Austin ISD Trains Its Own Teachers: 464 Uncertified Core Teachers Are on the Path to Certification Before the 2029-30 Deadline
Texas will bar uncertified teachers from core classes by the 2029-30 school year. Austin ISD's answer is a residency that puts trainees in high-need classrooms for a full year — and its uncertified share has already fallen from 11 percent to 5 percent.
AUSTIN — Austin ISD is training its way out of a deadline. Under a state-required plan, the district aims to move 464 uncertified core-subject teachers into full certification before Texas bars uncertified teachers from core classes — math, reading, science and social studies — in the 2029-30 school year, the Austin Current reported Monday.
The district's position has already improved on its own numbers: the share of uncertified teachers fell from 11 percent in 2025-26 to 5 percent this school year, according to October Austin ISD figures cited in the report. The 2025 Legislature limited the Districts of Innovation exemptions that had let districts staff core classes with uncertified teachers, and Austin ISD's plan asks the state for a delay to fall 2029 to finish the transition.
The pipeline is a residency. This year's cohort — 14 residents from the University of Texas at Austin and five from Texas State, with Texas Tech a past partner — trains for a full year at high-need campuses. More than 60 percent of residents who have worked in Austin schools through the program have stayed on to teach in the district after certification.
The placements now target the hardest seats to fill: special education, high school and secondary STEM. The stakes are not abstract — two Austin ISD campuses triggered state intervention this year after five failing ratings, and nine more could receive a fifth failing rating by the end of this school year.
