Is Your Child's Teacher Uncertified/Under Certified?
- Fellow Editors
- Oct 28
- 6 min read
What Does A Teacher's Certification Status Mean For Your Child's Education?
The nationwide shortage of teachers has become a deep concern for public school systems, communities, and parents. Nationally, 45,500 teaching positions remain unfilled. 365,967 teachers across 48 states and D.C. are not fully certified for their teaching assignments.
There are many reasons for this shortage. While the teacher's unions claim it has everything to do with pay, most teachers cite stress, poor work conditions and violent, out of control students as key factors.
In Maryland, 1,619 teaching positions were left vacant at the start of the 2024–25 school year and over 6,074 teachers (10%) are working with conditional licenses.
Conditional licenses are issued by a local school system (not the Maryland State Department of Education directly). These licenses are granted when a school cannot fill a position with a fully certified teacher. The candidate must have at least a bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution.
The license is valid for up to five years, depending on the type:
Conditional Degree Certificate (CDC) – 2 years
Conditional Non-Degree Certificate (CND) – 2 years
Conditional License (CL) – 5 years
Conditional Special Education License (CSEL) – 3 year
While the State of Maryland claims to be working to alleviate the shortage, they are at cross purposes with the Blueprint for Maryland's Future which mandates that local systems hire more diverse teachers while paying them a base, beginning salary of $67,000 a year. For one thing, when diversity becomes the hiring focus, the candidate pool drops. In 2025 approximately 6.1% of U.S. public school teachers are Black and 9.4% are Hispanic. In a system like Talbot County in Maryland where the minority population is 50% between Black and Hispanic students, hiring a comparably diverse teacher population is impossible. Currently, Talbot County has 24 non-certified teachers working in the system out of 323 teachers (approximately 7%). We have no data on their diversity.
Members of the state's Blueprint Accountability and Implementation Board, the board which manages the Blueprint, have very few new answers, leaving local districts to figure out how to fill empty and teaching positions where underqualified or unqualified teachers are working.
In one AIB meeting, a member proposed that Maryland just tell candidates how great it is to teach in Maryland, and the candidates will stream into the schools. In fact, the one possible draw for good teachers, increased planning time during the day, was nixed by the Maryland Legislature and Governor Moore as "too costly" to implement. It was possibly the one incentive that might have helped.
Another suggestion was to hire federal employees recently let go because of budget cuts.
“Displaced federal workers have invaluable knowledge, leadership skills, and a commitment to public service. This initiative provides them with the tools, mentorship, and opportunities to thrive as educators in our schools,” said Deidre Price, Montgomery County's senior vice president for academic affairs/college provost.
However, many of these displaced employees are older, near retirement, or not that accomplished in academic fields. Is a non-essential government paper pusher going to be a great teacher? Will they be able to manage classes filled with kids after sitting behind a desk for decades? Trust me, it's not that easy.
During the pandemic, states offered waivers in order to allow districts to hire uncertified teachers. The waivers were supposed to be temporary, and uncertified teachers were supposed to get certified in order to keep their jobs. Nationwide, many have failed to do so, but school districts don't want to force these teachers out of the occupation. Politically, it would look bad. Practically, it would leave classrooms without teachers.
Is having uncertified teachers that big a deal? An early study in Massachusetts found uncertified teachers to be just as effective as certified teachers. However, more recent studies in Massachusetts and Texas have shown that student academic performance on state tests have suffered after having an uncertified teacher for a year. The one wrinkle in the data is in Texas, where teacher certification is among the relaxed in the nation.
Like anything else, results are mixed with some uncertified teachers being as good or even better than certified teachers. For the most part, they are not as proficient. From the article Are uncertified teachers still the answer? | K-12 Dive by Anne Merod, 1/30/2025:
Regardless, there’s no right way to go about hiring uncertified teachers, said Heather Peske, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, in an email. State officials, she said, should prohibit practices that allow teachers to be hired without proper certification.
“States face a real challenge in developing their teacher pipelines, but fast-tracking underprepared teachers into the classroom will ultimately cost much more in terms of school budgets, teacher attrition, and students who get sub-par teaching. It’s penny-wise, pound-foolish,” Peske said.
Alternatively, Peske said, states and school district leaders should reimagine the teaching role with a hiring and retention strategy that will improve student outcomes.
This could include, for instance, innovative staffing models where multiple teachers with different skill sets and specialties work as a team to instruct a larger group of students, she said. Or it could mean paying highly effective teachers more or creating teacher leadership roles for mentoring other educators and helping them advance in the profession.
The question still remains for parents, what does having a non-certified teacher mean for your child?
For many students, the difference may not be noticeable. If your child's school district is able to train and monitor uncertified teachers adequately, that teacher may do an adequate job.
However, districts have to place uncertified teachers carefully, so they don't negatively impact student learning. They should work with grade level or content teams so that they have guidance in what and how to teach. Administrators and mentor teachers in districts should make it a priority to do frequent observations and "walk throughs" of classrooms.
Unfortunately, many districts do not have staff available to provide this intense extra monitoring and mentoring. Anecdotally, we can say that districts have enough on their hands training certified teachers, much less non-certified.
While the difference may not seem noticeable in every classroom, if it is what is going on in a child's classroom that matters to that parent and child. Imagine having other non-certified people in critical positions in our lives such as doctors, surgeons, pilots, car mechanics or builders. Most people would not want nor tolerate that. While a non-certified teacher may not endanger a child physically, they could certainly set that child's critical learning back.
Studies show that one or more years with an ineffective teacher can adversely affect a student's motivation, confidence, and achievement throughout a student's lifetime. Students may struggle to catch up in subsequent years, especially in cumulative subjects like math, where foundational skills are critical. (Source: Brooklyn Math Tutors). Often, the damage is extremely difficult to undo.
Anecdotally, in my thirty-year teaching career, I saw provisionally certified teachers who were excellent and teachers with advanced certification who were mediocre or worse. The problem is that it is difficult to predict teacher effectiveness with certified teachers but even more so among non-certified teachers since there's no long-term evidence available of education classes attended, grades received, or student teaching evaluations.
Some of us might say that this isn't necessarily a bad thing since many teachers testify that teacher education degree programs are not very useful when they get to the classroom.
Still, parents need to know if their child's teacher is uncertified and if he/she is, how administration will assure that their child will get an excellent education. Parents must have the option of moving their child from the classroom of a non-certified teacher to a certified teacher's class.
If that isn't possible, parents may want to provide extra, afterschool instruction or tutoring, particularly if it appears their child is struggling.
How will you know that a teacher is not certified? Federal law requires that requires schools receiving Title I funds must notify parents if their child is taught for four or more consecutive weeks by a teacher who is not certified in the subject area.
If your child is not in a school that receives Title 1 funds, you should be able to ask the county Human Resources department for that information. Or, you can find that information here:
In most cases, the teacher will tell you. Districts who are caught in the bind of providing adequate class coverage and keeping class sizes small need to be vigilant in monitoring the performance of non-certified teachers AND in assuring that these teachers are working diligently to become certified. And parents need to be vigilant.
MORE INFORMATION:
The Devastating Impact of Poor Teaching on Student Performance: Causes and Solutions. - School Dekho
Jan Greenhawk, Author
October 21, 2025
Jan Greenhawk is a former teacher and school administrator for over thirty years. She has two grown children and lives with her husband in Maryland. She also spent over twenty-five years coaching/judging gymnastics and coaching women’s softball.
This article was originally featured on the Easton Gazette.
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