Speaker 1: This week's trip Cast is brought to you by Raise
Speaker 1: Your Hand Texas, the Commit partnership the Charles Budd Foundation
Speaker 1: in Texas AFT. Hello and welcome to the Texas Tribune
Speaker 1: Trip Cast for April fifteenth, twenty twenty five. My name
Speaker 1: is Matthew Watkins, editor in chief of the Texas Tribune.
Speaker 1: Eleanor has unlocked my office door and allowed me back
Speaker 1: onto the podcast after a few hiatuses.
Speaker 2: If you won't let me talk about abortion, I don't
Speaker 2: know what I'm supposed to do. Yes, welcome back, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I have a little bit of a cold today, so
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 2: The allergies, is what I have.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna try really hard.
Speaker 2: Gross episode.
Speaker 1: Yes, if you hear any gross sniffle and just assume it's.
Speaker 2: Elinor yeah, yeah, safe, safe to assume.
Speaker 1: How was it without me?
Speaker 2: You know we were missing a little something. You know.
Speaker 1: I have some notes on your April Fool's joke that
Speaker 1: you played on Jasper.
Speaker 2: It was not a success.
Speaker 1: This is not good.
Speaker 2: It is not a good joke. It did not land.
Speaker 2: It was not well received. I like to I enjoy
Speaker 2: hearing from listeners of the trip Cast. I don't enjoy
Speaker 2: it when They mostly are like, why did you do
Speaker 2: so poorly at an April Fools Jroke? What are your names?
Speaker 1: So you actually got a listener feedback.
Speaker 2: I got listener feedback that was lamb.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, well, largely we'll try to do We have
Speaker 1: a whole year to prepare for next time, so I
Speaker 1: look forward to see what we can pull off there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, So today we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: Texas teachers, how they're doing, how they're being trained, and
Speaker 1: what could change for them this legislative session. It's been
Speaker 1: a pretty tough few years for teachers. You know, you
Speaker 1: had COVID and twenty twenty greatly disrupting their classrooms and
Speaker 1: loading them up with new challenges. The political climate in
Speaker 1: schools has of course intensified in recent years, and you know,
Speaker 1: the last legislative session, a teacher pay raise bill failed
Speaker 1: after it got cut up in negotiations over school vouchers.
Speaker 1: During that time, we've seen a six significant shift in
Speaker 1: the workforce. The Charles Butt Foundation's twenty twenty four teacher
Speaker 1: poll found that more than three quarters of teachers considered
Speaker 1: leaving the profession in twenty twenty four. That's a twenty
Speaker 1: percentage point increase from twenty twenty and of the new
Speaker 1: teachers who have come in, more than half fifty two
Speaker 1: percent were uncertified. And that's a big topic that we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today. We have the perfect guests
Speaker 1: to discuss this. His name is Ryan Franklin. He's managing
Speaker 1: director of Philanthropy Advocates. He's a former Associate Commissioner for
Speaker 1: Education Leadership and Quality at the TEA. He was a
Speaker 1: policy advisor to two prior education commissioners and worked on
Speaker 1: the staff of former Republican State Senator Florence Shapiro, who
Speaker 1: was a legendary leader in public education in the state.
Speaker 1: And before all that, he was a classroom teacher. So
Speaker 1: welcome Ryan, thank you for joining.
Speaker 3: Us, Thanks so much for having me this super important topic,
Speaker 3: and glad.
Speaker 1: To be with y'all. Yeah, excited to talk about it.
Speaker 1: It's coming on a week where you know, we expect
Speaker 1: a vote in the House on the vouch your bill.
Speaker 1: But I think you could arguably make the case that
Speaker 1: this is just as important, if not more important to
Speaker 1: kind of the future of education in Texas, this turnover issue,
Speaker 1: the certification issue, and everything like that. So I want
Speaker 1: to start with that turnover, the unhappiness that was reflected
Speaker 1: in that poll that I mentioned, a poll that, by
Speaker 1: the way, I saw that number on a PowerPoint presentation
Speaker 1: that you gave a few months ago, which which maybe
Speaker 1: want you to come in here. What do you think
Speaker 1: is driving this is what has changed for teachers that
Speaker 1: is creating this situation in the state.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the teaching job has always been a demanding job
Speaker 3: with lots of competing priorities and pulling lots of different directions.
