Teaching License Handbook

How We Check

Where Teaching License Handbook gets its routes, tests and fees, how each is dated, why some rows say not confirmed, and what the tools never do.

Teacher certification is easy to get wrong. Every state writes its own rules, tests and fees, the details hide in fee schedules and administrative rules, and old figures keep being repeated after a state changes them. A wrong test name or fee can cost a reader money and months. This page sets out where our rules and figures come from, how we date them, why some rows say “not confirmed”, how programs are named, what our tools do and don’t do, and how often we recheck.

This page is general information, not legal or career advice. Each state’s licensing agency decides every application, and rules, tests and fees change, often on 1 July. Confirm the current rules with the agency before you pay for a program, a test or fingerprints.

Where rules and figures come from

We go to the body that makes the rule or sets the fee, and link it at the claim. The full list, with links and read dates, is on our sources page.

  • State agencies: each state licensing agency’s own pages, checklists, leaflets and fee schedules, such as California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the Texas Education Agency or the New York State Education Department. These give the routes, forms, fees and processing steps.
  • State law: the state’s statutes and administrative rules in official text, from the legislature’s, code reviser’s or secretary of state’s own site, or the agency’s official rule PDF, cited by section. Where an agency page and the rule differ, the page says so; where a rule sets a fee and the agency charges more for online payment, we give both, as Texas shows ($75 in 19 TAC 230.101, $78 as TEA charges it, read 12 November 2026).
  • Test fees: the test vendor’s own official fee pages, cited for figures and paraphrased: ETS’s Praxis Information Bulletin 2026-27 for Praxis, and Pearson’s state program sites for CBEST and CSET, NYSTCE, TExES, ILTS, OAE, MTTC, MTEL, PECT, the Washington and Oklahoma tests, GACE and edTPA. Which tests a state requires comes from the state, not the vendor.
  • The teacher compact: teachercompact.org, its model legislation, its member map and the commission’s own documents, plus each member state’s own pages and law.
  • Federal loans and grants: studentaid.gov and the regulations in the eCFR (34 CFR 685.217 for Teacher Loan Forgiveness, 685.219 for PSLF, part 686 for the TEACH Grant), with Federal Student Aid’s own announcements for amounts.
  • Pay: three sources, always named and never blended or averaged: the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS, May 2025); NEA’s salary figures, labelled as the teachers’ union’s estimates (2024-25); and state minimum salary schedules, each with its statute and school year. NCES tables are used for history only.
  • Never a source: preparation-program and alternative-certification sellers’ marketing pages, university marketing pages, “best programs” and degree-lead sites, “request info” and program-matching sites, test-prep sellers and their “pass rates”, job boards and salary-aggregator sites, staffing agencies, career summary sites, forums, social media and video sites. Not for a rule, a figure or a statement, not even as “according to”. Claims from such sites appear only as claims we have checked, without naming who made them.

How a rule gets on the page

Each rule is sorted by how directly we read it, and that decides how we word it:

  • Read in a primary source. Stated plainly, with its source and the date we read it. Before a page uses a rule, the whole page or section is read again, not just the line that matched, because exceptions sit further down: a fee that differs for out-of-state applicants, a test waived only for in-state program completers, an online processing fee, a route that needs a district’s request, a renewal rule that changed on 1 July, a substitute rule that ends on a date.
  • Read only in part, in an older official copy or in a vendor’s data file. Not stated as a flat rule. Where a page uses it, it says what we read and what we could not, as with California’s Live Scan fee schedule, which the state still publishes with a 2012 date.
  • Not read. It stays off the page. Tables show “not confirmed” with a link to the state agency.

Why some rows say “not confirmed”

Some agencies publish a fee only inside their application system, post a fee chart as an image, or had pages we could not read in full when we checked. We don’t fill those gaps from a program seller, a summary site or an old document. As of 13 November 2026:

  • Arizona, Mississippi, Tennessee and Virginia: the licensing agency’s current pages were not confirmed. Their rows say “not confirmed” and link the agency. For Arizona and Virginia we read some statutes, and the rows say which.
  • Louisiana: certificate fee amounts are not published on any agency page we read, so Louisiana has no state page yet and its fee shows “not confirmed”.
  • The District of Columbia: OSSE announced a new credential fee schedule from 1 October 2026, and we could not read the amounts as text. DC’s fee shows “not confirmed”, and we don’t show the older figure.
  • Partly read states: for Alabama, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia, and for DC, some fields were read and others were not. Each row shows only the fields read, with their dates.
  • Single fields: some fees are set by a district or a fingerprint vendor rather than the state (Florida’s fingerprint fee, for example), and some test fees are not on a vendor page we could read (California’s Foundations of Reading and FAST, and the PPAT). Those cells say so.

“Not confirmed” never means a state has no rule or charges no fee. It means we have not read it in a primary source yet.

How rules and figures are dated

  • A source and read date on every state figure, in text, tables, tools and graphics, and a dated fact-check note at the end of each page.
  • The source’s own date where it gives one: a rule’s effective date (Florida’s fee rule, 6A-4.0012, effective 25 August 2026), a leaflet’s update date (California’s CL-659, updated 20 October 2026), or a fee table’s own “effective” line (Connecticut’s, effective 1 October 2025). Many pages give no such date, and we don’t invent one.
  • Test fees by testing year: Praxis fees are for the 2026-27 testing year, 1 August 2026 to 31 July 2027, and online purchases add a 3% non-refundable service fee (ETS bulletin, read 13 November 2026). Pearson fees carry the date we read the state program’s page.
  • Pay by its year: “BLS OEWS, May 2025”, “NEA estimate, 2024-25 (teachers’ union)”, “state minimum, [statute], [school year]”. The three measure different things, so pages say why they differ instead of combining them.
  • The compact by its read date: as read on 13 November 2026, the compact’s map lists 14 member states (Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Washington); Mississippi passed it but is not admitted. Each member decides how it handles compact applications: Pennsylvania, Nebraska and Utah publish a compact route, Colorado issues a 30-day license until it starts issuing compact licenses, Kentucky’s page says compact-state holders apply through the compact, and the other members’ pages read show no compact route.
  • Silence is not a rule. When a state’s pages and rules say nothing on a point, such as a substitute minimum, the page says the state sets none we could find or that districts decide. It does not fill the gap.
  • Reader links on official sites, so you can read the same text we did. Illinois statute links go to the General Assembly’s public site.

Why programs are named only from state lists

Searches for alternative routes often lead to program sellers, and a guide that names, compares or prices programs from their own pages starts to work like an advertisement. So a preparation program appears on this site only where the state’s own law, rule or approved-program list names it, in the list’s words, in alphabetical order, without comment, without a price we can’t source from the state, and without a link to the program’s sales pages. Every state page links the state’s own approved-program list with the date we read it. Where a state publishes its own program ratings or accreditation status, we link the state’s page and don’t rebuild it. Our page on checking a program’s state approval explains how to look a program up yourself.

What the tools do, and don’t

Our tools set a state’s stated minimums and fees next to what you enter. They never give a verdict.

  • The teaching route finder shows each route the state lists with its stated minimums beside your entries (“stated minimum met by your entry” or “not met”), the tests the state names with their fees, and what it can’t check: GPA, transcript review, the background check and a district’s hiring decision. It never says “you are eligible” or “you qualify”, and it never picks a route.
  • The cost calculator adds the state’s certificate fee, the tests it names, fingerprint fees and any online fees, each with its source and read date, plus the figures you type in yourself, such as tuition, which are marked “your figure”. The total is an estimate, not a quote.
  • The reciprocity and compact checker shows the destination state’s out-of-state route as read, the tests or coursework it may still ask for, its fee, whether both states are compact members and the compact’s status as read. The receiving state decides the equivalent license. It never says “your license transfers”.
  • The Teacher Loan Forgiveness or PSLF comparison uses only your own numbers and the federal rules as read on studentaid.gov and in the eCFR. Its results are estimates: your servicer and the Department of Education decide.

