Abbott Sets Texas Classroom Commission Priorities Ahead of 2027

Estimated Time to Read: 16 minutes

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) has given the newly formed Texas Classroom Commission its first assignments, offering an early look at several public education issues likely to receive attention when the 90th Texas Legislature convenes in January 2027.

Abbott convened the Commission for its inaugural meeting at the Governor's Mansion on August 10, roughly a month after announcing its creation and less than two weeks after naming its members.

The teacher-led Commission will focus initially on three primary charges: improving student proficiency in math and reading, limiting screen time in classrooms, and identifying additional strategies to attract and retain high-quality teachers. Abbott also asked members to examine how parents can be better equipped to support their children's academic progress and how unnecessary administrative burdens can be reduced so teachers can spend more time on classroom instruction.

The Commission is expected to meet regularly before producing a report with legislative recommendations for the 90th Texas Legislature. Those assignments significantly narrow what began as a broad mandate to examine the future of Texas public education. They also provide a clearer indication of where some of the state's education policy debate may be headed in 2027.

Texas Classroom Commission Moves From Mission to Policy

When Abbott first announced the Texas Classroom Commission in July, its mandate was intentionally broad. The Governor's office said the Commission would develop practical, classroom-informed recommendations for Abbott, the Texas Education Agency (TEA), and the Texas Legislature.

Its composition was also significant. Rather than building another education advisory panel primarily around administrators, associations, consultants, or advocacy organizations, the Commission consists of current and former educators from across Texas. It is chaired by Courtney Boswell MacDonald, a former classroom teacher and current chair of the State Board for Educator Certification.

At the Commission's inaugural meeting, MacDonald said she wanted to ensure the teacher perspective had a meaningful place in the decision-making process.

The August charges now give that process direction. Instead of simply asking educators to identify problems across Texas public education, Abbott has put several specific questions before them.

How can Texas improve reading and math outcomes? What role should screens play in classrooms? Why do teachers leave the profession? How can parents become more involved in their children's academic progress? What administrative requirements are keeping teachers from teaching?

The answers could eventually become the basis for legislation.

Abbott’s Education Agenda Before the Commission

The Texas Classroom Commission is new, but many of the issues Abbott has asked it to examine have appeared repeatedly during his time as governor.

Education was among the first major policy priorities of the Abbott administration. In his first State of the State address in 2015, Abbott declared early education his first emergency item and set a goal of having Texas students reading and performing math at grade level by the end of third grade. His agenda included additional funding for qualifying high-quality pre-kindergarten programs as well as literacy and mathematics training for teachers.

Lawmakers subsequently approved House Bill 4 (HB 4), which established enhanced standards tied to additional pre-kindergarten funding. Abbott also signed legislation creating or expanding literacy, reading, and mathematics training programs for educators.

Education also has a personal connection to the Governor's family. Texas First Lady Cecilia Abbott was raised by two educators, earned a master's degree in education, and worked as a teacher, vice principal, and principal at Catholic schools. She also served on the State Board for Educator Certification from 2001 through 2008.

Four years after Abbott's initial early education push, the Legislature approved House Bill 3 (HB 3) in 2019. The sweeping school finance legislation included major changes involving school funding and property taxes, but it also made teacher recruitment, retention, and compensation a larger part of state education policy. Among its lasting initiatives was the Teacher Incentive Allotment, designed to provide substantially higher compensation to designated teachers and encourage effective educators to remain in the classroom.

The closest predecessor to the new Classroom Commission came in 2022, when Abbott directed the TEA to establish the Teacher Vacancy Task Force amid concerns about teacher recruitment and retention. Its final report, released in 2023, centered recommendations around three areas: compensation, training and support, and working conditions. The task force considered teacher pay and the Teacher Incentive Allotment alongside mentoring, teacher preparation, staffing models, and ways of better respecting teachers' time.

Several of those themes carried into the 89th Legislature (2025).

Abbott declared teacher pay an emergency item in 2025, and lawmakers ultimately approved House Bill 2 (HB 2), which included billions of dollars for teacher and staff pay raises and an expansion of the Teacher Incentive Allotment. The Legislature also enacted changes involving teacher preparation, classroom discipline, career and technical education, and other aspects of public education.