Speaker 3: I think coming out of the pandemic in particular, just
Speaker 3: the strain on the classrooms, students being out of the
Speaker 3: classroom for so long and then coming back and trying
Speaker 3: to get back in the flow of school. So we've
Speaker 3: heard a lot about classroom management challenges have really ramped up.
Speaker 3: We are in this tense political moment and it feels
Speaker 3: like education is frequently at the center of politicized debates.
Speaker 3: The demands are more, the pay has not kept up
Speaker 3: with inflation. They are surrounded increasingly by underprepared colleagues that
Speaker 3: they're having to kind of pull the weight for. And
Speaker 3: so it's just really created a pressure cooker for teachers.
Speaker 1: Right, and what that has created then as a situation
Speaker 1: where as I mentioned before, schools have been sort of
Speaker 1: desperate to fill teacher vacancies, right, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the things leading to the push of uncertified teachers. Before
Speaker 1: we talk about kind of what has allowed that to happen,
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about just like what folks
Speaker 1: call sort of the traditional route to becoming a teacher, Like,
Speaker 1: what is what happens? What is the kind of traditional
Speaker 1: way of preparing teachers for that classroom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the traditional way, the way that most of us
Speaker 3: think about how teachers were prepared, and most of us
Speaker 3: had teachers prepared this way was completing undergraduate degree at
Speaker 3: a university and then the last semester of your senior
Speaker 3: year you go in and complete a student teaching assignment,
Speaker 3: so you're in the classroom getting hands on practice with kids.
Speaker 3: Before you're turned loose. You have to complete certification exams,
Speaker 3: you complete years of training hands on experience while while
Speaker 3: in college. That has been the rarity for going on
Speaker 3: twenty years now, that has not been the predominant way
Speaker 3: we've prepared teachers for twenty or so years, that's been
Speaker 3: a declining portion of the population with the rise of
Speaker 3: alternative certification programs and now more recently with completely uncertified teachers.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now give me the alternative certified process. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The alternative certified is somebody who already has a degree,
Speaker 3: maybe their career changer. They're working in another field, and
Speaker 3: decide they want to change careers and come into education,
Speaker 3: and they really may or may not do some coursework
Speaker 3: in training, but for the most part, they are given
Speaker 3: the keys to a classroom and they are training on
Speaker 3: the job, but they are the teacher of record. They've
Speaker 3: got the full response disabilities of a teacher, and they're
Speaker 3: kind of dropped in and learning it on the fly.
Speaker 2: So I assume you went through the traditional I did. Okay, yes,
Speaker 2: and so then but then if I was like I'm
Speaker 2: done with journalism, I want to go somehow make even
Speaker 2: less money. I'm going to go be a public school teacher.
Speaker 2: And it's a district that needs, you know, teachers, What
Speaker 2: would I have to do to I'm putting aside the
Speaker 2: uncertified piece of this way, But like that, what's the alternative?
Speaker 2: I would go do some degree of course work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you would, You would enroll, you might or might
Speaker 3: not take an entrance exam, pretty basic admission requirements. Prove
Speaker 3: up that you've got a degree, and you enter that
Speaker 3: program and they match you or you match yourself with
Speaker 3: a job, and they are training you while you're in
Speaker 3: that program. So you may or may not have any
Speaker 3: coursework or training before you enter the classroom the first
Speaker 3: day of school. Here are the keys, here the grade book.
Speaker 1: Good luck. I would just like deposits head and like
Speaker 1: the way you looked at me when you said that
Speaker 1: about making less money.
Speaker 2: If I decided to leave journalism. Remember it's always a possibility.
Speaker 2: Uh No, I could not be a teacher.
Speaker 1: This.
Speaker 2: My sister is a teacher. And when I think about
Speaker 2: how I spend my days versus how she spends her days,
Speaker 2: it's it's a it's such a difficult, such an important job.
Speaker 2: I think, you know, like many teachers, she finds it
Speaker 2: very fulfilling, but it's really intense.
Speaker 3: I've done a lot of job since I left the classroom,
Speaker 3: but there's nothing more mentally, physically, emotionally draining every single day.
