Teacher Quality
Data on teacher certification and experience

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Teacher Quality in the South: Click the options below to explore the data.

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Regional Highlights

Measuring teacher quality is difficult, so states rely on proxy measures.

More than one-third (35.6%) of teachers in the South were inexperienced, out-of-field or uncertified in 2023-24, a 1.4% decrease from the previous school year, but a 7.3% increase from the 2019-20 school year.

Teachers in the SREB region are 1.6x more likely to have an active National Board Certification than teachers in the United States overall.

More than 1 in 3 teachers in the South are inexperienced, teaching out-of-field or uncertified.

In 2023-24, 17.7% of teachers in the South were inexperienced (up 2.1% from 2019-20), 10.2% were teaching out-of-field (up 2.7% from 2019-20), and 7.7% were uncertified (up 2.5% from 2019-20).

12.5 is the average years of teaching experience among teachers in the SREB region.

In recent years, the average years of experience among teachers has remained relatively consistent (around 12 years).

Of the nation's 270,513 underqualified teachers in 2023, a majority (55.7%) worked in the South.

A greater percentage of teachers in the South have an active National Board Certification than in the rest of the U.S. — on average, 3.16% within the SREB region, compared to 1.95% percent in the rest of the U.S.

 

 

Data by State

 

 

 

 

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