By Robbie Sequeira, Stateline.org

As another school year ends, superintendents across the United States are staring down an autumn staffing crisis, with 1 in 8 teaching positions either vacant or filled by an underqualified educator.

States that are struggling with post-pandemic teacher shortages have spent millions to lure replacements and retain veterans with hiring bonuses and bumps in salaries. But hiring gaps remain, so some states also are trying another tactic: changing their standards.

The changes in teacher training and licensing come amid widespread turmoil in public schools: Tax revenue is being siphoned toward private school vouchers in many states; some classrooms are being scrutinized for banned books, displays or teaching lessons that trip into diversity, equity and inclusion territory; and students who went through pandemic-era shutdowns are struggling both with sitting still and with learning the material.

Some surveys show that fewer than a fifth of teachers are happy in their jobs.

“Teaching is not seen as an attractive profession right now,” said Drew Gitomer, an expert on teaching assessment at Rutgers Graduate School of Education.

“COVID exacerbated things, and teachers are caught in the middle of political battles — over curriculum, book bans, even personal attacks,” he said. “It’s not a healthy work environment, and that drives people away.”

Last year, Illinois enacted a law allowing teacher candidates to begin student teaching before passing content-area exams. It was an effort to reduce barriers for underrepresented groups, the measure’s sponsor said.

A bill under consideration this year would give more districts discretion over whether to factor pupils’ test scores into teacher evaluations, a break from a 15-year-old mandate.

In New Jersey, a new law formally removes the Praxis Core exam — traditionally used as an entry-level screening tool for aspiring teachers — from certification requirements.

And in Nevada — one of the states hit hardest by teacher shortages — a bill would streamline licensure for incoming educators. The bill would allow teachers credentialed in other states to begin working in Nevada classrooms while awaiting formal approval.

It also would remove extra steps for teachers switching grade levels and would waive application fees for recent substitute teachers.

Linda Darling-Hammond, founding president and chief knowledge officer of the Learning Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, said teacher shortages hit hardest in schools serving low-income students and students of color, where instability often leads to larger class sizes, canceled courses or a revolving door of substitute teachers.

“When you walk into a school facing shortages, you see instability,” she said. “Students may be taught by people who don’t know what to do, who leave quickly, and who often rely more on discipline than engagement.”

The root cause? Teacher attrition.

“Nine out of 10 vacancies every year are because of attrition — and two-thirds of that is not retirement,” Darling-Hammond said. “Support in the beginning matters. Teachers who come in and get a mentor stay longer. If you’re just thrown in to sink or swim, the odds of leaving are much greater.”

States have long struggled to attract teachers, and credentialing changes aren’t unusual. But some education advocates fear long-term repercussions.

Melissa Tooley, director of K-12 educator quality at the left-leaning think tank New America, said most states now offer alternative and fast-track teacher certification pathways, many of which allow candidates to start teaching with little or no pedagogical training in how to teach.

“We’re churning through people who might have potential, but we’re not setting them up for success,” she said. “A lot of what states are doing is short term. It’s about filling seats, not necessarily building a sustainable or high-quality workforce.”

More than 40 states require aspiring teachers to take the costly Praxis Subject test for the subject they want to teach, which some experts argue excludes strong candidates and duplicates other assessments.

“You were excluding people who might be good teachers but didn’t do well on that specific test,” said Rutgers’ Gitomer, who has researched the test’s effects on recruitment.

However, he added, dropping tests doesn’t necessarily help.

Several states — Georgia, New Jersey, New York, Washington and Wisconsin— have dropped a licensure requirement known as edTPA since 2022, but there’s little evidence the move has helped ease teacher shortages, Gitomer said. (The acronym stands for Educative Teacher Performance Assessment and involves a portfolio that includes testing and videos of classroom performance.)

“The state eliminated edTPA but didn’t replace it with a specific alternative,” he said.

“Instead, it gave full discretion back to individual institutions to develop or adopt their own performance assessments,” he said. “When we talked to institutions, it became pretty clear they didn’t think removing edTPA would be a major driver in addressing the shortage — and they haven’t seen evidence that it has been.”

How best to credential

Tooley said state credentialing systems must navigate a delicate balance: ensuring there are enough teachers, maintaining instructional quality and increasing workforce diversity.

“There’s this triangle — three pieces that need to be in place — and I think there are real tensions when it comes to how states are designing their certification policies,” she said.

And Gitomer described a fragmented national landscape, where some states are tightening teacher entry standards while others are dramatically loosening them — even allowing non-degreed individuals to teach.

“Some states are trying to raise standards; others are relaxing them to the point where you may not even need a college degree,” he said.

Indiana now requires all pre-K through grade 6 and special education teachers to complete 80 hours of training on the “science of reading,” a method that includes phonics, and pass an exam by 2027. State Sen. Jean Leising, a Republican, has proposed cutting the requirement in half, calling it “an excessive burden with little actual benefit” in a news release.

In Texas, a bill aims to reduce the use of uncertified teachers by the 2029-30 school year. The legislation would set a gradual cap on the percentage of uncertified teachers districts can employ in core curriculum classes — starting at 20% in 2026-27 and decreasing to 5% in 2029-30.

According to the Texas Education Agency, 31% of new hires in 2024-25 lacked a state teaching certificate or permit.

Yet some states stand out for how they’re changing their requirements, Tooley said.

She pointed to Washington, which has designed a recruitment strategy encouraging paraprofessionals, often known as teacher’s aides, to become classroom teachers. Also known as paraeducators, they’re a group with classroom experience, community ties and higher retention likelihood.

There, school districts are required to offer foundational training — ranging from 14 to 28 hours — directly to paraeducators.

In West Virginia, a new law now allows districts to count full-time behavior interventionists working in one or two classrooms toward meeting the required number of aides or paraprofessionals in K-3 classrooms.

Tooley noted that Pennsylvania and Alabama are experimenting with “menu-style” licensing flexibility — allowing candidates to demonstrate qualification through various combinations of GPA and test scores, rather than rigid cutoffs.

“These are people already in schools, often from the same cultural or linguistic backgrounds as students,” Tooley said. “They’re more likely to succeed and to stay.”

Low pay

A 2024 national survey by the EdWeek Research Center found that public school teachers are increasingly reporting declines in mental health, job satisfaction and classroom stability. Seventy percent of teachers recommended student mental health interventions, and nearly half said schools lack enough counselors, psychologists and social workers.

As mental well-being has worsened, the share of public school teachers who are very satisfied with their jobs has also declined by 2 percentage points from the previous year, to 18%, according to the survey, which was conducted by the EdWeek Research Center on behalf of Merrimack College.

While teacher wellness supports remain limited, educators say improvements in pay and student discipline are the most needed changes.

To entice passionate but burned out educators from leaving the workforce, several states have raised minimum teacher pay. Arkansas boosted salaries to $50,000 statewide, and South Carolina raised starting pay to $47,000. South Dakota enacted a $45,000 minimum with yearly increases, and penalties for districts that fail to comply by 2026. Connecticut advanced a bill setting a $63,450 salary floor, while Indiana and others are eyeing further increases.

At the federal level, the proposed American Teacher Act seeks to establish a national $60,000 minimum salary for teachers at a qualifying school to boost recruitment and retention across the country. The bill, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, a Florida Democrat, remains in committee.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

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