Texas and Florida Are Canary in Coal Mine of Schools Run by Uncertified Teachers

Marvin Burton has taught public middle and high school in Prince George’s County, Maryland, for 19 years. Although he is a certified music and special education instructor, like thousands of other educators throughout the country, he has periodically been assigned classes in other subjects. The reason? Teacher shortages. This reality has caused school districts throughout the U.S. to try and fill vacancies any way they can, with many hiring unlicensed teachers or permanent substitutes, or requiring veteran teachers, like Burton, to teach out of their area of specialization.

Burton’s most recent reassignment took place during the 2020-2021 academic year when he was asked to teach sixth grade science. “I knew the science of music,” he told Truthout, “but I had to learn earth and environmental science on the job. I was teaching online because of COVID and I was lucky to have a good mentor, a science teacher who knew the subject matter inside and out.” Nonetheless, Burton admits that he often felt shaky about the course content he was expected to teach and paid out of pocket to attend several professional development workshops to enhance his knowledge. “I wanted to give my students the best possible education,” he said.

Burton is now back to teaching music and, as an active member of the National Education Association (NEA), he is advocating policies to strengthen the education workforce, maximize student learning and elevate teacher job satisfaction.

Among the biggest challenges is increasing the pool of qualified educators so that every vacancy is filled by a licensed teacher and no one is assigned to teach out of subject.

According to a report released by the NEA in October 2022, the current spate of teacher shortages is relatively new. Between 2001 and 2012, the NEA reports that the number of qualified teachers outpaced the number of job openings; during the next four years, 2012 to 2016, this began to change with new hires roughly equivalent to job openings. Then, in 2017, shortages ramped up, with the number of open positions exceeding the number of qualified applicants.

While no one knows the exact reasons for this change, education researchers point to numerous causes.

Tuan Nguyen, associate professor of educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Missouri, cites multiple factors as responsible for the decline. “Low teaching salaries are a factor, but in addition, teacher prestige has plummeted,” he told Truthout. “A lot of media accounts portray teachers as ‘groomers’ and ‘indoctrinators.’ This has had an effect on the number of people interested in studying education. Classroom working conditions have also deteriorated and there is a lot more being demanded of teachers than there used to be.”

Part of this involves budgetary shortfalls. Funding that was available to schools because of the COVID-19 pandemic dried up in September of last year, and Trump’s move to freeze spending and cancel contracts for school improvements — things like the purchase of electric school buses and the replacement of lead-tainted water pipes and fountains — has put development plans on hold.

But budget gaps have long been a feature of public school existence.

“States have been starving schools for a long time,” Stephanie Yocum, president of the Polk Education Association, told Truthout. “Teachers are not only being asked to prepare students so they do well on standardized tests, they’re also being asked to be guidance counselors, media specialists, nurses, disciplinarians and do administrative work. It’s driving people out of the field.”

Josh Bleiberg, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education, agrees, but adds that fear of violence has also contributed to the shortages. “Gun violence weighs heavily on many teachers,” he said. “Having to participate in active-shooter drills and caution students that violent attacks are possible has added pressure.”

These realities — low pay, loss of status, fear of violence and increased job demands — have done two things. Teachershortages.com, a website created by Nguyen, Bleiberg, and others to track the state-by-state shortfall, estimates that this year alone, 49,000 teacher staffing positions have gone unfilled nationwide. “This is likely an underestimate as some reports are out of date, and some states do not have any information on teacher vacancy,” the site concludes. Moreover, approximately 400,000 positions have been filled by people who are underqualified.

“There’s a genuine quandary,” Bleiberg said. “On one hand, it seems straightforward that we would want every teacher to be credentialed, but on the other hand, there is a great teacher shortage.” This shortage impacts every state, but the deficits are most acute in special education, science, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) and bilingual education classes.

Furthermore, the National Center for Education Statistics notes that there are also shortages in school transportation and on-site tutoring staff, with the highest number of teacher and support staff vacancies in schools attended by low-income children of color.

