Texas Teaching Commission

Texas Teaching Commission

National and state research has confirmed what many of us know intuitively, that the single most important variable in student achievement and quality education is the quality of the individual teacher in a classroom. Texas has an abundance of district and state initiatives, legislative and administrative policies and grant programs, and local traditional and non-traditional K-12 and higher education efforts focused on recruitment, training, development, and retention of elementary and secondary teachers. However, most of these programs, policies, and initiatives operate in isolation with little alignment or cohesion between state policies and investments with local district implementation, investments, and quality control. The challenge is magnified by the pending retirement of a generation of baby boomer teachers in the next decade, and a shortage of teachers in high-need areas such as math, science, and bilingual education.

Educate Texas, a public-private initiative of Communities Foundation of Texas, has seen a desire for better information, strategies and ideas on how to align various state policies and local programs to better train, support, evaluate, and compensate our state’s teachers. The 82nd legislative session saw the introduction of several bills related to improving teacher preparation, evaluation, and compensation systems. Unfortunately, many policy proposals continue to be viewed in isolation from promising practices, research, or district initiatives. Similarly, many districts are embarking on ambitious reform paths without an understanding of state policy opportunities and barriers, with neither state policymakers nor local districts having a forum to consider the broader effects on the entire spectrum of teacher pipeline in Texas.

Educate Texas occupies a unique public-private arena that allowed us to convene stakeholders from education, policy, business and philanthropy to form the Texas Teaching Commission, and take a holistic look at the teacher continuum in Texas. Our goal was to support a thoughtful, generative dialogue on how to improve and align various programs and practices already in place. As a result, The Commission produced the report Supporting Students, Honoring Teachers: Recommendations for the Next Generation of Teaching Policy in Texas.