2025 Policy Impact: Workforce of the Future

Expanding the Promise of a Texas Diploma

Between 2021 and 2031, Texas will see nearly 1.7 million job openings each year, mostly from new jobs and retirements. Of those new jobs, nearly 1 million are expected to require some level of postsecondary credential.2 To succeed in today’s workforce, students need a strong foundation in the fundamentals and access to credentials that lead to high-wage, high-demand jobs.

More than 60% of jobs in Texas require some postsecondary education or training, but only around one in three Texas high school graduates are attaining this within six years of graduation.

But that is changing.

The Texas Legislature has changed the course of public education in Texas, amending the Texas Education Code to prioritize equipping students who graduate from a Texas public high school with the skills and credentials necessary to succeed as adults. The Legislature has also enacted transformational community college finance reform over the past several years, creating a system that will support regional economies across our state.

Improving educational outcomes and preparing Texans for successful careers is critical to our state’s future success. We have worked closely with state officials as they have redefined the goals of public education in Texas to explicitly include career readiness and credential attainment. And we have supported updated state financing systems to focus funding on strategies that lead to student success.

Prior to this year’s legislative session, our efforts helped contribute to this change through supporting the modernization of the Texas Permanent School Fund, the state’s investment fund for public schools, which is yielding record-setting funding for Texas public schools. Our efforts have also supported over $500 million to provide high-quality instructional materials to schools and teachers and a $691 million investment in overhauling community college finance to better align with workforce demand, placing Texas at the forefront of national higher education reform.

Following the 2023 legislative session, a sizable budget surplus presented Texas with an opportunity to take more meaningful steps to improve public education by applying resources in smart, targeted ways. At Texas 2036, we seized on this opportunity to advance policy recommendations that could move the needle for kids across the state.

Texas 2036 backed interim committee charges studying how to expand access to work-based learning and credential attainment in fields that lead to family-sustaining wages, while also preserving postsecondary opportunities. We also backed efforts to assist state and local initiatives to increase mathematics achievement and ensure Texas is a national leader in math proficiency. And we supported studying the district and state policy changes and investments that would be needed to increase the number of students reading and doing math at grade level by the end of third grade.

Following the release of the formal House and Senate interim charges in 2024, we engaged heavily in committee hearings as expert resources and advocates for expanding the number of certified teachers and improving student achievement in both reading and math. We also published issue briefs and in-depth reports, including:

Individual Economic Opportunity is a Core Purpose of Public Education

Key legislation adopted by the Texas Legislature this year reorients public education, from early childhood through high school, toward a common goal of producing graduates with the knowledge, skills and experience to step into high-wage, high-demand careers.

These efforts are bolstered by the development of a strong and stable teaching workforce underwritten by the largest teacher pay raise in state history, expansion of the successful Teacher Incentive Allotment program, and carefully targeted investments in high-quality teacher preparation pathways, residency programs and mentorship models.

Teachers are the single most important in-school factor in a child’s education. Yet, Texas faces a growing crisis in the retention and preparation of highly skilled and prepared teachers. In 2024, more than half of new teachers statewide — and 75% in rural districts — entered the classroom without certification or formal preparation.

The data is clear: students taught by uncertified teachers lose up to three months of learning in math and four months in reading, putting them at a disadvantage both academically and in their future careers.

The new Teacher Retention Allotment ensures that experienced teachers — those with three to five years in the classroom, and especially those with more than five years — see meaningful salary increases, keeping those teachers who are experienced and “hitting their stride” in Texas classrooms while also closing the pay gaps that exist between smaller rural and larger suburban districts.

This is an essential step in keeping highly qualified teachers in the profession. Furthermore, the expansion of the Teacher Incentive Allotment enhances district-led strategic compensation programs, allowing top-performing educators to earn between $3,000 and $36,000 annually in additional pay and giving teachers a path to earning six-figure incomes. An expansion to the Teacher Incentive Allotment program will further increase incentive-based compensation for districts that evaluate principal and assistant principal performance as well.

The Legislature also invested in training, identification and intervention in early literacy and numeracy, providing critical resources to our schools and teachers so they are well equipped to provide students with strong academic foundations.

Literacy and numeracy skills are correlated with academic and postsecondary success, as well as increased wages. Today, only 49% of Texas third graders are reading at grade level, and just 44% are on track in math.

Starting next school year, districts will have to start identifying students struggling with math and reading as early as kindergarten and provide struggling readers with interventions and support. For the first time ever, elementary math teachers will also be provided targeted training in mathematics instruction to increase the quality and effectiveness of mathematics education.

Just as these policies will better prepare students for success in high school, the Legislature acted to better prepare students for life after high school by reorienting Texas high schools around a dual mission: college and career readiness.

By expanding access to high-impact Career and Technical Education (CTE) models and scaling the Pathways in Technology Early College High School (P-TECH) and Rural Pathway Excellence Partnership Program (R-PEP) — programs proven to significantly improve student outcomes — state law further embeds career preparation into the high school experience.

Additionally, the bill enhances transparency and accountability by requiring disaggregated outcome data and measurable district-level goals, so Texans will know that the programs are working.

Since its founding in 2019, the Rural Schools Innovation Zone (RSIZ), an R-PEP program in South Texas, has produced impressive outcomes for students, often significantly outpacing statewide metrics.

Between 2019 and 2022, the percentage of students in RSIZ districts graduating with industry certifications increased by 45.5 percentage points. The percentage of graduates designated college, career, or military ready increased from 81.2% to 91.6% — 21.6 percentage points higher than the state average.

The percentage of graduates in RSIZ districts who completed a dual credit course skyrocketed from 9% before RSIZ to 58.9% in 2022 — an increase of 49.9 percentage points and over double the state average of 24%.

“This Legislature built on last session’s landmark community college reforms, which are already a national model, setting Texas up for years of continued economic strength and job growth.”

John Hryhorchuk
Senior Vice President of Policy and Advocacy