New Reports Outline How Pennsylvania Can Rebuild the Teacher Pipeline and Fix the Teacher Shortage With Competency-Based Credentialing

Harrisburg, PA - Today, #PANeedsTeachers—a statewide coalition working to alleviate the teacher shortage crisis—released a series of four reports outlining policies to rebuild Pennsylvania's teacher pipeline and address the shortage. The series, Advancing Quality and Removing Barriers, calls for certification and preparation systems that maintain high standards while removing barriers that keep talented, diverse educators out of the profession. The series highlights that competency should guide the process of training, hiring, and retaining teachers. It emphasizes building skills as teachers advance in their careers and providing them with opportunities to become leaders in their schools. 

“Pennsylvania has an opportunity to reimagine how they identify, develop, and advance great teachers,” said Nathan Driskell, Chief Policy Officer at the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE). “Competency-based credentialing allows us to uphold high standards while opening new, flexible pathways into the profession. It’s about ensuring that talent and skill determine who becomes and remains a teacher in the classroom.”

#PANeedsTeachers developed Advancing Quality and Removing Barriers following its 2024 summit and discussion to explore how improved credentialing and promotion can attract, prepare, and retain a high-quality, diverse teacher workforce.

Advancing Quality and Removing Barriers is #PANeedsTeachers's third report on Pennsylvania's teacher shortage. The organization previously developed #PANeedsTeachers: Addressing Pennsylvania's Teacher Shortage Crisis Through Systemic Solutions and the Solutions Playbook—a collection of over a dozen local solutions in place across the commonwealth addressing educator shortages. Additionally, #PANeedsTeachers has developed tools to track the severity of teacher shortages by county and state senate districts. 

Advancing Quality and Removing Barriers reviewed the certification process for teachers, the credentialing process for CTE educators, Grow-Your-Own programs and apprenticeships, and distributed leadership, which helps provide leadership opportunities for teachers. Each policy is part of a comprehensive approach—along with student teacher stipends—to help attract and retain teachers in Pennsylvania.

Advancing Quality and Removing Barriers: Certification

Teacher certification is a critical component of Pennsylvania's efforts to strengthen its educator workforce. There are two key priorities in shaping certification standards: raising teacher quality and diversifying the profession. By improving the quality and diversity of the teaching profession, students will have access to more effective and relatable educators, leading to improved learning outcomes.

Licensure policies should set clear, rigorous standards without creating unnecessary barriers that deter qualified candidates. 

Streamlining certification requirements, such as reducing fees and revising grade-span categories, can help address teacher shortages and better align certification with the evolving needs of Pennsylvania's schools. 

In addition, enhancing the clinical training and induction experiences for new teachers supports higher-quality preparation and increases retention, especially among candidates from diverse backgrounds. 

Pennsylvania can uphold high standards for teacher quality while removing obstacles that prevent talented individuals from entering and remaining in the profession.

Advancing Quality and Removing Barriers: Grow-Your-Own Teacher Apprenticeships

Grow-Your-Own (GYO) programs create accessible, community-based entry points into the profession, engaging high school students, paraprofessionals, career changers, and other local talent. Schools can also leverage registered teacher apprenticeships to make GYO programs high-quality, more affordable, and better aligned with the needs of schools.

GYO models expand access, offer meaningful clinical experiences — such as year-long residencies with effective mentors — and reduce or eliminate tuition and certification costs through targeted financial support.

The success of GYO pathways depends on strong district-preparation program partnerships and comprehensive support for candidates. These elements are essential for enhancing the impact of GYO programs, ensuring that Pennsylvania's educator workforce more closely mirrors its student population and effectively addresses shortages in high-need subjects and communities.

To maximize the impact of GYO efforts, state policy must incentivize high-quality preparation, deepen collaboration between local education agencies (LEAs) and educator preparation programs, and embed wraparound support for aspiring teachers. 

Advancing Quality and Removing Barriers: Distributing Leadership to Teachers

Distributing leadership to teachers means recognizing the expertise of classroom-based professionals and empowering them to shape instructional practices and school improvement efforts in ways that directly benefit students. 

Professional collaboration, including meaningful feedback from peers, has been shown to increase job satisfaction and teacher self-efficacy.

When teachers are recognized as experts in their practice and given opportunities to learn from one another, they are more likely to find their work rewarding.

Involving teachers in planning and improving school practices not only helps create better working conditions but also supports the retention of high-quality educators by engaging them directly in decisions that affect both their work and the students they teach.

The roles and responsibilities assigned to teachers should reflect both their potential impact and their demonstrated capacity to support fellow teachers in meeting the needs of students within their cluster, grade level, subject area, or school. Importantly, teachers serving in leadership roles are not responsible for, nor should they be assigned any duty that involves evaluating their peers.

Advancing Quality and Removing Barriers: CTE Certification

Career and Technical Education (CTE) at the secondary level is pivotal to shaping Pennsylvania's future workforce. As more students seek alternative career pathways, demand for high-quality CTE programs — and the teachers who deliver them — has increased, leading to an educator shortage. 

Some attribute the shortage of CTE teachers to the burdensome CTE teacher certification process. Many CTE teachers take significant pay cuts when transitioning from the private sector, and the certification process can take several years. The time, cost, and complexity of earning credentials discourage many talented professionals from entering the field.

Pennsylvania can reverse this trend by streamlining the certification process and recognizing the real-world skills industry professionals bring to the classroom.

About Teach Plus and the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE)

Teach Plus: The mission of Teach Plus is to empower excellent, experienced, and diverse teachers to take leadership over key policy and practice issues that affect their students' success. Since 2009, Teach Plus has developed thousands of teacher leaders across the country to exercise their leadership in shaping education policy and improving teaching and learning, to create an education system driven by access and excellence for all. For more information, www.teachplus.org

NCEE: NCEE studies the world’s highest-performing and fastest-improving education systems and the policies guiding them to understand what they do, how they do it, and the context and challenges they face. The evidence base informs partnerships with policymakers and educators to co-design systems that meet the needs of all learners and rise to the challenge of our collective future. For more information, visit www.ncee.org.