There is no single national answer.
Whether a private school teacher needs a state teaching certificate is decided by each state's law, and in states that reach private schools it can turn on the school itself: its accreditation or state approval status, or the state programs it joins.
Federal statistics do not fill the gap — NCES publishes certification rates for public and charter teachers but not for private school teachers.
Do private school teachers need a state teaching certificate?
The rules are state rules.
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Non-Public Education collects them in a comparison chart titled Teacher Certification, Length of School Day, and Curriculum Requirements, which it describes as a summary based on information states provided before September 30, 2016.
The words vary before the rules do.
California issues teaching credentials through the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, New York's Office of Teaching Initiatives uses certificates and licenses, and Texas uses certificate.
They are the same kind of state authorization under different names.
The federal numbers that exist measure public school teachers.
In the 2020–21 school year, 91% of traditional public school teachers held a regular teaching certificate in their state, compared with 75% of public charter school teachers.
The gap shows up at the bottom of the distribution too.
In 2020–21, 12% of public charter school teachers held no teaching certificate at all, versus 1% of traditional public school teachers.
On the broader NTPS measure — a regular, standard, advanced or probationary certificate — 79.6% of charter school teachers and 94.0% of traditional public school teachers counted as fully certified in 2020–21.
None of those numbers describe private school teachers.
NCES's sector comparison does not include certification-type data for private school teachers, so there is no current official figure for the share of private school teachers who hold a certificate.
Special education carries its own federal layer.
Under the IDEA regulations, a public school special education teacher must hold full state special education certification or be in a qualifying alternate route.
The teacher must not have had certification or licensure requirements waived on an emergency, temporary or provisional basis, and must hold at least a bachelor's degree.
For public charter schools, that rule defers to whatever the state's charter law requires.
By its terms, it does not cover teachers employed by private schools.
What a private special education school asks of its teachers is set by the state rules that reach it and the school's own standards.
Confirm the current rule with the state education agency
Which states require certification for some private schools?
Where a state does require certified teachers, the rule can reach every private school or only some.
Michigan's MCL 388.553 bars anyone without a certificate that would qualify them for like grades of Michigan public schools from teaching the regular or elementary grade studies in any private, denominational or parochial school.
Elsewhere the line follows a school's status.
Kansas does not require its non-accredited private schools to employ state-licensed teachers, though courses must be taught by competent instructors.
In Pennsylvania, teachers at religious nonpublic schools registered with the Department of Education are not required to be Pennsylvania certified, though the school can choose to request it.
Some federal summaries record no requirement at all.
The U.S. Department of Education's Colorado summary (last updated October 20, 2014) says certification of teachers in private schools is not required, and its Arkansas summary (updated 2012) says the same for Arkansas.
Both are dated summaries; confirm the current rule, and what else still applies to the school, with the state education agency.
That is why the honest answer to "which states" is not one list.
Where a requirement exists, it can follow the school's status, the state programs it joins and sometimes the position itself.
Two schools in the same state can sit under different rules.
The federal comparison chart compares the states on teacher certification, school day length and curriculum, which makes it a useful first read.
Its information predates September 30, 2016, so treat it as a starting point rather than the current law of any state.
- Read the state education agency's nonpublic school pages, where the state's own teacher requirements live.
- Ask each school on your list which category it holds under the state's framework — accredited, approved or another status the state assigns.
- If the school joins a state voucher, ESA or tax-credit program, check that program's staff terms separately.
- Confirm what the position itself adds, especially for special education and other specialist roles.
Certification is not necessarily the only state rule that reaches a private school job.
Approval, accreditation, background checks and reporting are separate state tracks, and a state can attach requirements through any of them where no certification requirement applies.
The state education agency is the authority on the full set.
How accreditation, state approval and chartered status change the answer
Two teachers in the same state can sit under different certification rules because of what their schools are.
States recognize nonpublic schools through different statuses, and a rule written for one status does not travel to the others.
Accreditation is one status that can carry conditions with it.
A state may attach teacher requirements to accredited schools while leaving other categories to set their own hiring standards, and it may attach different conditions to state approval instead.
Chartered status is the third status this section's heading names.
Where a state's framework includes a chartered or similarly formal status for nonpublic schools, the conditions attached to that status can reach teacher qualifications; the state education agency's nonpublic school pages show whether that status exists in a given state and what it carries.
Accreditation and state approval are also different things.
An accreditor is an outside body that reviews a school against its own standards; state approval is the state's own act, and the state can write requirements into it.
A school can hold either, both or neither.
The practical move is to ask each school what it is accredited or approved as, then read that status against the state's rules on the agency's nonpublic school pages.
Do voucher, ESA and tax-credit schools require certified teachers?
Voucher, ESA and tax-credit scholarship programs are created by state law, and each program writes its own participation terms.
Those terms can reach staff, and they sit alongside the state's general private-school rules rather than replacing them.
In practice that makes the answer program-specific.
A school's obligations under one program can differ from its obligations under another in the same state, and a school outside every program is bound by none of their terms.
Confirm the staff requirements of any program a school participates in with the program administrator or the state education agency, and ask whether participation changes the school's approval or reporting duties too.
Religious school exemptions
Religious character alone does not settle the certification question.
What matters is how a state's own framework treats the school.
Michigan's statute names denominational and parochial schools alongside other private schools, while Pennsylvania gives registered religious nonpublic schools a status of their own, whose teachers are not required to be Pennsylvania certified.
Each state's framework, read in its own terms, decides.
Separate from state certification is what a religious school may ask of its teachers for itself: a statement of faith, a reference from a pastor, membership in the school's congregation, or a religious-education credential from a diocese, a church body or an association.
Those requirements belong to the school or the church body that sets them.
They are not state certificates, and holding one does not stand in for a state certificate where a state requires one for the school's category.
If you are evaluating a faith-based school, keep the two questions apart: what the state requires of the school's category, and what the school requires of its teachers.
The school's hiring materials answer the second; the state education agency answers the first.
What private schools require instead (degree, subject expertise, faith fit)
Where no state certification requirement reaches a school, the school's own hiring standards take the state's place.
Degree, subject command, teaching demonstration, references and mission fit are the elements to be ready to speak to in a school's posting and interview process; each school weighs them in its own way.
Federal data describe the size of the private school teaching workforce and teachers' degrees, not what a school must require.
In 2020–21, NCES counted 466,000 private school teachers, full- and part-time.
In the same survey, 50% of private school teachers held a postbaccalaureate degree (a master's or higher) as their highest degree, alongside 51% of public charter school teachers and 62% of traditional public school teachers.
At faith-based schools, mission fit can be part of the screen: where a school's religious mission shapes the classroom, a candidate should expect to address alignment with it alongside subject expertise.
How schools actually evaluate candidates and run the search is career advice rather than law, and the private school teacher career guide covers the job search from that side.
State-by-state table: the one to build for your target list
A single table marking every state certified or not certified would give the question a cleanliness the law does not have.
The legal answer follows the school's status, its programs and the position, and it changes when a legislature amends it.
The table that pays off is the one you build for your own target list.
For each school you are weighing, work through four checks:
- The state's rule for the school's category, on the state education agency's nonpublic school pages.
- The school's own status under the state's framework: accredited, approved or another status the state assigns.
- Any state program the school joins, and the staff terms that come with it.
- The position itself, especially special education and other specialist roles.
The same four checks resolve to a different answer from state to state, which is why no single row settles this question nationally.
Where any summary — this guide included — and the agency's current text disagree, the agency wins: its nonpublic school office maintains the operative rules.
Schools doing the same homework before they hire can post a private school job with their requirements stated in the listing.
Should you get certified anyway?
For a school with no state requirement, certification is a career decision rather than a legal one.
The considerations are mobility, subject and target list.
Mobility first: public school teaching runs on state certification, and the practice shows it — 91% of traditional public school teachers held a regular certificate in 2020–21.
A certificate you hold keeps district options open alongside private ones.
Second, the target list: where a school hires outside a state requirement, a certificate is one qualification among several, alongside degrees, subject expertise and experience.
Run the decision against your own list: the states you might teach in, the kinds of schools you are targeting, and whether public or charter options belong in your plans.
Then confirm the certification rules that would apply to you with each state education agency involved.
Career information, not legal advice. Certification rules are state law, and the state education agency named for each state is the authority on its current requirements for private schools.