What You Need To Know About Private School Teaching Jobs In Texas

The number of school-age children in Texas and the demand that puts on the state to train new teachers is tough to visualize. The latest figures from the Texas Education estimates that there are more than 5.3 million elementary and secondary age children in Texas. 

Put another way, if those 5.3 millions Texas schoolkids were their own state, they would have a greater population than 28 other states!

And those numbers are for just the public and charter schools. There are also more than 300,000 students in some 2,000 private schools across the state according to the site Private School Review.

Those private school teaching jobs in Texas give newly-minted teaching candidates more choice when it comes to finding the right school.

Types of Private School Jobs 

When we talk about private school jobs, we are loosely talking not only about those religious and secular private schools that are not affiliated with any public school district but also about charter schools, a growing category of schools that have affiliation with public school districts but function almost as private schools.

It wasn't until 1995 that the Texas Legislature established open-enrollment charter schools in the state. Since then, enrollment in charter schools in Texas has jumped 236% in the last 10 years. In 2016-17 there were almost as many students enrolled in charter schools across the state (270,409) as there were in private schools (316,908).

These charter schools have results like private schools with U.S. News & World Report ranking of the Best High Schools in Texas including all charter, academy or specialty schools in the top 33 rated. The 10 included: Meridian School (Round Rock); The School for the Talented and Gifted (Dallas); Science and Engineering Magnet School (Dallas); Carnegie Vanguard HS (Houston); Liberal Arts and Science Academy (Austin); Chaparral Star Academy (Austin); DeBakey High School for Health Professions (Houston); Imagine International Academy of North Texas (McKinney); KIPP Austin Collegiate; and IDEA College Preparatory San Juan. 

Private schools include those religious-based schools, with Private School Review estimating that 62% of the private schools in the state have a religious affiliation. 

The Niche.com list of the Top 10 Private Schools in Texas is a mix of religious and secular. That list has six religious schools: St. Mark's School of Texas (Dallas); St. John's School (Houston); St. Stephen's Episcopal (Austin); Cistercian Preparatory School (Irving); St. Agnes Academy (Houston) and Strake Jesuit College Preparatory School (Houston).  The secular schools on that list: The Hockaday School (Dallas); Greenhill School (Addison); Keystone School (San Antonio) and The Kinkaid School (Houston).

Tuition at these private schools -- which can include all-boys, all-girls and boarding schools -- can run more than $30,000 a school year.

Do They Have Additional Requirements? 

The answer is it depends.

The state has mandated that special education and bilingual/ESL teachers at open-enrollment charter schools must have state certification like public school teachers.

With that being said, the governing body of these schools can set standards for teachers that not only meet state standards, but also  exceed them.

Looking at the Hockaday School, for example, the school reports that of its 121 full-time staff, 70 of them have masters and 11 have doctoral or law degrees. 

Do They Pay More? 

The average for open-enrollment and private school teachers is in line with the average base pay of public school teachers, but the variation of pay and chances for achieving the upper end of the pay scale are greater.

The Academy for Academic Excellence in Dallas, for example, had an average base pay of $87,449. The site Comparably put private school teacher salaries in Dallas at $54,456 per year, about $6,000 above the national average. Texas public schools average base pay across the state was $53,334.

That private school pay in Dallas, however, had a big swing from a low of $17,371 to a high of $162,222.

Private schools may be able to offer other incentives that public schools cannot match. At Hockaday, for example, teachers can take advantage of an endowment to travel to such places as the Galapagos Islands to further their education and prepare to teach their students.

Where To Find Private School Teaching Jobs

You can find private school teaching jobs in Texas from many of the same sources that you can find for public school jobs, such as the workintexas.com website as well as ihireelementaryteachers.com, Indeed and monster.

You can also use the Texas Education Agency as a resource as they have a listing of nearly 1,700 private schools that runs from A (Abilene Christian School) to Z (Zion Lutheran School Dallas) that is searchable by school district, county, region with a map view.

The Texas Charter Schools Association Job Board is also a good source for employment.