By June 2026, the state reported that more than $750 million in Teacher Incentive Allotment funding had been awarded to more than 65,000 teachers for the year, bringing total awards since the program's inception to more than $1.8 billion.

The Classroom Commission therefore does not begin with a blank slate. Its work represents another stage in a decade-long education debate that has gradually moved from early education and school finance toward questions about teacher retention, classroom conditions, administrative burdens, and measurable student outcomes.

Math and Reading Put Student Outcomes at the Center

Perhaps the most consequential Texas Classroom Commission charge is also the most straightforward: improve student proficiency in math and reading.

That charge comes as recent student performance data show different trajectories in the two subjects. Texas students have continued making gains in mathematics, while reading performance has remained comparatively stagnant.

The 2026 STAAR results showed continued improvement in math across several grade levels, extending gains that began after the significant learning losses experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Advanced mathematics pathways have also produced encouraging results, with students taking Algebra I before high school generally outperforming their peers on subsequent assessments.

Reading presents a more difficult picture.

Recent STAAR results have shown comparatively little improvement in reading proficiency, while national assessments have similarly raised concerns about Texas students' reading performance. The contrast suggests that the state's education challenges cannot necessarily be addressed through a single statewide strategy. Approaches that appear to be producing results in mathematics may not translate directly to reading.

There is also a notable historical parallel. Reading and math proficiency were central to Abbott's first education agenda in 2015, when he set a goal of having Texas students performing at grade level in both subjects by the end of third grade. More than a decade later, the Commission is being asked to revisit the same fundamental question of whether students are mastering core academic subjects.

That makes the Commission's work particularly relevant heading into the 90th Legislature. Rather than beginning with the assumption that additional spending or another statewide program is necessary, lawmakers should first examine where Texas is improving, where it is falling behind, and why.

The state's recent mathematics gains could provide useful lessons about instructional practices, advanced coursework, teacher preparation, accountability, or other reforms that are producing measurable results. At the same time, stagnant reading performance should prompt a closer examination of whether existing literacy initiatives are working as intended and whether state requirements or instructional approaches need to change.

That is important because education policy should ultimately be measured by outcomes. Texas has devoted substantial taxpayer resources to public education and enacted repeated reforms over the last decade. The Commission now has an opportunity to evaluate those policies against measurable student achievement and identify what is working, what is not, and what barriers may still stand between teachers and better academic results.

Classroom Screen Time Takes Center Stage

Abbott's decision to specifically charge the Texas Classroom Commission with examining classroom screen time is particularly notable because lawmakers only recently intervened in how students use personal electronic devices at school.

During the 89th Legislative Session (2025), lawmakers approved House Bill 1481 (HB 1481), creating a statewide requirement that school districts and open-enrollment charter schools adopt policies prohibiting students from using personal communication devices on school property during the school day. The law broadly covers devices such as smartphones, flip phones, tablets, and smartwatches, while providing exceptions for certain educational, medical, and safety needs.

Texas Policy Research (TPR) raised concerns throughout that debate that legitimate questions about student technology use were being answered with a statewide mandate rather than leaving greater discretion with parents, teachers, and local schools.

The Classroom Commission's new charge could take the debate in a different and potentially much broader direction.

House Bill 1481 specifically excludes electronic devices provided to students by school districts and charter schools. As a result, the law primarily addresses students' personal devices rather than the growing role of school-issued laptops, tablets, online assignments, educational applications, and other digital tools in classroom instruction. There is a difference between asking whether a student should be scrolling through a smartphone during class and asking whether the class itself should rely heavily on screens. The first question involves student behavior and classroom discipline. The second involves instructional methods, curriculum, technology spending, and the appropriate balance between digital and traditional learning.

Technology can expand access to educational materials and provide teachers with useful instructional tools. At the same time, policymakers have legitimate reasons to examine whether excessive reliance on screens contributes to distraction or displaces instructional methods that may be more effective for some students.

