The chair of the House Education Committee on Thursday filed a pair of education bills that would raise basic school funding, revise testing standards and add restrictions on unlicensed teachers.
All of those changes come from just two bills that sequentially sandwich House Bill 3, the lower chamber’s version of a voucher bill to subsidize private school tuition with public money. All three were written by Rep. Brad Buckley, R-Killeen, who has been serving in the Legislature since 2018.
Education Spending
House Bill 2 would increase state education spending, in response to years of complaints from districts and teachers that the state is not giving schools enough money to maintain schools and pay teachers competitively.
Specifically, it would raise the state’s basic allotment, a figure that determines how much money districts get per enrolled student, by $220, a roughly 3.5% increase. Currently, the basic allotment stands at $6,160, where it has remained since the last time the Legislature overhauled public education spending in 2019.
Since then, schools have endured a pandemic, high inflation, supply chain problems and learning loss that have made it more expensive to maintain the same level of services for students, let alone create or expand programs to address new post-pandemic challenges.
Federal coronavirus relief money helped many school districts ride out those difficulties over the past several years, but now that money is drying up, and the state hasn’t yet stepped in to help make up the difference.
Some lawmakers attempted to boost money for schools last session, but those efforts died over legislative maneuvers by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican allies to try to pass private school vouchers.
In order to match the spending power that schools had in 2019, the state would need to increase the basic allotment to about $7,500, which would require an increase more than six times bigger than what HB 2 proposes.
Unlicensed Teachers
House Bill 2 also would make changes to the way that the state handles unlicensed teachers, which have made up a growing share of the state’s teaching workforce as schools have grappled with persistent vacancies.
More than one out of every 10 teachers in Texas currently does not hold a teaching license, and new teachers are unlicensed at a far higher rate, according to state data cited by the Dallas Morning News.
HB 2 would forbid districts from letting unlicensed instructors teach core subjects such as English, language arts, math, science or social studies starting in the 2027-2028 school year.
That moratorium would have a limited grace period during 2026-2027 school year: Unlicensed teachers would be allowed to teach science or social studies to grades six and up, but not math or English and not to grades five and below.
The bill also would offer unlicensed teachers one-time cash incentives for getting certified through a partnership program after one year with the district, ranging from $2,500 to $10,000.
Standardized Testing
Meanwhile, House Bill 4 would aim to overhaul the state’s standardized test, the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness test, or STAAR.
Texas students take the STAAR annually starting in the third grade to meet federal standardized testing requirements. But it has been criticized by teaching groups, including the Texas American Federation of Teachers, for issues with its design.
House Bill 4 would direct the Texas Education Agency to redesign the test to reduce the time it takes students to complete, using the results of a standardized test pilot program it has administered since 2019.
The ultimate aim of the bill would be to have Texas rank among the top five states for preparing students for postsecondary success by 2040.
