Lawmakers want to expand Texas’ teacher pay raise program. Many educators will still be left out.

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JoMeka Gray spent many evenings away from her family to complement her salary as a kindergarten teacher, earning extra cash by caring for aging adults. Her credit cards were maxed out, and she sometimes worried about not having enough gas to get to school. She knows she was not alone — other teachers found side gigs baking cookies, designing T-shirts or working at nightclubs to stay afloat.

But life began to change a few years ago when Gray, who teaches at Kennedy-Powell Elementary in the Temple Independent School District, started earning pay increases through a state program that incentivizes educators who demonstrate that they have improved their students’ academic outcomes. Thanks to Texas’ Teacher Incentive Allotment, she now makes $20,000 more than she used to, which she said allows her to give “my students my full Mrs. Gray.”

“It's hard to be a teacher when your heart is in it, but your mind isn't in it because you have to go work extra jobs or you have to pick up extra debt just to make sure ends meet,” she added.

This year, Gray, the Elementary Teacher of the Year for her region, hopes lawmakers will expand the incentive pay program to help more teachers — a proposal that has gained traction as part of a multibillion-dollar public school funding package making its way through the Texas Legislature.

But while participants rave about the program, many teachers and school leaders remain skeptical about it. Rural district leaders say they lack the administrative resources to adequately manage it. Others worry that the incentive and its emphasis on student testing could foster a culture of unhealthy competition and resentment among colleagues.

The Teacher Incentive Allotment program’s merit-based structure means not everyone benefits. Only about 25,000 teachers — out of nearly 400,000 in Texas — currently receive pay raises under the initiative. Less than half of more than 1,200 districts participate.

Many educators warn that focusing too much on testing and performance leaves out teachers doing their best to educate children with varying needs and capabilities. Others raise concerns about the program’s exclusive focus on classroom teachers, which excludes essential school support staff who contribute to children’s instruction and learning.

State lawmakers’ proposed legislation would include changes to aid districts in administering the program, and education officials have said they are working on ways to help campuses better identify deserving teachers. But as schools across Texas struggle financially, even participants happy with the program say additional solutions are necessary to recognize the efforts of everyone involved in helping students succeed.

“I love the program because I love being able to do what I can to help those teachers who have excelled,” said Mandy Traylor, superintendent of the Veribest Independent School District, a rural community east of San Angelo. “But it really does concern me if this is the only way they see funding schools or providing teachers with the extra that I feel like they deserve.”

Positive feedback and lingering doubts

Since the introduction of the Teacher Incentive Allotment in 2019, Texas has sought to put more educators on a pathway toward a six-figure salary, an ambitious endeavor that follows many years of performance pay efforts across the country.

Texas’ program, which education policy experts consider a national model, gives public school districts the option, with approval from the state education agency, to create a local incentive pay system largely designed to their liking. Districts determine which teachers and campuses can participate in the program, measuring their effectiveness through observations and student growth.

The observations generally involve school administrators visiting the classroom several times during the school year and grading teachers on certain criteria. Schools typically measure students’ academic growth through exams administered at different points in the year, focusing on how big of a leap each child took over that time span.

Successful teachers receive a “recognized,” “exemplary,” or “master” designation, which they can maintain for five years. Pay hikes range from $3,000 to roughly $32,000 a year, depending on the designation teachers receive and where their schools are located. Higher raises flow to educators working with children in rural or high-poverty areas.

A Texas Tech University study examining outcomes among the first cohort of 26 participating districts suggested a positive effect on teacher retention and a moderate impact on student achievement. Researchers described the findings as “good news to Texas policymakers,” many of whom hoped the merit program would push more effective teachers toward communities with the highest academic needs.

But six years in, the state’s recruiting pitch has left many unconvinced.

When Texas began rolling out the Teacher Incentive Allotment, officials in the Springlake-Earth Independent School District underwent training for the program and presented it to their educators for feedback on whether it should join.

The message they got back was clear: Teachers wanted no part of it.

“It wasn't even close,” said Superintendent Denver Crum, adding that even those who most likely would have qualified for pay raises “were not for it because they didn't want that type of division.”

Crum worries that in his rural West Texas community, where teachers grow and work closely together, and where administrators lack specialized staff to oversee and run complex initiatives like the Teacher Incentive Allotment, implementing the program would foster more harm than good.