Speaker 2: The challenges. This is like such a minor thing. And
Speaker 2: I understand this is not like the main barrier teachers
Speaker 2: are facing. But I'm like, she can't just like go
Speaker 2: to the bathroom when she wants. And I'm like, we
Speaker 2: should be talking about that far more often we talked
Speaker 2: about teachers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're isolated, they're in the classroom, they you know,
Speaker 3: just it's a very can be a very isolating, lonely profession.
Speaker 2: And then the uncertified. Let's say, so he's traditional, I'm alternative.
Speaker 2: You can be uncertified in this example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so how does an uncertified teacher end up in
Speaker 1: the classroom these days?
Speaker 3: A district you pass a criminal background check and you
Speaker 3: have a pulse in a district is willing to hire you.
Speaker 1: That's it, all right, I have two for two. I
Speaker 1: can do it. Yeah, they too. Well, tell me then,
Speaker 1: what we should think about this, I mean, what is
Speaker 1: is there a preference between those three paths in your mind?
Speaker 1: Is there something that is better for the students and
Speaker 1: for the state to have a teacher that fits into
Speaker 1: you know, category A, B or C.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think there was a time when we didn't
Speaker 3: necessarily have the data to know for sure. I think
Speaker 3: we had hunches that hey, if you practice something, you're
Speaker 3: going to be better at it, but we didn't have
Speaker 3: the data over the last I would say five to
Speaker 3: seven years, we've gotten clear data that preparation matters, and
Speaker 3: teachers that are prepared in a traditional university based program,
Speaker 3: they get months worth of extra learning than an alternatively
Speaker 3: certified teacher, and they get even more than an uncertified teacher.
Speaker 3: So in terms of student learning, there's no question that
Speaker 3: the practice makes a difference. So it's not just the certification.
Speaker 3: It's really about there and having the hands on practice
Speaker 3: to do the job, and so it makes a real
Speaker 3: different in student learning. It also makes a real difference
Speaker 3: in how long those teachers stay in the classroom. As
Speaker 3: we've seen with uncertified teachers, it becomes a revolving door.
Speaker 3: And so districts that have relied increasingly on this population
Speaker 3: are then having to fill that vacancy almost every year
Speaker 3: because they have extremely high turnover rates, which not surprising.
Speaker 3: If it's a hard job, you're not prepared for it,
Speaker 3: they're just feeding you to the wolves.
Speaker 1: I'm reading from your PowerPoint presentation here and it says
Speaker 1: here students with good teachers are more likely to attend
Speaker 1: college and earn higher salaries. Replacing a teacher in the
Speaker 1: bottom five percent with an average teacher would increase the
Speaker 1: present value of students' lifetime income by approximately two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars per classroom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's substantial, and that's old research. It's old national research. Recently,
Speaker 3: Jacob Kirksey at Texas Tech has done a Texas look
Speaker 3: at this and had similar findings. The outcomes. It's not
Speaker 3: just a right now, are you learning math? Are you
Speaker 3: learning to read? It's a long term life outcome from
Speaker 3: having a well prepared teacher.
Speaker 2: But I imagine, like the other part is like watch it.
Speaker 2: I guess I'll ask this is like if you can't,
Speaker 2: if you don't have those well trained, certified teachers, is
Speaker 2: having any teacher better than no teacher?
Speaker 3: I think that's actually a question we should be talking
Speaker 3: about more, and nobody's talking about that. But I actually
Speaker 3: think it's a really good question because I think we
Speaker 3: could be staffing our schools in our classrooms differently with
Speaker 3: how we're assigning the teachers, and so if you've got
Speaker 3: you could have a bigger classroom with a really good
Speaker 3: teacher paired with an underprepared teacher, uncertified teacher maybe to
Speaker 3: manage it. So I think there's some innovation out there
Speaker 3: and there's some examples of this starting.
Speaker 1: To pop up.
Speaker 3: So I think on the baseline, most people say, no,
Speaker 3: of course not we need to put a person in
Speaker 3: the classroom to supervise the classroom. But I actually think
Speaker 3: it's a really good question and one we should be
Speaker 3: asking more interesting.
