The Hidden Cost of Deregulation: A Statewide Analysis of a Growing Uncertified Teacher Workforce

Wesley Edwards, Tatiana Kurochkina and Gabriela Gorescu

No 9ctws_v1, OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science

Abstract: As school leaders and district human-capital managers struggle with persistent teacher shortages, policymakers nationally have created statutes deregulating teacher licensure/certification. In Texas, most K-12 districts can now hire uncertified teachers. This provides flexibility in school leader hiring practices, and likely expands applicant pools, yet more than one-third of all new teachers in recent years are uncertified. This quantitative study investigates the demographics, school characteristics, and retention/mobility outcomes of over 300,000 teachers. We find that uncertified teachers have alarmingly low retention probabilities, and are clustered in schools serving mostly students of color and economically disadvantaged students. We discuss implications for policy as well as how our results contribute to literature/theory related to market deregulation and teacher careers.

Date: 2025-04-26
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/680d43410f8ea5165c568d31/

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:osfxxx:9ctws_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/9ctws_v1

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OSF Preprints from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF ().