Licensure Reciprocity: Mississippi

Expanding the Pool of Teachers Policy

Goal

The state should help to make licenses fully portable among states, with appropriate safeguards.

Meets a small part of goal
Suggested Citation:
National Council on Teacher Quality. (2011). Licensure Reciprocity: Mississippi results. State Teacher Policy Database. [Data set].
Retrieved from: https://www.nctq.org/yearbook/state/MS-Licensure-Reciprocity-7

Analysis of Mississippi's policies

Mississippi does not support licensure reciprocity for certified teachers from other states.

Mississippi does not make it clear whether it requires applicants to meet its standards regarding licensure testing.

Teachers with comparable out-of-state certificates are eligible for Mississippi's professional certificate. There is no state-mandated recency requirement; however, transcripts are required for all applicants. It is not clear whether the state analyzes transcripts to determine whether a teacher was prepared through a traditional or alternate route or whether additional coursework will be required.

Mississippi is also a participant in the NASDTEC Interstate Agreement; however, the latest iteration of this agreement no longer purports to be a reciprocity agreement among states and thus is no longer included in this analysis.

Citation

Recommendations for Mississippi

To uphold standards, require that teachers coming from other states meet testing requirements.
Mississippi should not provide any waivers of its teacher tests unless an applicant can provide evidence of a passing score under its own standards.

Accord the same license to out-of-state alternate route teachers as would be accorded to traditionally prepared teachers.
Mississippi should consider discontinuing its requirement for the submission of transcripts. Transcript analysis is likely to result in additional coursework requirements, even for traditionally prepared teachers; alternate route teachers, on the other hand, almost invariably will have to virtually begin anew, repeating some, most or all of a teacher preparation program in Mississippi.

State response to our analysis

Mississippi asserted that it extends reciprocity to any state as long as it "meets Mississippi license requirements or equivalent requirements as determined by the Mississippi State Board of Education." The state contended that this means all applicants asking for a Mississippi license by reciprocity must show documentation by their degree and test scores that the out-of-state license they obtained meets the state's license standards.

Last word

The wording of the state's requirement is vague as to whether candidates have to simply pass a content test in another state, or whether candidates actually have to earn at least the passing score required by Mississippi. 

Research rationale

Many professions have gone further than teaching in encouraging interstate mobility. The requirements for attorneys, for example, are complicated, but often offer certain kinds of flexibility, such as allowing them to answer a small set of additional questions. See the Comprehensive Guide to Bar Admissions Requirements 2007, published by the National Conference of Bar Examiners and the American Bar Association, available at:
http://www.ncbex.org/ .

On the similarity in effectiveness between graduates of traditional and alternative programs, see  J. Constantine, D. Player, T. Silva, K. Hallgren, M. Grider, and J. Deke, An Evaluation of Teachers Trained Through Different Routes to Certification, Final Report. National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Services, U.S. Department of Education (2009), D. Boyd, et al. "How Changes in Entry Requirements Alter the Teacher Workforce and Affect Student Achievement." Education Finance and Policy, (2006).  T. Kane, J. Rockoff, and D. Staiger. "What Does Certification Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness? Evidence from New York City." National Bureau of Economic Research. (2006), G. Henry and C. Thompson, "Impacts of Teacher Preparation on Student Test Scores in North Carolina." Teacher Portals. University of North Carolina (2010). Z.Xu, J. Hannaway and C. Taylor, "Making a Difference? The Effects of Teach for America in High School." The Urban Institute/Calder. (2009), D. Boyd et al "Recruiting Effective Math Teachers, How Do Math Immersion Teachers Compare? Evidence from New York City." Calder Institute (2009); as well as "How Changes in Entry Requirements Alter the Teacher Workforce and Affect Student Achievement," by Donald Boyd, Pamela Grossman, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James Wyckoff, National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2005; and "The Effects of Teach For America on Students: Findings from a National Evaluation," (Mathematica Policy Research Inc., 2004).