Each formula is tested against answers worked by hand before the tool goes live. A state we have not read in a primary source is not in a tool’s state list, or shows “not confirmed”. There is no certificate lookup tool: every state page links the state’s own official lookup instead.

How pages are checked

After a page is written, a separate fact-check compares each route, test, fee, hour count, deadline, pay figure and date with its source and reworks every sum. A final review looks for errors, gaps and anything that could lead a reader to pay for the wrong test, miss a step or read a rule as a promise. A page with a serious problem still open does not go out. The same state’s figures must match across its state page, the 51-state table, the tests table and the tools.

How often things are rechecked

  • State rows (routes, tests, fees, renewal, substitutes, lookups): every three months, again each July when many state fees change, and after each state’s legislative session.
  • Praxis fees: each August, when ETS publishes the bulletin for the new testing year that starts on 1 August. Pearson state program fees at each state recheck.
  • The teacher compact: after each commission meeting (the next is on 20 November 2026, as read on 13 November 2026) and when a state passes or changes its compact law.
  • Pay: OEWS each spring, when BLS publishes the new May figures; NEA each April; state minimum schedules when a new school year’s schedule is published.
  • Federal loans and grants: after any change to the rules on studentaid.gov or in the eCFR, and each October for the TEACH Grant amount.

A page shows an updated date only when its content really changed. Between rechecks a fee or rule can change without our knowing, which is why every state figure shows the day we read it. Changes our pages reflect are logged on fee and rule changes.

How we treat claims seen elsewhere

Claims repeated online are reported as claims, never as fact, and we don’t name who made them. Some we have checked, as of 13 November 2026:

  • “You must pass the Praxis Core.” Not everywhere. Pennsylvania dropped its basic-skills requirement for certification (Act 55 of 2024, PDE), New Jersey keeps one only for limited cases (P.L.2024, c.26, NJDOE), and in California a bachelor’s degree from a regionally accredited institution meets the requirement (Ed. Code 44252(b)(12)). Nevada still requires Core, with exemptions it lists. See Praxis Core.
  • “edTPA is required.” Not everywhere, and the list moves. New York ended it on 27 April 2022 (NYSED); Illinois paused it from 4 August 2023 to 31 August 2026, runs a state pilot to 31 August 2029 and requires an approved assessment again from 1 September 2029 (105 ILCS 5/21B-30). See edTPA by state.
  • “California requires the RICA.” The RICA was retired on 31 October 2025, and only results from before that date are accepted (CTC leaflet CL-402A, read 13 November 2026). See CBEST and CSET.
  • “Pennsylvania charges $200.” Since 12 November 2025 it is $50 plus a $100 discipline fee, $150 in all, under Act 47 of 2025 (PDE, read 12 November 2026).
  • “The teacher compact lets you teach in any member state now.” It covers only member states, only the first grant, and only an “unencumbered” license, and the receiving state decides which of its own licenses is equivalent (teachercompact.org). As read on 13 November 2026, only some members publish a compact route.
  • “A Praxis test costs $X.” Add the 3% non-refundable online service fee on online purchases, and check the testing year: 2026-27 fees run from 1 August 2026 to 31 July 2027. See Praxis fees and passing scores.

Our limits

We read the agency pages, rules and fee schedules a page depends on, but an agency’s evaluators apply them to each file, and how they read your transcripts, tests or experience can differ from how a rule looks on the page. Some agencies publish fees only inside their application systems. No check catches everything, so please tell us if you find a mistake. Fixes are logged on our corrections page, and our editorial policy covers the rest of how pages are made.

Before you pay for a program, a test or fingerprints, check the rule with the state agency. If a date is close, don’t wait for a recheck of ours.

Rules and fees on this page checked on 13 November 2026.