The Commission's teacher-driven structure could be especially useful in answering those questions. Classroom educators can identify where technology improves instruction, where it interferes with learning, and where decisions should remain with teachers, parents, and individual schools.

But the broader debate over who should make decisions about children's technology use should also serve as a caution against assuming that every concern requires another statewide mandate. If the Commission finds that excessive classroom screen time is affecting student achievement, lawmakers should examine the causes and available solutions without unnecessarily substituting state judgment for that of parents and educators. The objective should be better educational outcomes, not simply another uniform rule from Austin.

The 90th Legislature could therefore face a considerably broader technology debate than the one lawmakers confronted in 2025. Having already regulated students' personal devices, the next question may be how much technology schools themselves should place between teachers and students.

Teacher Retention Returns to the Texas Education Agenda

The Commission's third principal charge is to identify additional strategies for attracting and retaining high-quality teachers.

Teacher compensation will inevitably remain part of that discussion, particularly after lawmakers approved significant new funding in 2025. But the wording of Abbott's charge suggests the Commission is expected to look beyond compensation alone.

That distinction matters because Texas's teacher recruitment and retention challenges are not simply questions of salary. As Texas Policy Research has previously examined, compensation can influence whether teachers enter or remain in the profession, but so can training and professional support, administrative workloads, classroom conditions, scheduling, school culture, and the amount of professional autonomy teachers have in their classrooms.

The Texas Education Agency has similarly continued to identify teacher recruitment and retention as major priorities. Its 2025 Annual Report highlighted teacher preparation programs, certification pathways, mentoring initiatives, and compensation programs as parts of the state's broader effort to strengthen the teacher workforce.

That is where the experience of the Teacher Vacancy Task Force becomes particularly relevant.

Its work demonstrated that teacher retention involves more than salaries. Working conditions, classroom discipline, professional support, certification and preparation, administrative demands, and the amount of time educators actually have available to teach can all affect whether teachers remain in the profession.

Abbott's separate direction to examine unnecessary administrative burdens therefore deserves particular attention. The Commission now has an opportunity to hear directly from educators about whether state and local requirements are consuming time that could otherwise be spent preparing lessons, working with students, or improving instruction. If teachers identify reporting requirements, paperwork, mandatory training, or other administrative practices that consume time without producing meaningful educational benefits, lawmakers should consider whether those requirements can be streamlined or eliminated.

That approach would also align with the Texas Liberty Compact, which calls for protecting economic liberty by removing unnecessary regulatory barriers to work and for systematically eliminating outdated or duplicative requirements from Texas law. Applied to education, lawmakers should examine whether certification rules, continuing education requirements, administrative mandates, or other state-imposed obligations actually improve teacher quality and student outcomes. Requirements that serve a legitimate purpose should remain, but those that unnecessarily make it harder to enter the teaching profession, remain in the classroom, or focus on instruction should be reconsidered.

The same principle should apply to spending. Teacher retention should not automatically become another justification for increasing education appropriations. The 90th Legislature will have an opportunity to examine whether existing resources are reaching classrooms effectively, whether previous teacher-focused investments are producing measurable results, and whether changes to working conditions could improve retention without continuously expanding government spending.

The Commission's teacher-led structure could make that examination particularly valuable. Teachers themselves are well positioned to distinguish between policies that actually make the profession more sustainable and those that merely add another program, mandate, or administrative layer to the public education system.

Parental Involvement Remains Part of Texas Education Reform

The Commission will also examine ways to better equip parents to support their children's academic progress.

That charge could lead the Commission into questions surrounding academic transparency, communication between schools and families, access to student performance information, instructional materials, tutoring resources, or other tools that allow parents to identify when their children are struggling. Parental involvement is another theme with roots extending back to Abbott's earliest education agenda. In his 2015 State of the State address, Abbott argued that parental involvement was critical to student advancement while calling for greater educational choice.

That debate has changed considerably since then. Most notably, the 89th Legislature created Texas's Education Savings Account (ESA) program after several sessions of debate over school choice. The Classroom Commission's parental involvement charge is narrower, focusing specifically on helping parents support academic progress. That distinction could be important as the Commission develops its recommendations.

