Teacher Qualifications

There are 3 professional certificates available in Maryland:

Standard Professional Certificate I and II
Teachers teaching a core academic subject (reading, mathematics, writing) must hold a valid certificate to teach in Maryland.

The Standard Professional Certificate I is issued to an applicant who meets all certification requirements and is employed by a Maryland local school system or an accredited non-public school.

The Standard Professional Certificate II requires 3 years of satisfactory, professional school-related experience plus 6 hours of acceptable credit and a professional development plan for the Advanced Professional Certificate.

Advanced Professional Certificate
Requires verification of 3 years of full-time professional school-related experience, 6 semester hours of acceptable credit; and a master’s degree, or a minimum of 36 semester hours of post baccalaureate course work which must include at least 21 hours of graduate credit. (The remaining 15 semester hours may include graduate or undergraduate course work and/or Maryland State Department of Education Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits, or obtained National Board Certification and earned a minimum of 12 semester hours of approved graduate course work earned after the conferral of the bachelor degree.

Resident Teacher Certificate
Issued to an applicant who has been selected by a local school system in a specialized program.

Conditional Certificate
Issued only at the request of a local school system superintendent to an applicant employed in a local school system who does not meet all certification requirements.

The teacher totals reflected in each of these categories, are the number of teachers with credentials teaching core academic subjects as defined by the Federal government. These subjects are English, Reading or Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, Foreign Languages, Civic and Government, Economics, Arts, History and Geography. Teachers teaching other subjects are not in these totals.

Classes taught throughout the school year, including summer school classes were reported. In addition, the elementary classes were weighted to account for all core academic subject instruction.

The federal "No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB), enacted in January 2002, states that all teachers in core academic areas must be highly qualified in the core academic subjects they teach by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. It also requires that newly hired teachers in Title 1 programs or schools be highly qualified immediately. All teachers hired after the first day of the 2002-2003 school year in Title 1 schoolwide programs must be highly qualified. In Title 1 targeted-assistance schools, only those teachers paid with Title 1 funds need to be highly qualified immediately.

"Highly qualified" is a specific term defined by No Child Left Behind. The law outlines a list of minimum requirements both in content knowledge and teaching skills to meet the "highly qualified" status. The law requires teachers to have a bachelor's degree and full state certification and to demonstrate content knowledge in the subjects they teach. Under NCLB states decide what is necessary for certification and for determining subject-matter competency. Rules surrounding the requirements for highly qualified teachers continue to be developed and refined. For more information on the state requirements please go to: www.msde.maryland.gov.

Under NCLB, states are required to measure the extent to which all students have highly qualified teachers. We have incorporated statistics on the percent of not highly qualified teachers in high poverty schools and in low poverty schools. This calculation is based on ranking schools by the percentage of economically disadvantaged students. Maryland uses students receiving free and reduced priced meals for this measure. MSDE reports the percentage of not highly qualified teachers in the highest and lowest quartiles of schools in this ranking.