At the July meeting of the Oklahoma State Board of Education, the board approved — as an item on the consent agenda — granting emergency teaching certificates to 1,089 adults without education degrees to serve as classroom teachers in the state during the 2024-25 school year.
None of the board members, nor state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, acknowledged the enormity of that vote, which increased to 1,728 the number of adults with emergency certification for the school year. It seems inevitable that by the end of the school year, Oklahoma will surpass the 5,014 emergency certifications awarded for 2023-24.
Such numbers seemed unthinkable in the recent past — in the 2011-12 school year, the board awarded only 32 emergency certifications for all of Oklahoma. But for any number of reasons — the lure of higher-paying professions, growing issues with classroom discipline , higher salaries for educators in other states, a state superintendent who’s referred to teachers’ unions as a “terrorist organization” — Oklahoma teachers are leaving the classroom in droves.