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All states / Missouri

Missouri

Verified against current sources (2026-05-08) Cite this page ↓

Missouri does not offer a bilingual education credential; ELD/ESL is an add-on endorsement. SEI training is not mandated for all teachers. As of 2021, 3.8% of public-school students are classified English Learners (NCES). Re-verified against current SEA sources on 2026-05-08.

3.8%
classified ELs (2021-10-01)
view trend →
ELD
credential types offered

Credentials

Bilingual education

Not offered.

ELL Educator Certificate

  • Add-on endorsement
Approved program
Required
Coursework
Required
Practicum
Required
Subject test
Required

ELL endorsement, K-12, per 5 CSR 20-400.570 (effective Aug 1, 2017): requires a valid Missouri permanent or professional teaching certificate, recommendation from a DESE-approved educator preparation program (per 5 CSR 20-400.500), 18 semester hours of content coursework (linguistics, language and culture, second language acquisition, methods, curriculum, assessment), 6 hours literacy, 3 hours psychology of the exceptional child, a 3-hour culminating clinical experience working with ELLs in elementary and secondary settings, and a qualifying score on the required exit assessment(s) per 5 CSR 20-400.310 and 5 CSR 20-400.440.

Sheltered English Instruction (SEI)

Not mandated for all teachers.

State policy signals

Seal of Biliteracy

Recognition for graduating students proficient in English plus another language.

Adopted in 2017.

Source: sealofbiliteracy.org (opens in a new tab)

ELP assessment

Annual English Language Proficiency test used for EL identification and reclassification.

ACCESS for ELLs · WIDA Consortium member.

Source: wida.wisc.edu (opens in a new tab)

History of licensure

Dated policy and verification events shaping this state's EL teacher credentials.

  1. Missouri Seal of Biliteracy adopted

    Missouri adopted the Seal of Biliteracy in 2017, administered by DESE. The DESE Seal of Biliteracy program now reports annual results back to 2020-21 across 127+ participating districts and includes a Distinguished Seal of Biliteracy tier.

    dese.mo.gov (opens in a new tab)

  2. 5 CSR 20-400.570 ELL Certification Requirements (K-12) effective

    DESE's ELL endorsement rule (5 CSR 20-400.570) took effect August 1, 2017, codifying the K-12 add-on certification: 18 hours of content coursework (linguistics, language and culture, second-language acquisition, methods, curriculum, assessment), 3 hours psychology of the exceptional child, 6 hours literacy, a 3-hour field/clinical experience, and a qualifying exit assessment. Together with 5 CSR 20-400.500 (general approved-program requirement) and 5 CSR 20-400.310 / .440 (assessments), this rule grounds the schema's `eld.requirements.{program,coursework,practicum,test}: true` codings.

    sos.mo.gov (opens in a new tab)

  3. EPAA 29(100) document analysis (Leider, Colombo & Nerlino, 2021)

    Leider, Colombo & Nerlino published in Education Policy Analysis Archives 29(100) a comprehensive document analysis of every state and DC's bilingual, ELD/ESL, and SEI teacher-credentialing requirements, professional teaching standards mentions, and EL-percentage figures, based on primary SEA sources collected October–December 2019. The 2019 coding of Missouri's EL-credentialing landscape is preserved as a temporally-anchored research baseline against which the catalog's later verifications are framed.

    doi.org (opens in a new tab)

  4. Missouri's Teacher Standards revised (August 2025)

    DESE issued a revised "Missouri's Teacher Standards" document in August 2025 that replaces the older standards used in the 2019 baseline. The revised standards retain Standard 1.5 ("Diverse social and cultural perspectives"), Standard 2 references to diverse learners, and Standard 6.1's reference to "students whose first language is not Standard English," but do not name English learners explicitly — keeping `professionalStandardsMentions.el: false`.

    dese.mo.gov (opens in a new tab)

Sources

  1. [1] Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2019-11-15 (via Leider et al. 2021)
  2. [2] Leider, Colombo & Nerlino (2021), EPAA 29(100). Tables 2-5 + Appendix A. (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2019-11-15 (via Leider et al. 2021)
  3. [3] 5 CSR 20-400 — Missouri Code of State Regulations, Title 5, Division 20, Chapter 400 (Office of Educator Quality), incl. 5 CSR 20-400.500 general teacher certification requirements and 5 CSR 20-400.570 Certification Requirements for English Language Learners (K-12) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  4. [4] DESE — English Language Development (program landing page; ACCESS for ELLs, MO ELP/ELD Standards, Seal of Biliteracy) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  5. [5] DESE — Missouri Seal of Biliteracy (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  6. [6] Missouri's Teacher Standards (DESE, August 2025 revision) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  7. [7] NCES Digest of Education Statistics, Table 204.20 — English learners (ELs) enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools, by state or jurisdiction: Fall 2011 through fall 2021 (2023 release; MO Fall 2021 = 3.8%) (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  8. [8] WIDA Consortium member states (wida.wisc.edu/about/consortium); confirms Missouri as a current member, supporting ACCESS for ELLs as the annual ELP assessment (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08
  9. [9] Seal of Biliteracy adoption-by-year list (sealofbiliteracy.org / Wikipedia mirror); confirms Missouri among 2017 adopters (opens in a new tab) — retrieved 2026-05-08

Cite this page

Site content is published under CC BY 4.0. When citing a fact from this page, please cite both projectcert and the original Leider et al. (2021) paper the dataset extends.

APA
projectcert. (2026, May 8). Missouri EL teacher certification. https://projectcert.org/states/mo/
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
BibTeX
@misc{projectcert_mo_2026,
  author  = {{projectcert}},
  title   = {{Missouri EL teacher certification}},
  year    = {2026},
  url     = {https://projectcert.org/states/mo/},
  urldate = {2026-05-08},
  note    = {Last verified 2026-05-08}
}
@article{leider2021decentralization,
  author  = {Leider, Christine M. and Colombo, Michaela W. and Nerlino, Erika},
  title   = {{Decentralization, teacher quality, and the education of English learners: Do state education agencies effectively prepare teachers of ELs?}},
  journal = {Education Policy Analysis Archives},
  volume  = {29},
  number  = {100},
  year    = {2021},
  doi     = {10.14507/epaa.29.5279}
}

See the methodology for how these data were collected, or the glossary for term definitions.