How to Look Up and Verify a Teaching Certificate in Any State

Start from the state that issued the certificate.

Teaching certificates are state credentials: the education department or standards board that licenses teachers in a state holds the record of the certificates it issues.

In Texas, the record you check online — TEA's "virtual certificate" — is considered the official record of educator certification in Texas under Texas Education Code §21.053(a).

A name search works where the tool offers one: Georgia's Check Certification Status page asks for either the certificate number or the educator's name, and Texas's and Kentucky's lookups take a first and last name.

(Whether a private or charter school role required a certificate in the first place is a separate question — it depends on the state and the kind of school.

If you are working that out, start with teaching at a private school, and check the rules where you teach with the state agency that issues licenses.)

The table lists the official public lookup tools our research verified, state by state, with each agency's own tool or page linked.

Tool names and addresses were checked on the agency pages in October 2026.

Every state has an agency responsible for licensure of P-12 educators — those agencies issue the certificates, keep the records and run the lookups.

For a state not in the table, start at that agency's website and look for "educator certification," "licensure" or "certificate lookup."

A certificate number is the identifier a licensing agency attaches to your record — Illinois, for example, identifies each educator by an IEIN.

Where your state uses one, it is the more precise search when two educators share a name, and Georgia's lookup asks for either the certificate number or the educator's name.

A lookup record answers a short list of questions, and the labels differ from state to state.

Work through four checks when you read one:

• Status — whether the certificate is active, expired or inactive, and what type of certificate it is.
• Certificate areas — the subjects and grade levels the certificate covers, listed in the state's own terms.
• Expiration date — when the certificate runs out. Renewing a teaching certificate is a separate process with its own deadlines, set by the state's rules.
• Public action — whether the state has taken any final, public disciplinary action against the certificate.

What the record shows carries different weight in different states.

In Texas, the virtual certificate is considered the official record of educator certification that satisfies Texas Education Code §21.053(a) — what the lookup says is, formally, the certification record.

Confirm you have the right person before acting on a record.

Georgia's lookup accepts the certificate number or the educator's name, so search by the number when two educators share a name.

One lookup reads one state's records.

A certificate issued in another state sits in that state's system, and carrying it across state lines is its own process.

NASDTEC's Interstate Agreement is a collection of more than 50 individual, one-way agreements stating which other jurisdictions' certificates each state will accept — not two-way reciprocity.

Verifying a candidate's certificate starts with the state that issued it.

Texas's public lookup is open to anyone searching by first and last name, and Tennessee's public Educator License Information search lets anyone verify another educator's license status.

States do not all route employment verification through the public tool.

Massachusetts warns school and district administrators not to rely on the public lookup for hiring and to use ELAR instead.

Illinois no longer completes out-of-state licensure verification forms at all.

Credentials in Illinois are verified through the ELIS system using the educator's IEIN, date of birth and last name, so a verification there can need identifiers the school may not hold.

Whether a teacher needed a certificate to take the job is a separate question, and it depends on the state and the kind of school.

Once a teacher holds a state certificate, though, checking it starts with the state that issued it — the lookup or verification system that state runs.

The state record is not the whole screen.

A criminal background check is its own step, and misconduct handled in administrative hearings rather than criminal court may not appear in it — which is what the Clearinghouse in the next section is for.

How a school runs verification and weighs the results is the employer side of hiring at private and charter schools.

A revoked license is easy to miss: a state lookup covers only its own certificates, and a candidate's history may sit in a different state's records.

NASDTEC operates the Educator Identification (Ed ID) Clearinghouse for exactly this — a national database of educators whose licenses were annulled, denied, suspended, revoked or otherwise invalidated.

By NASDTEC's estimate, about 6,000 educators a year have adverse actions taken against their certificate or license for serious misconduct, and because most misconduct cases are handled in administrative hearings rather than criminal court, they may not appear in a criminal background check.

Coverage is broad: state agencies responsible for licensure of professional P-12 educators in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Department of Defense schools, Guam and the Canadian province of Ontario submit information to the Clearinghouse.

Access is for organizations, not individuals: the Clearinghouse is available to public and private P-12 schools — charter schools included — and to state-approved educator preparation providers, which register for it.

For a teacher, that means a final public sanction in one state's licensing history can be visible to a registered school elsewhere, so it is worth knowing what your own record shows before you apply.

For a school, registering adds a screen that a criminal background check alone does not replace.

Career information, not legal advice: lookup tools, records and screening programs change, so confirm certificate status, hiring screens and any sanction history with the state education agency or the body that made the rule.