Speaker 1: How much of this is a Texas problem and how
Speaker 1: much of this is happening everywhere across the country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think coming out of the pandemic, everyone
Speaker 3: was facing challenges. I think what's DIFFERENTECH in Texas is
Speaker 3: just we had the statutory framework that allowed it to
Speaker 3: really be the wild wild West. So other places reduced
Speaker 3: their certification requirements are sort of backed off things. Texas
Speaker 3: just already had the law in place that said, you know,
Speaker 3: if you're in a district of innovation, which most districts are,
Speaker 3: they can hire you without any preparation or certification.
Speaker 1: And tell us a little bit about that district of
Speaker 1: innovation process.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so if you are meeting very baseline academic threshold,
Speaker 3: you can opt out as a district of certain statutory provisions.
Speaker 3: And two of the most common things that they've opted
Speaker 3: out of is requiring certification and requiring parental notification for
Speaker 3: uncertified teachers, because that's the other thing that's happened is
Speaker 3: this statute, in the absence of District of Innovation would
Speaker 3: presume that, hey, parents are being notified if you're if
Speaker 3: your kid doesn't have a certified teacher, that's also being waived.
Speaker 3: And so parents are kind of being you know, left
Speaker 3: uninformed and wondering, what's going on in my classroom? Why
Speaker 3: is this now? I happen to know ten layers deep
Speaker 3: on tea website where to go look to see if
Speaker 3: my kids teacher a certified. But I am not normal.
Speaker 1: And what you're sort of describing here is that the
Speaker 1: teacher the District of Innovation allows you to kind of
Speaker 1: go around that certification requirement. And so what we're seeing
Speaker 1: here is actually not necessarily half of all students, I mean,
Speaker 1: half of all teachers are being hired kind of evenly
Speaker 1: across the state is uncertified. What we were actually seeing
Speaker 1: is a lot of districts hiring very large numbers uncertified
Speaker 1: and others doing smaller I mean, once I that you
Speaker 1: mentioned seventy five percent of rural teachers actually are being
Speaker 1: hired as uncertified.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really I was a rural teacher, and the
Speaker 3: challenges are just different on finding people to work in
Speaker 3: rural schools, and it's so much more impact there in
Speaker 3: rural districts. And I think the other thing about this
Speaker 3: is by allowing the uncertified, unprepared individual in the classroom,
Speaker 3: it's removed the incentive from anyone to go get certified.
Speaker 3: So we've really seen our numbers drop off across the
Speaker 3: board of people pursuing any preparation route.
Speaker 1: Why was this sort of workaround created in the first place?
Speaker 1: What was the goal?
Speaker 3: So I can't really speak to what the intent there was.
Speaker 3: I think it was really built around creating more flexibility
Speaker 3: for traditional districts and giving them some of the flexibilities
Speaker 3: that charter schools had at the time, because charters have
Speaker 3: long been able to be sort of exempt from the
Speaker 3: preparation requirements. But in charters, parents go in knowing that
Speaker 3: the schools are prepared and set up to provide that
Speaker 3: structured curriculum and support there. So it's a little bit
Speaker 3: different environment from a charter and traditional district.
Speaker 2: So are there states, I mean you talk about the
Speaker 2: statutory framework in Texas. Are there states where like you
Speaker 2: are required to have you cannot have uncertified teachers.
Speaker 3: I think that's way more common than what we're dealing with.
Speaker 3: We've seen some states shortcut their certification or do temporary
Speaker 3: things to kind of get through the COVID crunch, But
Speaker 3: I am not aware of a site that is as
Speaker 3: lacks on the preparation and certification requirements as Texas.
Speaker 1: Interesting. All right, let's pause for a moment here from
Speaker 1: our sponsors, and then we'll talk about what might be
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Speaker 1: in our teachers, we invest in the future workforce of Texas.
Speaker 1: We believe teachers make the difference. Commit Partnership. Visit commit
Speaker 1: data dot org slash teachers to learn more about the
Speaker 1: teacher experience, turnovers, salaries, and more for your Texas county
Speaker 1: or school district. The Charles Butt Foundation enhancing education for
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Speaker 1: AFT in the fight at TEXASAFT dot org. Slash Together
Speaker 1: dash we dash thrive. Okay, So here's my question for you.
Speaker 1: What does the legislature think about this. What are is?
