What Happened When States Dropped Teacher Licensing Requirements?

In this Education Week article, Sarah Schwartz reports on the impact of pandemic-era teacher licensure waivers in shaping the teacher workforce by featuring research from two newly released CALDER papers. The CALDER research brief looks at evidence from five states on who entered the classroom with pandemic-era emergency licenses and who they taught, finding that emergency-licensed teachers were more diverse and taught in more diverse classrooms. The CALDER working paper goes further back in the teacher supply pipeline to look at enrollment and graduation data from teacher preparation programs in all 50 states and D.C. Overall, they find that waivers didn't result in a major boost in new teachers nationwide, but they did have important impacts on the composition of the teacher workforce. Check out the article below to learn more.