May 27—It’s no secret that Texas public schools are losing teachers.

Between the fall of 2022 and fall 2023, the attrition rate reached a historic high of 13.4%, according to data collected and published by the Texas Education Agency.

Trend watchers say the reasons are varied. The COVID-19 epidemic forced schools across the country to quickly transition their classrooms to virtual learning spaces, an effort that tried the patience and bandwidth of educators and families. A fractious political environment saw public education targeted by critics who say it indoctrinates students, or worse, makes them vulnerable to predators. More recently, state lawmakers deadlocked over Gov. Greg Abbott’s push for school vouchers in a legislative session that didn’t bring increased school funding.

As seniors walked across the stage at commencement last week — or as they get ready to graduate this week — they leave districts that are closing campuses and implementing hiring freezes as budgets pinch tighter and tighter.

So what are Texas school administrators to do?

It turns out that a growing share of school districts are hiring teachers who are alternatively certified, meaning they are hiring teachers who didn’t take the traditional path of earning a four-year degree in education and then maybe adding a master’s degree or doctorate to that.

In Denton, and getting career changers into the classroom

Denton is home base for iteach Texas, a growing alternative certification company working to help people who are either changing careers or looking for an off-ramp from the corporate grind. Alternative certification programs also capture workers who have retired from a career but aren’t ready to be totally out of the workforce.

Andrew Rozell, president of iteach Texas, talked to the Denton Record-Chronicle last June just after North Texas school superintendents gathered for a “Mayday” press conference pressing lawmakers to pour resources into their districts with a new school finance bill.

“We’re advocates to celebrate teaching,” he said. “And I think that it’s crucial that the message that we provide is, ‘Yes, teaching is hard, but the work is worth it.’ Teaching is unlike almost any other profession in the actual impacts you get to have on a day-to-day basis. And so we want to celebrate that and promote and empower and elevate the entire teaching profession.”

Rozell describes iteach Texas as an alternative to the brick-and-mortar university model of teacher education. The for-profit company sought out the approval of the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation, which is the national accrediting body for many teacher preparation pathways through university programs.

“There’s always been a stigma around alt cert, so we said, ‘How do we combat that?’ And so we went to CAEP and said we want to become accredited. And to this date, we are the first and only non-university to ever achieve a CAEP [accreditation],” Rozell said.

University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University education preparation programs are accredited through the the Texas Education Agency, but Dallas Baptist University, Midwest State University and Texas Tech are among the state colleges who are accredited through the council.

As of May 26, iteach is still the sole alternative certification organization in Texas to hold its accreditation through the national council.

Programs like iteach Texas do use application metrics to weed out people who wouldn’t succeed. In fact, iteach certifies college graduates and — while the program is virtual — candidates do get instruction experience.

“Individuals that go and get a degree in math, they know their content,” Rozell said. “So let’s take their knowledge of math. They come to us and we can tell them and train them how to actually teach what’s already in their head.”

The U.S. Department of Education reports that the nation is experiencing a teacher shortage. The growth of programs like iteach Texas reflect that in their growth alone. Since it was founded in 2003, iteach Texas has expanded into 14 states.

A teacher’s perspective

Holly Van Eynde teaches English at Ryan High School.

Education was always important in her family. Her father is a college professor, and she was on the same path. She’d finished graduate school and, to get a break from academia, Van Eynde got a corporate job. Then she had two or three friends who earned an alternative certification.

“I essentially called one of my friends one day and I said, ‘I’m not happy sitting in front of a computer. I can’t.’ I am well-spoken. I can write a great email, but I just can’t write 100 emails a day,” Van Eynde said.

A friend told her to think about getting certified and to consider the Denton-based iteach Texas.

“I think at the time, it was about price, certainly,” she said. “But also it was about the fact that my buddy said they were very communicative. They give good feedback. And both of those were very important to me.”

