjects and grade levels uncertified teachers are covering. Waivers to hire uncertified teachers cannot be applied to special education, bilingual education, English as a Second Language or pre-kindergarten teaching roles, according to the Texas Education Agency. ABC 13 reported that uncertified teachers were hired into prohibited positions, including special education roles, last academic year.
HISD is not alone in relying on uncertified teachers to fill vacancies. Nearly half of first-time new teacher hires were uncertified in 2022-23, according to a July Texas Tech University report. The report indicated that students with new uncertified teachers experience learning loss, losing about 4 months of learning in reading and 3 months in math, unless the teacher has previous experience working in a public school.
“The latest data I have showed that uncertified teachers turnover at three times the rate as other teachers. And so part of it is that, ‘okay, I’ve never been in a classroom before. I don’t know what classroom management looks like because I’ve never seen it modeled,'” the report’s author, Jacob Kirksey, said.
“And we don’t want to see them just picking people off of the street, putting them in a classroom in front of our students for the sake of saying that there’s a teacher in the classroom,” the union leader had said. “Because we really believe that high-quality instruction must be given by someone who is qualified, capable and well-trained to deliver that instruction.”
The number of teachers overall declined from 11,388 at the beginning of last year to 10,640 teachers this academic year. While HISD’s teaching workforce declined, the level of uncertified teachers increased.