He also expressed concerns about the program’s use of testing as a measure of teacher effectiveness. The superintendent noted that students’ diverse backgrounds and needs — many kids have language barriers, some may not consistently have enough food to eat and others just may not test well — can significantly impact the pace of their growth. Good teachers also have bad days.

“The idea behind it is sound, that your best teachers should be rewarded,” Crum said. “I don't know that this system is capable of doing that.”

The Texas Education Agency says it plans to continue working with school districts on implementing systems that account for different forms of teacher and student success. Matthew Holzgrafe, the agency’s director of district talent systems, emphasized that education officials see tracing student growth as a more equitable way of accounting for kids’ learning differences, as opposed to only evaluating their performance at a single point in time.

Many districts rely on testing to track progress, Holzgrafe acknowledged, but he noted that the Teacher Incentive Allotment program allows the use of locally developed or third-party growth measures outside of test scores. He also said the agency works to help smaller districts overcome implementation barriers by providing regional support and technical guidance, with the goal of establishing local systems that identify the best teachers, promote collaboration and center professional development.

“I would say it's still growing. I would characterize it, though, as widely popular, and we have exceeded our own internal growth estimates consistently,” Holzgrafe said. “Compared to other sorts of programs, it is a poster child of adoption, and other pieces, because districts are seeing the benefit, and teachers are seeing the benefit.”

For many participants, fears they may have had when entering the program have not played out.

When Traylor, the Veribest district superintendent, started thinking about joining two years ago, it was becoming clear that public schools would not see a significant increase in funds as a consequence of the bitter fight over private school voucher legislation. That meant participating in the performance pay program was likely the only opportunity her teachers would have to make more money — and for the rural district of less than 300 students to remain an attractive employment destination.

The Veribest district crafted a plan: It would allow all teachers to qualify for raises, and the administration would take on the increased workload of running the program. Now, the only principal in the district, who presides over pre-kindergarten through high school, also manages duties for the initiative — from teacher evaluations to data submission.

Teachers have also bought in, even though only nine of the district’s 21 educators qualified for raises most recently. Worries that the program would lead to a tense environment of competition did not materialize. The superintendent attributes the lack of strife to the district’s efforts in recognizing the contributions of all teachers — not just those receiving a bigger paycheck.

“Every curriculum is different. Every year's class of students is different,” Traylor said. “I have some really incredible teachers that did not make it this year. I said, ‘But that doesn't mean you're not going to make it next year or the year after. This is a real thing, and you have potential to do this.’”

Having experienced how the program works, Traylor said she understands why rural school districts may shy away from participating, citing the need for them to be “extremely organized.” Her support for the program, she said, does not mean she thinks the incentive allotment is “a valid alternative to decent funding.”

“With so much dependent on everything being perfect, everyone having a good day on test day, and everyone giving it their all, I just feel like that's a gamble,” Traylor added. “If that's what we're depending on for teachers to receive an increase, that scares me.”

Some benefit, many are left out

Texas lawmakers designated teacher pay a top priority during this year’s legislative session.

The House’s spending plan would raise salaries by increasing schools’ base funding for each student from $6,160 to $6,555, the first boost they would receive since 2019. Forty percent of the money, known as the basic allotment, would pay for across-the-board raises for school staff, excluding administrators. Teachers with a decade or more of experience would receive the highest raises.

The Senate so far has opposed a base funding increase, which allows schools to not just raise pay for all full-time employees but also fund other critical needs, like utilities and insurance. Senators would instead prefer to give districts money to use strictly for teacher pay, with higher raises set aside for more experienced instructors working in smaller districts.

Despite the differences between their measures, both chambers are mostly aligned in their desire to grow the Teacher Incentive Allotment.

The proposals to expand the program would provide districts more technical support for implementation; make certain school administrators eligible while limiting when districts can provide across-the-board raises to teachers; qualify more instructors for the incentive; and increase the amount of money each participating educator gets. The highest performing teachers could receive up to a $36,000 pay bump.

But many educators worry that lawmakers’ enthusiasm for the program focuses too much on rewarding those it labels high-performing classroom teachers, without acknowledging the village of people in a school who contribute to students’ success.

They also feel that expanding the program will not solve what they see as a fundamental problem with performance pay: Qualified teachers will almost always be left out.

Only about 6% of 384,408 teachers in Texas receive raises through the Teacher Incentive Allotment — across fewer than 600 school districts — according to the most recent Texas Education Agency data.

