Colorado lawmakers want to solve the teacher shortage by cutting licensing barriers for out-of-state teachers

With rural school districts struggling to fill classrooms, Colorado lawmakers are looking for solutions beyond state lines — but first, they must pass a bipartisan bill that would cut red tape for out-of-state educators and speed up the licensing process.

Senate Bill 126, sponsored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, wants to make it easier to fill long-standing teacher shortages by easing licensure requirements and expediting license applications for out-of-state teachers. The bill was passed by the senate in early March and went to the House Education Committee for a vote on March 26.

“The teacher shortage we’ve been facing for decades now is not totally inevitable,” said Frank Reeves, director of operations for the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, which represents 146 districts and 135,000 students across the state. “Experienced educators want to teach in Colorado. This bill clears the path by eliminating arbitrary licensure obstacles that have very little to do with classroom competency, so qualified teachers can get into our classrooms without unnecessary delay.”

Three years ago, Colorado passed a bill to enact and join the Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact, an existing agreement among 13 states that creates license reciprocity to make it easier for educators to access teaching careers across state lines.

The agreement allows Colorado to recognize and transfer a professional teaching license held in another state, thus removing barriers like additional exams or coursework for experienced out-of-state educators who want to teach in Colorado. However, Rep. Meghan Lukens — a Steamboat Springs Democrat and bill sponsor — said the state is still waiting to reap its benefits.

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“The challenge we are finding is that while the compact is technically enacted, they have not finalized their rules yet,” Lukens said during a March 26 hearing with the House Education Committee. “Three years after the compact became active, we are still waiting for the benefits of this policy.”

In the meantime, bill would accomplish two things: expand the pool of eligible teachers from compact states who can earn a license in Colorado, and shorten the time it takes to issue the license.

Under the original Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact bill, passed in 2023, licensed educators from one of the 12 other participating states must have at least three years of successful teaching experience within the last seven years to be eligible for a professional teaching license in Colorado.

Senate Bill 126 removes the requirement that the experience must be within the previous seven years, which supporters of the bill say will remove barriers for educators who have taken a break from teaching but have sufficient experience to fill one of Colorado’s thousands of vacant educators jobs.

“Currently, if a teacher took time off to raise a family, care for a parent, maybe even go into administration and wanted to get back into teaching, maybe went to the military even for just a year or two too long, that seven-year requirement would omit them from receiving a license in Colorado,” Reeves said.

“The seven-year requirement does create barriers for our Colorado workforce, especially in rural areas, where we’re trying to recruit from out of state,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Fort Morgan Republican and bill sponsor. “They could be nine years out, but they still have all the credentials and everything else our teachers need, and we would love to have them in our schools.”

The bill would also require the Colorado Department of Education to issue an initial teacher license to an educator licensed by a compact state within 30 days of receiving their application, so long as all requirements are met. On top of the bill’s goals to expand eligibility for applicants, this provision would help expedite the process of getting out-of-state teachers in Colorado classrooms.

“A 30-day process and timeline isn’t a luxury, it’s a lifeline,” Reeves said. “If someone applies in May who has experience, who wants to come on, they’re not going to wait until July or August to get a license before they move on and move somewhere else, probably to another state.”

Outside of a required criminal background check, applicants would not be required to complete additional coursework, examinations or programs as a condition of an initial license, but the department of education may require these items as a condition of license renewal later on, according to the bill text.

These changes to the licensing requirements would have been especially beneficial during the 2024-25 school year, which began with 7,792 teaching positions still left to fill, Johnson said.

“Our schools are struggling to fill teaching positions. The reasons our workforce challenges are many include low pay, heavy workloads and competition from neighboring states,” Johnson said during the March 26 House Education Committee hearing. “While there is no silver bullet to solve these problems, this bill is a small step to helping fill that void by expediting licensure for experienced out-of-state teachers.”

In Colorado, teacher and special services provider vacancies increased in 2024-25 compared to the previous year, with 14.12% of teaching positions still needing to be filled by the start of the 2024-25 academic year. Almost 9% of principal positions were also vacant during the same year.

Rural mountain districts often face larger vacancies, with additional challenges to hiring like geography, cost of living and housing shortages.

“Finding good teachers is really really hard right now,” said Chris Selle, superintendent for Meeker School District. “So if we find great people that we know are a good fit for our community, we want to try to make that pathway to get them licensed in the state of Colorado as smooth as we can.”

The bill’s fiscal note states it doesn’t carry any associated costs because the Colorado Department of Education already has the necessary staff to process license applications and participate in the compact.

An amended version of the bill was passed by the House Committee on Education and now heads to the House Committee of the Whole.