Teacher licensing changes risk exacerbating teacher shortage

New teacher licensure requirements from Gov. Tim Walz’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) that include requiring aspiring educators to “demonstrate” ideologically driven content risk exacerbating the teacher shortage.

Teacher candidates completing an initial licensure program and those seeking an initial Tier 3 license through the licensure via portfolio process will have to demonstrate the following, to name a few, in their coursework:

  • “affirm” student identities including sex and gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation and “incorporate” them into a learning environment;
  • “understand” how “ethnocentrism, eurocentrism, deficit-based teaching, and white supremacy undermine pedagogical equity”;
  • “assess” their “biases” and “mitigate their own behavior to disrupt oppressive systems”;
  • “empower” learners “to be agents of social change to promote equity.”

(Read more about what teacher candidates will have to demonstrate here.)

Impacted educators and teacher candidates may rethink pursuing this profession because of concerns about what they will have to embrace and demonstrate.

I was a guest on the Upper Midwest Law Center’s Minnesota Law Weekly podcast hosted by Senior Trial Counsel James Dickey to further discuss. Watch below and read a recap by Alpha News here.