Today the Senate Education Committee will discuss a wide-ranging teacher pay bill that would expand performance bonuses for public teachers, preschool free for their children and offer retention bonuses to try to fill vacancies across the state.
The expansion would cost $5 billion, according to a press release from Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, who wrote the bill along with Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month declared teacher funding a state emergency. School districts and teachers for years have been urging the governor and Republican lawmakers to set aside more money for public education in Texas.
Senate Bill 26 also would expand a program that offers bonuses to the state’s top teachers for serving in rural or “high-need” districts.
What’s the Teacher Incentive Allotment?
The Teacher Incentive Allotment was established in 2018 as part of the Legislature’s comprehensive public education overhaul bill, Senate Bill 3. Teachers are rewarded with more money for performing better, especially in rural or high-need districts.
The incentive allotment offers teachers bonuses for ranking among the best in the state as measured by student performance, “with the goal of providing outstanding teachers an accessible pathway to a six-figure salary,” according to the latest state guidebook on the program.
Currently, it encompasses roughly the top third of teachers in Texas, according to the state guidebook. In the 2023-24 school year, the state awarded $292 million in bonuses through the program.
How does it work?
There are three components to the bonus formula.
First, it sets a base allotment — how much each district or charter school gets per high-performing teacher. (The district gets the money from the state but must give at least 90% of that money to the teachers.)
Second, it adds money to that base amount according to how many “high-need” students are served by the school or district and whether it is rural.
Finally, it caps the amount of extra money that teachers can get from serving rural or high-need students.
Senate Bill 26 would add a fourth component, setting standards for a district or charter to be designated as “enhanced,” which would entitle it to an extra 10% bonus on top of all the other factors.
Who’s “High-Performing?”
Currently, there are three categories for teacher performance. The “master” level encompasses the top 5% of Texas teachers, the state guidebook explains. “Exemplary” teachers are in the top 20%, and “recognized” teachers are in the top 33%.
Districts can establish a local system to collect data on teacher performance to make those designations.
SB 26 would add two new categories of teachers that would be eligible for bonuses: “acknowledged” teachers and nationally board certified teachers.
(Mostly) Bigger Base Allotments
SB 26 would increase the base allotments of each tier of teacher except for “master” teachers, who would stay at a $12,000 base allotment.
• “Exemplary” teacher would get $9,000, up from $6,000.
• “Recognized” teachers would get $5,000, up from $3,000.
Both of the new teacher levels would be eligible for a base allotment of $3,000.
Bigger Needs Multipliers
SB 26 also would increase by $1,000 the “high needs and rural factor” of state education code — the part of the formula that adds to that base allocation. The new factors would be:
• $6,000 for master teachers.
• $4,000 for exemplary teachers.
• $2,500 for recognized teachers.
Both of the new performance tiers would have their factors set at $1,500.
Higher Caps
SB 26 also would bump up the caps slightly.
• Master teachers would be capped at $36,000, up from $32,000.
• Exemplary teachers would be capped at $25,000, up from $18,000.
• Recognized teachers would be capped at $15,000, up from $9,000.
The new categories each would be capped at their own levels. Both nationally board certified teachers and “acknowledged” teachers would be capped at $9,000.
“Enhanced” Schools and Districts
In addition to all of those, within the TIA program, SB 26 would create a new classification for certain school districts or open-enrollment charter schools: an “enhanced” TIA “school”, which would be eligible for 10% more bonus money from the state. (SB 26 describes them as “schools” universally, even though the designation also would apply to qualifying school districts.)
“Enhanced” schools and districts would need to ensure that “substantially all teachers” would be eligible to earn at least one of the bonus performance designations.
They also would need to implement a compensation plan “based on performance” that “does not include across-the-board salary increases for instructional staff except for periodic changes to the district’s or school’s salary schedule to adjust for significant inflation.”
It’s unclear whether any school that includes a standard 2% raise to teachers to counteract inflation would violate that requirement. Representatives from the offices of Sens. Creighton and Parker did not respond to a Wednesday afternoon request to clarify the definition of “significant inflation” by press time Thursday.
Districts and charter schools would need to spend that extra 10% maintaining their “enhanced” status, and would need to certify that annually to the commissioner’s office.
The Senate Education Committee will convene to discuss SB 26 at 11 a.m. Thursday, or upon adjournment of the Senate, which is scheduled to convene in full at 10 a.m.
The meeting will be streamed live on the Senate broadcast page.