The agency expects participation to grow by about 15,000 teachers and 200 districts in the next year, even without the new legislation. But even if the numbers play out as anticipated, the program would still leave out the overwhelming majority of teachers and about a third of districts.

Katelyn Damore, a bilingual content interventionist in Central Texas, works with roughly two dozen elementary students who struggle to read at grade level. Her job entails working with children in small groups and teaching foundational skills they need to catch up, or helping the school identify if any student has a learning disability and needs more direct instruction.

Her district participates in the incentive program but decided her role does not qualify for a pay raise, even though she performs similar work as other teachers who qualify. One reason districts may choose to exclude certain educators from participating is because of the difficulty finding reliable growth measures for non-core subjects.

“Of course we want to be viewed as being an amazing, effective teacher, and we want to see growth in our students,” Damore said. “It's great that they're thinking about teacher pay, in a way, to try to increase it to help with teacher retention. But I think it can kind of be backfiring when there are certain teachers who don't have access to it.”

Some teachers are particularly concerned with the Senate’s performance pay plan because it would eliminate automatic raises for those who complete the rigorous process of earning their national teaching certification, steepening the hill for educators to access the state program.

“If everybody does have access to it, then we're going to work together. We're going to collaborate and make each other better all along the way,” said Dixie Ross, a retired teacher who previously benefited from the Teacher Incentive Allotment and now helps others work on their national certification. “If it's a competitive situation where only five teachers can earn it, well, ‘I want to be one of those five, and I'm not going to help you because you might get it and I won't.’”

DeeDee Haralson, an academic trainer in the Judson Independent School District who is responsible for coaching and mentoring other teachers, boiled her frustration with the program down to a simple word: fairness.

“Just because I don't have students does not mean that I'm not helping students grow,” she said.

In response to the lingering concerns, Sen. Brandon Creighton, who chairs the Senate education committee, said that as the state tries to address a critical shortage in teachers, keeping educators happy in their jobs has to be a top priority.

“We're not creating the Teacher Incentive Allotment to leave the paraprofessionals behind, to in any way suggest that our bus drivers and our janitors, our counselors, those that work in the cafeteria, our librarians — that any of those personnel are any less of a priority,” he told The Texas Tribune. “But at the end of the day, we're seeing alarming trends across Texas of teachers leaving the profession, and so we're investing in ways that make sure that those dollars are driven to the classroom and that we keep teachers motivated to stay in teaching and not go to another profession.”

The Conroe Republican also noted that the incentive program is only a fraction of the Senate’s overall investment in teacher pay, educator preparation and public school funding.

Rep. Brad Buckley, the Republican chair of the House Public Education Committee, said he believes the proposed changes this session will help improve the program and bring more educators along.

“Teachers are starting to talk about it. And I've been to several campuses in my district that do it, and you see, really, a culture change,” Buckley said. “What we really like about that, and what we're seeing, is other districts are like, ‘Wait, they're doing it over here,’ and they're going to do it — because it also becomes a bit of a competitive factor between districts.”

The Dallas Independent School District, which lawmakers consider a poster child of the Teacher Incentive Allotment, implemented its own pay-for-performance system before the Legislature passed it into law six years ago, crediting the initiative with helping improve retention and offer competitive salaries.

But the program, district officials say, should not be considered a cure-all for the difficulties choking public education in Texas. In the six years that have gone by without the Legislature raising schools’ base, per-student funding, many districts have had to wrestle with challenges ranging from budget deficits and campus closures to declining enrollment and teacher shortages, without additional support.

“The more restricted the dollars are that are given, it's not going to help create a level playing field across the districts,” said Dallas ISD Superintendent Stephanie Elizalde, “which is what I think everybody is really wanting to make sure happens — that teachers everywhere are paid what they should be and students everywhere get the materials that they need.”

Texas ranks 46th in national per-student spending and 31st in average teacher salary, according to a 2025 report from the National Education Association.

Gray, the Temple elementary teacher who received a $20,000 pay bump from the merit pay program, said she fully supports lawmakers’ efforts to grow the Teacher Incentive Allotment this session and believes that Texas has already set a national standard for other states to follow.

Still, she believes, all teachers and support staff deserve “some type of a pay raise.”

She couldn’t do her job without them.

Disclosure: Texas Tech University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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