The consequences are dire. The Education Trust, a national policy and advocacy group, reports that Black and Brown students bear the greatest burden of the shortages since they are more likely to study with inexperienced teachers. While many of these teachers are excellent, disparities in school funding, a pervasive lack of resources and a lack of mentorship cause tremendous turnover. The Education Trust concludes that this has a deleterious impact on student achievement and learning: “High turnover creates instability,” making it difficult for schools to create coherent instruction and to implement new initiatives,” the group reports.

Hannah Putman, managing director of research at the National Council on Teacher Quality, confirms that allowing unqualified people to teach creates a revolving workforce. “When states put underqualified people in classrooms, the premise is that anyone can be a teacher. It’s not true,” she told Truthout. “To be a successful teacher, a person needs to not only know the subject matter but also understand that teaching is about building relationships. Yes, you need content knowledge, but teaching is about making sure that students are learning every day.” This requires preparation and skill development, qualities that cannot be mastered by reading a book, watching a video, visiting different websites or enrolling in short online certification programs that promise to make someone teacher-ready in eight to twelve weeks. “Teachers who feel like they’re effective in the classroom have much more motivation to stay in the field,” she says.

Both Texas and Florida prove Putman’s point.

The Dallas Morning News reported in January that 56 percent of new teachers hired by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) in 2024 were unlicensed. (The TEA did not respond to Truthout’s request for an interview.)

The TEA calls this enhancing school “flexibility” and “creativity,” but a study conducted by researchers at the University of Texas-Austin found that 30 percent of unlicensed hires leave education within their first year on the job, a phenomenon that leads to both lower student achievement and significant learning gaps. This finding was corroborated by researchers at Texas Tech, who reported that kids lose between three and four months of learning when they have an inexperienced and uncertified teacher.

Nonetheless, the hiring of unlicensed instructors has been the TEA’s modus operandi for a decade. In fact, Texas became one of the first states — the others have since all followed suit — to allow unlicensed teachers into the classroom when, in 2015, its state legislature opened what it called “Districts of Innovation” to give traditional public schools some of the “flexibility” that charter schools have regarding class size, teacher credentialing and the length of the school year. At the time, the average salary for TEA teaching staff was $51,892, or $69,550 in 2025 when adjusted for inflation.

The upshot has been a massive influx of unlicensed educators, with “newly hired uncertified teachers” doubling or even tripling in some districts.

And then there’s Florida. The Florida Education Association (FEA) reports that despite a 16 percent increase in the number of teachers assigned to instruct out-of-subject classes since 2022, halfway through the 2024-2025 school year, nearly 4,000 instructional positions throughout the state remained unfilled. This, while the Sunshine State leads the nation in book bans, restrictions on allowable pre-K to public college curricula and an open door to encourage uncredentialed educators to become classroom teachers. According to Florida TaxWatch, “Florida ranks 50th nationwide in teacher pay, with a critical shortage affecting students across the state. Despite recent efforts, teacher salaries have actually decreased by 15.7% over the past decade when adjusted for inflation.”

Still, a flurry of activity has been unleashed to bring new — unlicensed — educators into the classroom.

For example, military veterans are granted exemptions for entering the teaching profession and the Florida Department of Education (DOE) boasts that it will award a five-year temporary teaching certificate to those with an honorable or medical discharge — even if they have not completed college. The only requirements are having completed 60 college credits with a minimum GPA of 2.5 and passing both a background check and a “subject area examination.” What’s more, since July 1, 2024, people over the age of 18 have been able to teach in “classical schools” that focus on “the principles of moral character and civic virtue.” The Florida DOE notes that these schools base their curriculum on the “classical trivium”: grammar, logic and rhetoric. Teachers do not need a degree to be hired but must file an “affidavit” affirming that they will “uphold the principles incorporated in the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Florida.” Classical schools — the ultraright-wing Hillsdale College developed the model that stresses rote memorization and uses a curriculum focused almost exclusively on the Western canon — have opened in 50 Florida cities including Ormond Beach, Miami, Sarasota, Tampa and Vero Beach. Politico reports that they have enrolled 13, 892 students.

