Hundreds of Texas school districts will be allowed to continue employing uncertified teachers for the next three years, thanks to a 2025 school finance law that let districts delay compliance with state certification requirements.
Texas Education Code requires public school teachers to be certified.
A person may not be employed as a teacher, teacher intern or teacher trainee, librarian, educational aide, administrator, educational diagnostician, or school counselor by a school district unless the person holds an appropriate certificate.
Yet more than half the state’s public school districts took advantage of a provision in House Bill 2 to waive the requirement and let uncertified educators continue teaching core subjects until the 2029-30 academic year.
About 12 percent of Texas public school teachers are currently uncertified (42,000 out of 350,000)—triple the percentage just five years ago, according to state data.
In the 2025-26 school year, about 27 percent of newly hired teachers lacked the required certification (12,100 of 44,100 new teachers).
How did this happen?
Since 2015, independent school districts have been allowed to exempt themselves from the requirement to employ certified teachers, among other state laws, by designating themselves as Districts of Innovation.
Currently, 985 districts are DOIs—95 percent of the state’s 1,039 ISDs.
HB 2 purported to prohibit districts from using their DOI plans to waive certification requirements—eliminating exemptions first for teachers of K-5 reading and math, then for all teachers of foundational subjects: reading/language arts, math, science, and social studies.
But the law also allowed districts to delay compliance if school boards submitted plans for transitioning to full certification by the deadline.
The education commissioner approved 570 districts’ plans to keep employing uncertified teachers.
HB 2, which increased government education spending by $8.5 billion, included funds for preparing teachers to obtain certification.
