When Gov. Greg Abbott announced his shortlist of priorities for the Legislature during his State of the State address in early February, raising teacher pay made the cut.
“We must fund and train the best teachers,” he said. “That starts with giving our teachers a pay raise this session.”
The directive, one of the governor’s seven emergency items for this session, came as 78% of polled teachers said they considered leaving the profession last year. Currently, the average salary of Texas educators – $62,474 – is about $9,300 less than the U.S. average as estimated by the National Education Association.
Now, just a few weeks after the governor’s address, proposals to raise teacher salaries are taking shape.
One bill in the Texas Senate outlines a plan to give teachers with at least three years of experience across-the-board raises. Teachers who’ve been in the classroom for five years or more would get the biggest raises: $5,500 for teachers in large districts and $10,000 for those in small ones. If passed, Senate Bill 26, would also invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the Teacher Incentive Allotment, a merit-pay program that rewards teachers whose students’ performance improves. The Texas Senate Education Committee voted unanimously last week to advance the legislation. On Wednesday, the full Senate unanimously passed the bill.
In the Texas House, state Rep. Brad Buckley (R-Salado) filed legislation last week that would also increase teacher pay. Among other things, House Bill 2 proposes raising the basic allotment – the minimum amount Texas must spend per student – from $6,160 to $6,380. Right now, districts must spend at least 30% of any basic allotment increase on compensation for full-time employees, including teachers. Buckley’s bill would raise that to 40%. Similar to the Senate’s plan, HB 2 also increases funding for the Teacher Incentive Allotment.
These two pieces of legislation include three different methods for boosting teacher pay. That's because there isn't one universally agreed upon quick fix for the issue. To better understand the potential impact of these different approaches, KUT spoke with school finance experts, the Texas Education Agency and advocacy groups.
Increasing salaries with across-the-board raises
Teachers need salaries on par with the national average, Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, said. One way to do that is with across-the-board raises.
“I think that some level of across-the-board pay raise that starts to get us to that magic number … of being at least in the middle when it comes to teacher salaries across the United States is probably some of the best policy decision that could be made,” he said.
Ideally, Capo added, lawmakers would take the cost-of-living into account when determining across-the-board raises. But while teachers’ groups like Texas AFT have expressed support for across-the-board raises, some school finance experts are more wary.
Chandra Villanueva is the director of policy and advocacy at Every Texan, a progressive group. She said this one-size-fits-all approach isn’t equitable for a few reasons. First, she said, it doesn’t take into account the unique needs of each district. Second, it leaves out other staff.
“We also have counselors, librarians, educational aides, bus drivers, lunchroom workers," she said. "We need to look at the workforce as a whole and make sure that everybody is being compensated fairly."
Lori Taylor is head of the Department of Public Service and Administration at Texas A&M University. In general, Taylor (who told KUT she was not commenting on specific legislation) said a few issues can arise with across-the-board raises. If the Legislature mandates a pay increase but does not fund it, she said school districts would then need to shift their resources to cover the cost.
Taylor said another consequence of across-the-board raises is new teachers would see a larger percentage increase than experienced ones if the amount is the same, regardless of years in the classroom.
“It tends to flatten the distribution of teacher compensation,” she said. “That might be desirable; it might be undesirable. But it’s definitely what would happen if you just declare that all teachers should get paid an extra $3,000, for example.”
Instead of mandating a lump sum, Taylor said, lawmakers could also mandate a certain percentage increase. But if that’s not adjusted for the local cost-of-living, she said, it won’t have the same impact for teachers in expensive areas such as Austin or Dallas.
Allocating more money to the Teacher Incentive Allotment
Another option for giving educators a bump in pay is investing more money in the Teacher Incentive Allotment, which the Texas Legislature created in 2019. This is a step Gov. Abbott would like to see lawmakers take.
“This session, Governor Abbott will work with the legislature to increase teacher pay and invest $750 million to expand the Teacher Incentive Allotment, bringing more teachers into the merit pay program,” his press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, said in an emailed statement.
Matt Holzgrafe, director of district talent systems at the Texas Education Agency, said the goal of the TIA is to provide a pathway for top-performing teachers to earn six-figure salaries.
“Our goal at the state level is to provide supports for districts to set up systems that identify great teachers,” he said, “and then we provide the funding to the districts to reward those great teachers.”
Depending on their designation in the program, teachers can receive anywhere from several thousand dollars in bonus pay to more than $30,000. So far, Holzgrafe said, participation in the program has improved retention.
“Designated teachers retained at 8 percentage points higher than their non-designated peers, which has been really heartening,” he said.
About 49% of the state’s 1,200 school districts currently participate in the program. Austin ISD is one of the latest districts to join, which the district announced last week.
Holzgrafe said $292 million went to districts participating in the program last year. He expects the figure will be closer to half a billion dollars this year, with somewhere from 40,000 to 45,000 teachers qualifying. According to an annual report, 26,989 teachers qualified for bonuses last school year – fewer than 10% of Texas teachers.
The possibility of investing more money in a program that doesn’t reward the vast majority of teachers is concerning to Capo. He said he’s willing to entertain conversations about merit-based pay, but only after all Texas teachers make salaries in line with the national average.
“This is a really clever way that the state is able to go out and say that they’re putting all this money into teacher pay but it doesn’t really go anywhere because the funnel is narrowed down,” he said.
Villanueva is also critical of this approach to raising teacher pay. Similar to across-the-board raises, she said putting more money toward this program again leaves out other school staff.
Increasing the basic allotment
Across-the-board raises and incentive pay seek to put money more directly into teachers’ pockets. But, at a time when most Texas school districts face budget shortfalls, Villanueva said the state should give them more funding overall.
“The best way to increase teacher pay is increase the basic allotment and also move toward enrollment-based funding,” she said. “Over 460,000 students were not funded in our school finance formula last year because of attendance-based funding.”
The last time the Legislature increased the basic allotment was in 2019. Since then, inflation has eroded districts’ purchasing power by 18 to 19%, Taylor said.
“What that means is that districts have less ability to hire teachers and less ability to keep up with inflation in the labor market,” she said.
Taylor said increasing the basic allotment gives districts flexibility to spend money in a way that best reflects local priorities.
“The districts are in a better position than the Legislature to know how they need to use their resources and whether they need to use their resources for higher pay across-the-board or whether they’re really worried about retaining their best performing teachers,” she said.
From Capo’s perspective, there are pluses and minuses to using the basic allotment to increase teacher pay. He said one plus is that a certain percentage of any increase must be spent on compensation — not just for teachers, but also support staff, whom he said are “woefully” underpaid.
“We would prefer having an across-the-board pay raise for teachers, there’s no doubt," Capo said. "But we are not comfortable and would not agree to something that completely left out everyone else on the campus."
What’s next
The proposals for increasing teacher pay in the Texas House and Senate offer different combinations of the three methods described here: across-the-board raises, merit pay and increasing the basic allotment.
Whichever route lawmakers take, Capo said, another legislative session can’t go by without an investment in teacher salaries. Efforts to increase teacher pay fell apart in 2023, the last time lawmakers got together, because proposals got tangled up in the fight over legislation to give families taxpayer money to pay for private schools. At the time, Gov. Abbott said he would veto any public school funding measure if school vouchers weren’t approved. That’s another one of his emergency items during this session.
If raises aren’t approved this year, Capo said, it will only get harder to retain experienced and certified educators in Texas. During the last school year, nearly 11% of the state's teacher workforce was uncertified.
“There is most certainly a crisis,” he said. “Anyone who believes otherwise is not paying attention.”