Van Eynde said she started working as a substitute teacher while she was going through the program and picked up a lot of instruction experience to put toward the program. She also worked as a teacher’s aide, another way to be in the thick of the classroom and apply her education in real time. At Texas State University, she’d served as an adjunct professor and a teaching assistant.

Teaching English for Denton ISD isn’t the same as teaching college students, but Van Eynde said she’s discovered a lot of rewards and finds the classroom exciting and engaging.

“I know a lot of people call it a thankless job, but it doesn’t feel that way to me,” she said. “My students, they certainly don’t thank me for teaching them, but they’ll give me a drawing. They’ll tell me I’m their favorite teacher. I had a student … who brought in an email that they wrote to one of their other teachers, and they said ‘Miss V, I want you to see this email I wrote to one of my teachers,’ because I did a whole section on the importance of how to write a well-written email … and I looked at it I was like, ‘You did incredible. This is … a perfect email. I’m so proud of you.'”

Van Eynde recalled a quiet student she wanted to reach, but she couldn’t tell if she was succeeding. He moved on, and one day dropped by her classroom to ask her help on an assignment. Van Eynde said she encouraged him to sit down with his new English teacher.

“He was like, ‘Yeah, I could do that, but I trust you,'” she recalled. “It’s never necessarily a ‘thank you,’ but it is them learning to trust you. It’s them showing you a light bulb going off where you can just see it in their eyes.”

When asked if she plans to build a career as a high school teacher, she pauses. She thinks teenagers are fun to work with, and she enjoys watching them discover new ideas and understand literature and language. And then she mentions the factors that have caused some teachers to pack it in.

“I love, love, love teaching,” she said. “If the pay were better, I know I would never leave this job. That I would be here forever. But sometimes the pay doesn’t feel sustainable in the long run, and so, you know, it’s hard to say. I know that I will be in education of some sort for the rest of my life.”

The impact on local classrooms

For systems like Denton ISD, staffing can be a challenge. Schools are under construction and renovation, and officials passed a billion-dollar bond in 2023 to afford new schools and infrastructure.

But every new school will need qualified, certified teachers.

Jason Rainey, the interim assistant superintendent at DISD, said that while public school leaders tend to prefer teachers certified through the traditional pathway of a bachelor’s degree in education, there are talented teachers who get into the door through alternative certification programs.

“Since I’ve been in HR for eight years, there’s been a decrease in the number of students that are leaving high school and going into the university for the traditional pathway for teaching,” Rainey said.

The district only tracks alternatively certified teachers if they have alternative certification the year they were hired, Rainey said. Some teachers get a standard certificate after getting alternatively certified, he said.

Using that metric, Rainey said Denton ISD hired 76 alternatively certified teachers for the 2020-21 year. In 2021-2022, the district hired 56. In 2022-23, they hired 63. This school year, the district hired 74.

“So, roughly, we’re right at about the same place we were four years ago, and fell off there in ’21-’22, but then back up a little bit. We’ll see where we are next year,” Rainey said.

Rainey said mentorship matters for beginning teachers regardless of how they are certified, though teachers with alternative certifications might glean more from such relationships. Denton ISD has programs to develop teachers with alternative certifications in a number of areas from instruction to planning.

Denton ISD, though, is putting more resources into identifying future educators while they are still on campus. The LaGrone Academy has a teaching program that has attracted the interest of the TEA. And this year, DISD launched a residency program in partnership with UNT. The university had a grant for $500,000 and put the dollars toward 25 of its students spending a year in Denton ISD classrooms. The program was a success with some of the residents joining the district in the fall, he said. The university and DISD are continuing the program with more students in 2024-25.

Rainey said he hopes parents who value qualified teachers will encourage their own children to consider the profession.

“I want to make sure that they’re really encouraging their kids that teaching is a great profession,” Rainey said. “I think that’s one of the things that is missing. So I think that’s one of the things that we can do, as parents, as educators. Everybody has a story about how at least one teacher or multiple teachers have impacted their lives to really mold them and help them be who they are today.”