Speaker 1: Do lawmakers consider this a problem or a solution?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think we've sort of been on this
Speaker 3: arc of how they've talked about this has changed. So
Speaker 3: in the midst of the pandemic, we were talking about
Speaker 3: teacher vacancies, and so we had the governor really step
Speaker 3: out there in twenty twenty two and create this teacher
Speaker 3: Vacancy task Force. They people from all around the state
Speaker 3: came together really focused on the vacancy issue. Twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: legislature comes to town. They consider the teacher pay raise
Speaker 3: bill you mentioned, They consider really comprehensive supports, preparation incentives
Speaker 3: for candidates. Those things get to the five yard line
Speaker 3: and they don't get across. But bipartisan leadership on both
Speaker 3: sides and so interest in doing something about this problem.
Speaker 3: The narrative then sort of shifts to being about this
Speaker 3: uncertified teacher issue. And I think at first glance, people
Speaker 3: are like, well, it makes sense to give districts some flexibility.
Speaker 3: But as we've studied this issue and as we've seen
Speaker 3: the data come out, folks have really become clear our
Speaker 3: student achievement is sort of plateauing in the state, maybe
Speaker 3: losing ground a little bit, and I think folks see
Speaker 3: the connection between, Hey, if we're putting a substantial portion
Speaker 3: of our teachers having no preparation and no teaching experience
Speaker 3: in the classroom, it's going to have an impact on
Speaker 3: student learning. So I would say we've got a broad
Speaker 3: base of understanding from policymakers and an interest in doing
Speaker 3: something about it. Chairman Buckley in House Book Education, they
Speaker 3: had an interim charge. They had hearings on this, so
Speaker 3: they've studied that the Senate had worked on at the
Speaker 3: prior session and prior interim. So there is a kind
Speaker 3: of broad based awareness that this is a challenge in
Speaker 3: general consensus that we need to do something to close
Speaker 3: the loophole and build the supply of well prepared teachers.
Speaker 1: And it feels like there's there's sort of two options here.
Speaker 1: There's the carrot, you know, try to incentivize more people
Speaker 1: to become teachers, and the stick, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of requiring schools to hire certified teachers and things
Speaker 1: like that. It seems like maybe both options are being
Speaker 1: sort of considered in the legislature right now and might
Speaker 1: have a pretty good chance of getting through. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about the carrot at first, right. So the Senate
Speaker 1: has passed a teacher pay raise bill this legislative session.
Speaker 1: It is something, as I mentioned at the start of
Speaker 1: the show, that was blocked last legislative session. There was
Speaker 1: commitment to do it, there was funding in the budget,
Speaker 1: but it got sort of tied up with other kind
Speaker 1: of funding increases and was blocked by the governor essentially
Speaker 1: saying if you don't pass school voucher's school choice, then
Speaker 1: you can't have these other extra funds as well. We're
Speaker 1: back this session. As I mentioned earlier, they're going to
Speaker 1: vote tomorrow Wednesday on the school voucher bill. I think
Speaker 1: most people believe this time around is going to get through,
Speaker 1: and so maybe a teacher raise will get through. I'm
Speaker 1: going to read to you quickly the money that's at
Speaker 1: stake here. Districts in smaller schools, mostly rural schools, would
Speaker 1: receive bigger raises. Those with three to four experience would
Speaker 1: receive a three to four years of experience would receive
Speaker 1: a five thousand dollars raise. Five or more experience would
Speaker 1: receive a ten thousand dollars raise. That would be about
Speaker 1: half as much for the bigger districts, twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: for the less experienced, five thousand for the more experience.
Speaker 1: How much do you think that changes the equation in
Speaker 1: terms of teacher recruitment challenges that already exist.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it helps both with the recruitment but
Speaker 3: even more importantly with retention. So I think we've got
Speaker 3: to do something to try to catch our teachers who
Speaker 3: are in the classroom doing the work. We've got to
Speaker 3: stop the bleeding a little bit on attrition there, and
Speaker 3: so I think some sort of teacher pay raise makes
Speaker 3: a lot of sense. Governor Abbott named that as one
Speaker 3: of his emergency items, and so I think, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of momentum behind that. The structure of
Speaker 3: it looks a little different between what the house is
Speaker 3: thinking and what the sentence thinking, but there's definitely momentum there.
Speaker 3: So I think that's both to make it more viable
Speaker 3: for people to consider coming into the classroom, but even
Speaker 3: more important to help stem the attrition and keep people
Speaker 3: people in the classroom.