Classical schools also operate in Texas.

Public schools in Florida, meanwhile, are struggling. Andrew Spar, FEA president, told Truthout that teacher shortages have led to an increase in class sizes. “The Florida Constitution caps K to third grade classes at 18 students, fourth to eight grade at 22 and high school at 25, but the legislature took away the penalties for schools that violate this. Districts used to lose money if they did not honor required class sizes but no more.”

In addition, Spar said that when teachers resign during the school year, it is not uncommon for a long-term substitute teacher to give the kids worksheets to complete in lieu of real instruction.

“Teaching has always been a sacrifice, but it used to pay enough to make ends meet. Teachers teach because they care. They want to give back and make a difference in kids’ lives. Now we’re told, ‘Don’t nurture relationships. Don’t go out and get a book about what it means to be a newcomer to the U.S. Don’t use books about Black, Latinx or LGBTQIA people.’ Teachers are no longer able to connect with kids in meaningful ways. They’re frustrated. This dissatisfaction, mixed with low pay, is driving people out of the profession,” Spar said.

Union leader Stephanie Yocum calls it “a toxic environment.”

“Our county alone has between 200 and 300 teacher vacancies that we cannot fill,” she told Truthout. “We’re staffed by about 700 permanent substitutes — 150 in special ed and ESOL, and 550 scattered throughout the county; this is 10 percent of the total workforce. The deficit is particularly bad for math and science classes; some middle school students have never had a certified teacher in these subjects.”

Rachel Zemach, a deaf former teacher of deaf children and the author of The Butterfly Cage, is particularly incensed by the impact the shortages are having on children with disabilities.

“I don’t think it’s done maliciously, but the end result is that kids lose years of their lives, time that is meant for them to be educated,” she told Truthout. “The world is already harsh to people with any kind of disability, but when kids graduate without being able to read or write well, it can limit their future.” Disabled students, she adds, know that many of their teachers underestimate them and treat them with condescension, which makes learning even more difficult.

Changing this attitude, she said, is key to creating the welcoming, inclusive community that teachers and administrators say they want. But there are other things that need to change as well, and teachers, union activists, community members and parents’ groups have clear recommendations for ending the teacher shortage and ensuring that every child has access to a high-quality public education.

“I have always worked in Title 1, high-poverty schools, and my students know that I work incredibly hard to give them a good education,” Marvin Burton told Truthout. “But my example — including paying for supplemental training myself — should not be the model. Many teachers leave the profession because they are assigned subjects they don’t want to teach and don’t feel competent to teach. I know the stress they feel. COVID exacerbated what was already happening, and the virus pushed me to take the advocacy trail.”

That trail has included working with the NEA to oppose federal cuts to education and push back against universal voucher programs. It has also meant that he works long hours to make sure that his students have the skills they need to succeed. “Middle school is where students get into programs to start preparing for high school,” he says. “If they miss algebra, but are then put into a geometry class, we’ve done them a disservice and they will ultimately be unprepared for college or the workforce.”

Attracting new students to the field of education is another essential, he says, but this will require once again making teaching a desirable profession and a meaningful career path.

The Trump administration will not make this easy. Proposals to gut the federal Department of Education, impose universal voucher programs to undermine public schools and provide block grants to states, without special carve-outs for special ed or ESOL instruction, are being floated at the same time that teachers continue to be smeared as pedophiles and purveyors of “wokeness.”

“We need people who care about public education in elected office,” Spar says. “As a union, [FEA is] focused on policy and is zeroing in on inequities between what happens in charter schools, public schools and voucher programs. The overwhelming majority of kids in the U.S. go to public schools, and they deserve to be taught by teachers who are well-compensated and respected. When teachers don’t stay on the job, the turnover has an adverse impact on student learning, but when teachers and administrators know the families, know the community, kids excel. This should be something that everybody wants.”