If your child's school has struggled to fill a classroom, the reason is often less about who wants to teach and more about who is allowed to. North Carolina just changed a good deal of that. The state budget signed into law this week, a $34.4 billion package, does more than fund raises and schools. Tucked inside is a rewrite of how the state licenses teachers, and it should make it easier for districts to recruit and keep them.
The timing is not accidental. Roughly 1 in 10 North Carolina teachers leave the profession every year, and schools are hiring right now for a year that starts in August for most students.
"It will help to increase teachers who are fully certified," said Geoff Coltrane, senior director of government affairs and strategy for the state Department of Public Instruction, who walked the State Board of Education through the changes on Thursday. Many of the provisions started as Senate Bill 840, which Republican lawmakers folded into the budget that Gov. Josh Stein signed on Tuesday.
Here is what actually changes, and what each piece is likely to mean for the adults in front of your child.
No More Admissions Test to Enter a Teacher Prep Program
Coltrane called this "a very exciting development." College students no longer have to pass the Praxis Core test or clear a minimum SAT or ACT score to be admitted into an educator preparation program.
The State Board and the Department of Public Instruction had pushed for this for years, arguing there is not a strong relationship between passing that test and actually being an effective teacher. The department has also said the Praxis requirement acted as a barrier to admission, particularly for Black students. In plain terms, the state has decided it was screening out people at the front door who might have gone on to be very good in a classroom.
More Room for New Teachers to Pass Their Exams
North Carolina once required new teachers to pass their exams before they ever started teaching. That changed in 2017, when lawmakers created an initial professional license, a non-renewable license good for three years that gives beginning teachers time to pass. Teachers who meet the requirements can move to a continuing professional license, the renewable five-year version.
The catch was a paperwork trap. Teachers had to have taken the exams in their first year to be eligible for that continuing license, and the department pointed to teachers who passed their exams but still could not get licensed simply because of when they sat for them. The budget removes that first-year requirement.
A Path for Effective Teachers Stuck on a Limited License
Teachers who have not met the exam requirements can hold a limited license, a renewable three-year license that the employing district requests on their behalf. Under the new budget, those teachers can convert to a full continuing license if their students post a positive EVAAS growth score on state exams in two of the past three years, meaning the state's measure of how much students grew over the year.
"It's essentially acknowledging teachers who are showing growth with their students, who are obviously showing they're effective," Coltrane said.
State board member Olivia Oxendine raised the obvious gap: some teachers do not have growth data at all. Art and music teachers, for instance, do not have a tested subject to generate a score. The board said it needs to study how to help them.
An Easier Move From Another State or Country
An experienced out-of-state teacher used to need three years of experience, good standing, and proof that their home state had "substantially similar licensure requirements" to North Carolina. In practice, Coltrane said, that last clause forced some veteran teachers to sit for North Carolina exams all over again. The budget strikes the phrase.
"Now if a teacher comes to North Carolina with a license, three years of teaching and is in good standing, DPI and the State Board will be able to award them a full continuing professional license, which will really help to smooth the process for a number of teachers," Coltrane said.
The same flexibility now extends to experienced teachers arriving from other countries. "We have a growing number of international faculty who come," Coltrane said. "This provision will now also help to smooth out those teachers."
The Middle School Change Nobody Seems Sure About
The one provision state leaders were visibly less confident about affects who can teach middle school. The budget directs the State Board to write rules expanding the elementary license to cover grades seven and eight. Previously the elementary license covered K-6 and the middle grades license covered grades 6-9.
"That essentially eliminates the middle grades license, doesn't it?" Oxendine asked.
Coltrane said the department is still working through the impact. "There are a lot of issues and questions to be wrestled with," he said.
Middle grades licensure exists because teaching a seventh-grader is not the same job as teaching a second-grader, and folding the two together is the kind of change that sounds administrative until it shows up in your child's math class. For most families, the near-term effect of this budget will be quieter and more welcome: a better chance that the teacher hired for August is fully certified and plans to stay.