Speaker 1: The average national salary for teachers seventy one, six hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety nine dollars. In Texas, that number is sixty
Speaker 1: two four hundred and seventy for so we are considerably
Speaker 1: under the national average for teachers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I imagine you can't just say, right, like,
Speaker 2: no more uncertified teachers, right, like you have to fix
Speaker 2: the structural problems that brought us here, right, right, sort of?
Speaker 2: I presume your model for this, yes, right, I mean
Speaker 2: what around this needs to be fixed to make this
Speaker 2: not like, uh, you know, I cover healthcare, and so
Speaker 2: I think about like the corollary of like rural healthcare
Speaker 2: where it's like, obviously we don't have uncertified doctors, but
Speaker 2: like the result is that rural hospitals close.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I mean you can't just say, like snap your fingers,
Speaker 2: we need more providers, or we need more teachers in
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So that's why we have to build the supply.
Speaker 1: We've got to.
Speaker 3: If you close the loophole, you phase that out, then
Speaker 3: you instantly from day one, create an incentive for people
Speaker 3: to go back into preparation. Something like seventy percent of
Speaker 3: the uncertified teachers now have been an educator preparation program.
Speaker 3: They just left when they said, look what what am
Speaker 3: I paying you for? I can do the job and
Speaker 3: get this without so day one, those people can go
Speaker 3: back and they can get a temper a certification to
Speaker 3: get prepared while they're in there. What we've also got
Speaker 3: to do is we've got to bring traditional preparation back
Speaker 3: and so both the semester long student teaching like we've
Speaker 3: kind of thought about teaching in the past, but also
Speaker 3: kind of the newer model, which is a residency base,
Speaker 3: which is more to the medical point. It's a year
Speaker 3: long hands on you experienced the first day of school,
Speaker 3: the last day of school, and really getting those hands
Speaker 3: on experience. And we've got a number of programs in
Speaker 3: Texas and a number of schools that have done work
Speaker 3: in this, and so if we can create the incentives
Speaker 3: for the candidates to get certified, for the districts to
Speaker 3: hire and differentiate the compensation, then I think we can
Speaker 3: start to move people back in there in the preparation
Speaker 3: programs to offer these sort of high quality routes.
Speaker 1: What happened to the traditional route? Like why is it
Speaker 1: such a I mean, I used to cover a higher education.
Speaker 1: I would hear about like, you know, colleges of education
Speaker 1: just having declining student enrollment. But what's going on there
Speaker 1: that people aren't choosing that route anymore.
Speaker 3: It's a long time journey. But a couple of things
Speaker 3: happened in the eighties. One, they eliminated the education major
Speaker 3: in statute and so in Texas, yeah, so everybody had
Speaker 3: to get an academic major. And so that happened close
Speaker 3: in time to when we created alternative certification programs, and
Speaker 3: so over time, the alternative certification route was more flexible.
Speaker 3: You could get paid while receiving your training, and so
Speaker 3: more people moved to that as our student population has changed.
Speaker 3: Most students have to work while they're in college, and
Speaker 3: to take a semester off and not being able to
Speaker 3: draw an income while you're doing your student teaching. That's
Speaker 3: really hard sacrificed for most people to make. So we
Speaker 3: had a lot of people that go all the way
Speaker 3: through four years and then they would say, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: just not going to do my student teaching because I
Speaker 3: need to work, and then they would have paid for
Speaker 3: their teacher training and then paid for it again by
Speaker 3: entering in all alert program And so that's one of
Speaker 3: the things we're decided about some of this legislation to
Speaker 3: help compensate the candidates for their time in both traditional programs.
Speaker 3: And the year long residency and with additional waiting and
Speaker 3: funding for rural districts. We think, so that's some really
Speaker 3: smart rural proposals out there.
Speaker 2: I used to work in Pennsylvania, where like they had
Speaker 2: historically like this big network of teacher colleges that then
Speaker 2: became four year colleges but really emphasized continue to emphasize,
Speaker 2: you know, teaching degrees and education degrees. So it's so
Speaker 2: interesting to hear Texas, you know, around that time that
Speaker 2: they sort of were turning those two year teacher colleges
Speaker 2: into four year universities but continuing to really emphasize education.
