Texas guides
TRS, teaching certificates, special education, salary and Social Security: guides for Texas teachers
Each guide covers rules and figures Texas teachers may want to check, and quotes the agencies and laws behind them, including: Texas law and the Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS) for working after retirement; the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the rules of the State Board for Educator Certification (SBEC) for teaching certificates and special education certification; Texas law, TEA and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for pay; and federal law, the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) for Social Security and the earnings test. The guides are grouped below by topic.
Last reviewed October 20, 2026
Retirement: TRS and Social Security
Texas Teacher Retirement: TRS Employment After Retirement Rules
Working after you retire from TRS: what TRS says about employers it does not cover and about third-party entities, the one-month break before working for a TRS-covered employer, the EAR exceptions for TRS-covered work, and the separate limits for disability retirees.
Do Texas Teachers Pay Social Security? TRS and 2026 Earnings Limit
Whether Texas teachers pay into Social Security (it depends on the school district; in data NCES published in 2019, most Texas districts did not take part), how a TRS pension and Social Security fit together after the Social Security Fairness Act, and the 2026 earnings test before full retirement age.
Teaching certificates and special education certification
Texas Teaching Certificate (License): TEA Lookup, Renewal, Inactive
How to look up a Texas teaching certificate (license) in TEA’s Certificate Lookup, how a standard certificate is renewed every five years, what happens when one goes inactive, lifetime certificates, and moving to Texas with another state’s certificate.
Texas Special Education Certification (License): EC-12 and TExES 186
Texas special education certification in TEA’s and SBEC’s words: Special Education EC-12, the Special Education Specialist EC-12 certificate and its TExES 186 test, other special education certificates, adding a certificate by exam, and HB 2’s fee waivers (the first attempt at an applicable special education exam, and the application fee on some routes).