Irving ISD’s shift to a three-tier, performance-based pay system has left hundreds of returning teachers earning less this year, according to the United Educators Association. Some teachers had signed their 2026-27 contracts before learning they would not receive a $5,000 supplement they expected.
The United Educators Association says roughly one-third of returning teachers received less total pay this year, while about two-thirds of the district’s teachers saw an increase in the plan’s first year, according to Dallas News. The figures reflect differing results under a model intended to reward top performers.
The pay change is also the subject of a dispute over the district’s approval process. Teachers who signed contracts in May 2026 learned a month later they would not qualify for the expected $5,000 supplement. The school board adopted the new plan in June. The association argued that the district needed prior Texas Education Agency approval.
How the New Tiers Affect Returning Teachers
Under the previous plan, teachers with at least five years of district service received a $5,000 raise, those with three to five years got $2,500, and teachers with less than three years received $1,000. The new schedule provides supplements of $5,500 for top-tier teachers, $3,000 for middle-tier teachers and $1,500 for bottom-tier teachers. New hires this year receive no supplement.
For a teacher with five years of experience, placement in the middle tier means $2,000 less than last year’s supplement; placement in the bottom tier means $3,500 less, Dallas News reported. The district also did not add last year’s state teacher-raise funding to teachers’ base salaries, according to the report.
Dallas News reported that Leslie Darby, a legal studies teacher at Jack E. Singley Academy, said campus officials had told teachers not to expect a performance-pay model for 2026-27. She said the proposal came after contracts had been signed.
Darby said teachers depend on supplemental pay for everyday expenses, including groceries and gas.
Teachers Raise Recruitment Concerns
Ashley Triay, an 11-year legal studies teacher at Singley Academy and a former attorney, said the plan could make it harder to recruit teachers. Singley Academy offers specialized career programming alongside its core curriculum.
United Educators Association executive director Steven Poole said he did not believe the district had fully considered the effects of the change and predicted it would complicate teacher recruitment, according to Dallas News.
The association argued that the Irving ISD board lacked authority to adopt the pay model without state approval. Under Texas Education Code Section 7.057, the decision will rely on a review of the district-level record under a substantial-evidence standard, according to the Texas Education Agency.
Why the District Changed Its Pay Plan
Superintendent Dorian Galindo, who took the district’s top job in summer 2026, said state funding was a major reason for the change and that the model is designed to reward top-performing teachers, Dallas News reported.
Irving ISD’s roughly 1,900 teachers are evaluated using performance measures that include student test scores. The district had introduced a similar strategic compensation model for principals at the start of the 2025-26 school year. Dallas ISD also rolled out a comparable teacher performance-pay model at four elementary schools about a decade ago before expanding it to additional campuses.
A Dallas ISD Precedent
Dallas ISD pursued an earlier compensation initiative of its own. According to Education Next, beginning in 2013 the district replaced traditional pay scales for principals and teachers with an evaluation and compensation system that used multiple measures, including student achievement and student survey responses. That initiative was separate from Irving ISD’s current plan.
The shift comes as Texas implements House Bill 2, the roughly $8.5 billion school funding package Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law, which includes teacher pay raises and other measures aimed at attracting and retaining educators, according to The Texas Tribune. The law offers districts a 10% funding bonus for replacing experience-based salary schedules with performance-based pay plans, and it expands the state's Teacher Incentive Allotment, with performance-based raises ranging from $3,000 to as much as $36,000 annually, per the Tribune's reporting.
Houston ISD adopted its own Pay-for-Performance model for the 2026-27 school year, ranking teachers into six categories from Unsatisfactory to Exemplary 1 based on evaluations weighing quality of instruction at 45% and student outcomes at 35%, according to Community Impact. Teacher salaries there range from $70,000 to $101,000 annually, with about 9,600 teachers starting the school year and only five positions left open, the outlet reported.