Speaker 2: Like I knew a lot of people who just went
Speaker 2: to those universities because it was like the university they
Speaker 2: got into and ended up in a teaching program because
Speaker 2: it was so emphasized by the school versus sort of
Speaker 2: eliminating the education.
Speaker 3: It has come back, It came back in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 3: but it's you know, it had really changed in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a very recent Yes, Yes, I feel like
Speaker 2: where the issue is coming from. Yeah, I'm on expert.
Speaker 1: Yeah interesting, Yeah, so you talked about this already a
Speaker 1: little bit, but you know, there are there are provisions
Speaker 1: in the House bill that would essentially prevent districts from
Speaker 1: hiring teachers without certifications you talk to. There's a Senate
Speaker 1: bill that I think would do a similar thing. There's also,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, some funding to you know, help those
Speaker 1: help people get certified and things like that. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I kind of want to go back to what Eleanor
Speaker 1: was asking, which is, if there's not enough teachers and
Speaker 1: there's not enough certified teachers, are we not just creating
Speaker 1: a situation where it's going to make it harder for
Speaker 1: districts to hire teachers while we're already facing a shortage.
Speaker 1: I mean, how how do we? It seems to me
Speaker 1: like this could be a recipe for, just as you
Speaker 1: maybe mentioned, increasing classroom sizes, because we just don't have
Speaker 1: enough certified teachers to go around.
Speaker 3: If we don't both pieces, that's really the risk this session.
Speaker 3: I think we've got a great opportunity to do national leading,
Speaker 3: innovative kind of stuff in this space. But if we
Speaker 3: just closed the door without creating the incentives for quality,
Speaker 3: we will have really missed an opportunity and sort of
Speaker 3: set people up for failure. That's why I really think
Speaker 3: It is the carrot and the stick. Because districts are
Speaker 3: hiring people. They are hired forty four thousand people last
Speaker 3: year something like that, So they are hiring somebody in
Speaker 3: those classrooms. If we can create incentives to get those
Speaker 3: people prepared while building the pipeline long term, I think
Speaker 3: we can do that, but we can't. We really need
Speaker 3: to do both.
Speaker 1: So my sister also a teacher, actually a former teacher.
Speaker 1: She was a special education teacher among the teachers that
Speaker 1: are you know, most badly needed. She taught for multiple
Speaker 1: years and made the decision, this is her first school
Speaker 1: year to be outside of the profession. And you know, frankly,
Speaker 1: it wasn't a decision of you know, I need to
Speaker 1: go make more money. It was, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: feel respected in this job. There are so many kind
Speaker 1: of things coming at us from the state government, from parents,
Speaker 1: from everything else. You know, we are not being treated
Speaker 1: the way with the respect, you know, and the value
Speaker 1: that we provide to society. I get. One of my
Speaker 1: questions here is like this bill, these bills that we
Speaker 1: talked about don't necessarily address those issues. How much do
Speaker 1: you think that is factoring into this challenge. Additionally, and
Speaker 1: is there anything that you know the state or schools
Speaker 1: can be doing about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's going to take everybody pull in
Speaker 3: the right direction. I've heard Chairman Creighton talk a lot
Speaker 3: about professionalizing teaching, and so I think preparation is a
Speaker 3: part of that, the paying compensation, but I also think
Speaker 3: the classroom supports and the workload demands that we put
Speaker 3: on teachers, and classroom management, discipline issues. All of these
Speaker 3: things add up. And I think Charman Creighton's got kind
Speaker 3: of a series of three bills that work together on this,
Speaker 3: and that's really how he's talked about the legislation. We
Speaker 3: really appreciate him trying to take a comprehensive approach to it,
Speaker 3: not trying to just do one part of the continuum,
Speaker 3: but really trying to address it holistically.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, we will see what happens. It's going
Speaker 1: to be an interesting week and an interesting month and
Speaker 1: a half in education in this legislative session. So thank
Speaker 1: you Ryan for joining us on this podcast. Thank you
Speaker 1: to eleanor Into, our producers, Rob and Chris, and particularly
Speaker 1: Rob the composer of our theme music. Thank you to
Speaker 1: our sponsors Texas AFT, the Charles Butt Foundation, raise your
Speaker 1: hand Texas in the Commit Partnership. We will talk to
Speaker 1: you all next week.