The pathway for prospective educators to become qualified to teach in Tennessee might soon become easier.¶
The State Board of Education (BOE) is considering making a handful of changes to the certification process, including allowing teachers who fail the Praxis exam to submit lesson plans or videos, complete remediation programs as an alternative path to receive a teaching license, or retake specific test portions instead of retaking the entire test. The change would apply both to aspiring teachers and current teachers reactivating a lapsed license.¶
The proposal follows a separate policy, effective this month, that already exempts trainee teachers in state-approved student teaching placements from the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (commonly referred to as edTPA), a portfolio-based assessment of classroom readiness. Additional changes to the Praxis exam and portfolio pathways would be the second major licensure change to take effect in a matter of weeks.¶
What is the Praxis?
The Praxis consists of a series of tests that teacher candidates must pass to demonstrate their qualifications for credentialing. Praxis exams that teacher candidates must pass vary based on the candidate’s intended grade band and subject area, plus a teaching & learning assessment of pedagogy, Praxis Core.¶
Currently, those who fail a Praxis test must wait 28 days to retake it and must retake the full exam that they failed (though not exams within their required series that they passed).¶
Supporting Changes
Supporters argue that teaching competency goes beyond a single test score, and that making it easier to earn a teaching license could help to reduce teacher shortages.¶
Over the past five years, Tennessee has reported a 300 percent increase in emergency-credentialed teachers, and more than 6,000 emergency credentials were issued last year. Tennessee Department of Education data tell a similar story: statewide teacher vacancies fell 43 percent between 2023 and 2024, but a growing share of classrooms are being staffed through permits and other non-traditional licenses.The number of teachers working on permits alone rose from 3,579 in 2022-23 to 5,529 in 2024-25.¶
The problems in Tennessee persist on a national level, too. According to the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, there will be a shortage of more than 611,000 teachers through 2032. Researchers at CEW attribute much of the coming shortfall to retirements outpacing the number of new graduates entering the field, a challenge Tennessee will continue to face.¶
Why Teacher Quality Matters for Student Learning
The stakes of the debate over certification pathways extend well beyond staffing numbers. Tennessee has spent much of the past decade raising its academic standards — the State Board of Education began that work in 2014 — and student results have improved accordingly.¶
On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly called the nation's report card, Tennessee students climbed 10 or more spots in the national rankings across fourth- and eighth grade reading and math, outperforming the national average in both subjects for the first time. The Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) tells a similar story. Math proficiency reached a record 42.2 percent in the 2024-25 school year, about 11,000 more students than the year before, and third grade reading proficiency hit its highest mark since at least 2017.¶
State officials, including Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, have credited educators directly for that progress. Because teacher effectiveness is consistently found to be among the strongest in-school predictors of student achievement, any change to how the state credentials new teachers is also a decision about how to maintain and continue to improve student outcomes.¶
A national analysis by the Learning Policy Institute found that teachers without full certification leave their schools at meaningfully higher rates than fully certified teachers. State-level research from EdTrust-Tennessee adds an equity dimension: students in Tennessee's lowest-performing schools are about seven times more likely to be taught by a teacher on an emergency credential than students in the highest-performing schools, and students in high-poverty schools are roughly three times as likely to have a teacher on an emergency credential. New or expanded pathways into the classroom will need to continue centering student growth.¶
Skeptics’ Reservations
Those opposed to the proposed changes argue that providing more forgiving pathways to a teaching license will make for more underqualified teachers. Education leaders have publicly wondered whether the changes would go too far, including State Board member Krissi McInturff, who specifically expressed concerns at a board meeting this summer that they could “water down” teacher certification standards.¶
Teacher advocacy groups' public comments on the proposal have so far centered on flexibility and easing entry into the profession, rather than on how the changes would be measured for classroom effectiveness - a gap some state board members have said they want addressed before a final vote.¶
National research offers some support for that caution. A summary of teacher-quality studies by the Economic Policy Institute found little clear impact of emergency or alternative-route certification on student performance in math or science, compared with teachers who complete standard certification programs. Separately, a widely cited study of New York City teachers found that those who entered through alternative routes produced math and reading achievement gains comparable to, or in some cases below, those of traditionally certified teachers.¶
Other critics point out that many professions, such as law, medicine, and accounting, require prospects to pass licensing exams and sometimes even retake them regularly.¶
As for the high teacher turnover in the state, skeptics also argue that standardized exams provide a uniform benchmark for applicants and that the shortages should be combatted with better pay, working conditions, and other retention efforts.¶
What's Next
The State Board of Education is expected to continue discussing the proposal in the coming months before scheduling a final vote, giving stakeholders time to weigh in.¶
State leaders know they cannot ignore Tennessee’s teacher pipeline problems, but a decade of hard-won academic progress makes clear what is at stake. Widening access to the profession and protecting student learning don't have to be competing goals, but achieving both will likely require pairing any new flexibility with clear, measurable competency benchmarks and public reporting on outcomes.¶
