About
projectcert is an atlas of teacher certification requirements for instructing classified English Learner (EL) students across the fifty U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
Background
Under Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974), and subsequent federal civil-rights regulations, students classified as English Learners are entitled to meaningful access to the curriculum. Realization of that entitlement turns substantially on the preparation of the teacher of record. State education agencies (SEAs) set the credentialing requirements for teachers of ELs; those requirements vary considerably. This catalog documents the resulting variation.
Contents
- An interactive map presenting six encoded variables.
- Cross-state reports on bilingual, ELD, and SEI credentials.
- A side-by-side state comparison tool.
- An individual record for each of the 51 jurisdictions (e.g., Massachusetts).
Source paper
Leider, C. M., Colombo, M. W., & Nerlino, E. (2021). Decentralization, teacher quality, and the education of English learners: Do state education agencies effectively prepare teachers of ELs? Education Policy Analysis Archives, 29(100). https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.29.5279 (opens in a new tab)
How to cite / attribution
Use of data, figures, or findings from this catalog in research, reporting, policy work, presentations, or other publications requires citation of both the underlying source paper and this site. The paper is the original scholarly work that seeded the catalog; citing only the site would obscure the authors whose research established the dataset.
Source paper (required)
Leider, C. M., Colombo, M. W., & Nerlino, E. (2021). Decentralization, teacher quality, and the education of English learners: Do state education agencies effectively prepare teachers of ELs? Education Policy Analysis Archives, 29(100). https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.29.5279 (opens in a new tab)
This site
projectcert. An atlas of U.S. state teacher certification requirements for instructing classified English Learner students. Retrieved 2026-08-16 from this website.
Each state page also lists the underlying SEA documents that ground every fact, alongside their retrieval dates. Quotations of specific requirements should cite the SEA source directly in addition to the entries above.
Contributing
The state records are maintained in a public project repository. Proposed updates — new SEA documents, changed credentialing requirements, corrections — should be submitted as an issue or pull request with the source URL and retrieval date.