The challenge will be strengthening the ability of parents to participate in their children's education without simultaneously creating new administrative processes that consume additional teacher time

Texas Education Reform Could Shift Back Toward the Classroom

Taken together, Abbott's initial Texas Classroom Commission charges point toward a somewhat different education conversation than the one that dominated the 89th Legislature. The 2025 session dealt with major structural questions, including billions of dollars in additional public education funding, teacher compensation, ESAs, career and technical education (CTE), special education, and classroom discipline.

The Commission's assignments move closer to the classroom itself. Reading and math proficiency, screen time, teacher retention, parental involvement, and administrative burdens all raise questions about the everyday environment in which teachers teach, and students learn.

That does not mean the larger debates over public education funding or school choice are finished. Texas will still be implementing major reforms enacted during the previous legislative session, and those programs will inevitably receive scrutiny. But the Commission could add another dimension to the 2027 education agenda by asking whether existing policies actually make it easier for teachers to teach and students to learn.

That could mean lawmakers spend more time examining regulations, administrative mandates, instructional practices, classroom technology, teacher authority, and measurable academic performance rather than viewing education reform primarily through the amount of money appropriated to public schools.

The Teacher Vacancy Task Force Offers a Benchmark for 2027

The existence of the earlier Teacher Vacancy Task Force also provides a useful benchmark for evaluating the Classroom Commission. The important question will not simply be whether the Commission produces recommendations. Texas has no shortage of commissions, task forces, reports, and studies. The better measure will be whether its recommendations identify specific problems that lawmakers or state agencies can realistically address and whether those recommendations ultimately translate into policy.

Some recommendations from the Teacher Vacancy Task Force aligned with subsequent state efforts involving teacher compensation, the Teacher Incentive Allotment, teacher preparation, and working conditions. The Classroom Commission could follow a similar path, particularly because its report is being developed specifically ahead of a legislative session.

But policymakers should also examine whether existing recommendations remain unfinished before creating new programs to address the same problems. If previous reports identified unnecessary demands on teachers, for example, the Legislature should determine why those burdens remain and whether existing requirements can be repealed or streamlined. The Commission's value should come from helping lawmakers make better policy decisions, not simply adding another report to the shelf.

Commission Recommendations Could Shape 2027

The Commission itself cannot change Texas law. Its importance will ultimately depend on what it recommends and whether Governor Abbott and lawmakers decide to turn those recommendations into legislation.

Its timing nevertheless gives the panel an opportunity to influence the legislative agenda before the 90th Legislature convenes.

Some recommendations may require legislation. Others could involve TEA rules or changes in local school district practices. Still others may reveal that existing state requirements should simply be repealed or streamlined.

That last possibility deserves particular attention.

Education reform does not always require government to create something new. If teachers identify state policies that interfere with classroom instruction without producing measurable benefits, removing those barriers could be among the Commission's most consequential contributions. The same standard should apply to proposals involving screen time, parental involvement, teacher retention, or academic proficiency. Statewide mandates should not be the automatic response to every problem the Commission identifies.

Where greater flexibility, transparency, or local decision-making can accomplish the same objective, lawmakers should consider those approaches before expanding state regulation.

What to Watch Ahead of the 90th Texas Legislature

The most important question over the coming months will not be how many recommendations the Texas Classroom Commission produces, but what kind of recommendations emerge. A report centered primarily on new spending programs, additional mandates, or statewide requirements could simply add another layer to an already complicated public education system.

Recommendations that identify specific obstacles to student achievement, reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, strengthen teacher authority, improve transparency for parents, and preserve room for classroom-level decision-making could offer lawmakers a more meaningful reform agenda.

The Commission should also give lawmakers an opportunity to distinguish between policies that sound appealing and those that can demonstrate measurable educational benefits.

Texas has spent considerable money and political capital on education reform during Abbott's tenure. The 90th Legislature will have an opportunity not only to consider what Texas should do next, but to examine whether previous reforms are delivering the results policymakers promised.

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