Weekly Fiscal Facts are provided to Wisconsin Newspaper Association members by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. The Wisconsin Policy Forum logo can be downloaded here.
A growing number of Wisconsin teachers hold emergency licenses, reflecting staffing needs and a greater reliance on non-traditional routes into the classroom.
Amid a shifting educator workforce landscape that included turnover falling from 2023 highs, the number of emergency teaching licenses issued by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) kept rising to 3,832 in the 2023-24 academic year (referred to as 2024). The number of emergency licenses has risen 19.9% since 2022 – the last time the Forum reported on emergency teaching licenses. The number of emergency license holders has followed a similar trend.
DPI data for 2024 listed 95,501 unique individuals holding licenses, many with multiple positions. Among these, 3.6% had emergency licenses – an increase from 2019, when 2.5% of 96,261 licensed educators taught with emergency licenses.
In the most typical route into Wisconsin’s educator workforce, an incoming teacher earns a bachelor’s degree in education, meets the state’s licensing requirements, and begins teaching with a Tier II Provisional License. Teachers who do not follow the traditional route, however, begin their teaching careers with Tier I Licenses, for which they need to have earned a bachelor’s degree and passed a background check.
Educators with Tier I licenses – informally often called emergency licenses or permits — are allowed to work in schools for one or three years while they work towards a Tier II license. In addition to new teachers on non-traditional tracks, DPI also issues Tier I licenses to teachers who are licensed in states other than Wisconsin or who want to teach classes or grade levels outside of their current licenses.
Districts often turn to educators with emergency licenses when the traditional pipeline – schools of education – does not yield enough candidates in their needed areas. Alternatively, a district may ask experienced or retired teachers, or school support staff, to take on roles for which they are not yet licensed. These may be temporary arrangements to fill a gap as the district seeks a permanent employee with appropriate licensure.
The increased number of educators with emergency licenses was not driven by a few subject areas, but rather came from accumulated growth across many, especially smaller, areas. The increase was seen across districts but is more prevalent in small or urban districts, certain subject areas, and cases of individuals with less experience.
As school leaders increasingly rely on emergency license holders, they may want to consider what support they offer them. Districts that hire more educators who have not gone through traditional four-year programs may need to supply the training and mentoring that these programs traditionally provide.
Meanwhile, policymakers may wish to evaluate which strategies (traditional and alternative) are most effectively recruiting and also retaining educators, and boost those pathways yielding more and higher quality applicants.
This information is provided to Wisconsin Newspaper Association members as a service of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. Learn more at wispolicyforum.org.
