Transferring a Pennsylvania teaching licence to Florida
Florida is an ITMC member and Pennsylvania operates the compact as a live route, but the compact governs movement BETWEEN member states and Florida’s own reciprocity statute is what an incoming teacher is evaluated under. Pennsylvania’s compact membership is what a Pennsylvania teacher uses to leave, not what Florida uses to admit them.
Which framework applies to you
| Pennsylvania | Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact member (enacted 2023) |
| Florida | Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact member (enacted 2023) |
Both ends are compact members, so the compact is at least theoretically available — but membership is not availability. Whether the route is open depends on whether the destination state has published the list of licences it accepts and actually opened it. Pennsylvania has; Colorado has not. Check which case your destination is →
The question that decides this corridor
Does the Florida Bureau of Educator Certification treat Pennsylvania’s Grades PK-4 certificate as satisfying Elementary Education (K-6), given PK-4 stops two grades short?
Florida issues elementary as K-6. Pennsylvania issues PK-4 and separately Grades 4-8. Neither Pennsylvania certificate covers Florida’s K-6 band on its own, and Pennsylvania discontinued the Elementary Education K-6 certificate that would have matched it on 31.08.2013. If PK-4 is not accepted, the applicant needs the Elementary Education (K-6) subject area examination — and the fee is per subject and nonrefundable.
Who to ask: FLDOE Bureau of Educator Certification, 800-445-6739, Monday–Friday 08:00–17:00 Eastern
ambiguous_confirm_with_state — this is a real gap in the
published record, not a gap in our reading of it. We checked on
10 September 2026. Anyone who gives you a confident answer to this is guessing;
the agency is the only place it can be settled.
Moving on military orders? Federal law gives a military spouse a separate route: a covered teaching certificate is valid in the new state on three documents. Florida's education agency does not mention that route on the pages we read. What federal law and Florida publish →
What Florida requires
Each card carries the rule or agency page it comes from and the date we read it. Where a source states something verbatim, we quote it rather than paraphrase.
Only passing exam scores earned no more than ten (10) years prior to the date of application are acceptable.
A mid-career teacher whose subject-area examination predates that window has no usable scores for the examination route.
Florida Department of Education, Subject Area Examinations — read 9 September 2026Authorised by the State Board of Education under Certification Rule 6A-4.0012, F.A.C. Adding a subject is $75 per subject; removing one is $20 per subject; upgrading Temporary to Professional is $75; late renewal is $105.
Florida Department of Education, Certification Application Fee Schedule — read 9 September 2026The fingerprint processing fees for the required background screening (state and federal) may be borne by the district school board, charter school, employee, or contractor.
Separately, FLDOE warns that prints taken BEFORE Florida employment may need reprocessing at a second fee. If you are printed early in order to hold a certificate for interviews, budget for paying twice.
Florida Department of Education, Certification Steps, and Step 4: Submitting Fingerprints for Certification — read 10 September 2026If a U.S. citizen chooses to have his/her fingerprints processed prior to Florida employment for issuance of the Professional Certificate, it may be necessary to have the fingerprints reprocessed, and the individual may have to pay a second processing fee as a condition of employment in a Florida public school.Florida Department of Education, Certificate Types and Requirements — read 9 September 2026
the department shall issue within 90 calendar days after receipt of the completed application a professional certificate to a qualifying applicant
s. 1012.56(1)(a), F.S. This is a statutory duty rather than a service target.
The Florida Senate, s. 1012.56, F.S. — Educator certification requirements (2026 edition) — read 9 September 2026These four steps lead to your initial Florida certificate
This is the practical reason a Temporary certificate cannot issue before employment. A holder of a valid professional standard certificate from another state qualifies for the Professional certificate without step 3 gating them the same way, which is exactly what makes the tier question on this corridor worth so much.
Florida Department of Education, Certification Steps, and Step 4: Submitting Fingerprints for Certification — read 10 September 2026If the results of your fingerprints are clear, your certificate is issued within 30 days of our Bureau’s receipt of your district’s request.
Do not read this as an alternative to the 90-day statutory limit in s. 1012.56(1)(a), F.S. They are measured from different starting points, this one from the DISTRICT’S request and that one from your completed application, so they are not a range.
Florida Department of Education, Certification Steps, and Step 4: Submitting Fingerprints for Certification — read 10 September 2026What is unresolved: that is 13 states. The Council of State Governments lists 15 members. Pennsylvania would not list itself, which leaves MISSISSIPPI — a CSG-listed member since 2024 — unaccounted for and absent from Pennsylvania's list. The page does not explain the omission. If you hold a Mississippi certificate, do not assume the compact route is open to you; ask PDE.
Pennsylvania Department of Education, Out-of-State Educators — read 9 September 2026Note the words "professional level". As in Florida, a sending state's entry-tier certificate may not qualify — the same distinction that decides the New York to Florida corridor.
Pennsylvania Department of Education, Out-of-State Educators — read 9 September 2026Teacher or Support Personnel Certification or License Experience-Based, Residency, Temporary Teaching Permit (TTP) Instructional I, Educational Specialist I Instructional II, Educational Specialist II N/A
Useful when an application form or another state asks which "stage" or "tier" your Pennsylvania certificate is: PDE has published the mapping itself.
Pennsylvania Department of Education, Certificates in Pennsylvania — NASDTEC Stages of Licensure — read 10 September 2026The endorsement, side by side
| Pennsylvania | Florida | |
|---|---|---|
| Certificate or endorsement | Mathematics 7-12 (subject code 6800) | Mathematics (6-12) |
| Grade band | 7–12 | 6–12 |
| Named examination | <span class="muted">not captured</span> | Florida subject area test: Mathematics (6-12) |
Note the grade-band mismatch. Pennsylvania issues 7–12; Florida issues 6–12. Whether that matters depends on whether the destination applies an identity test or a comparability test — and those are different tests with different outcomes.
What works in your favour
Pennsylvania issues Science – Biology, Chemistry, Earth and Space and Physics separately at 7-12, and Florida issues Biology, Chemistry, Earth-Space Science and Physics separately at 6-12. For single-science teachers this is one of the cleanest subject matches in the project — the mismatch is one grade at the bottom, not a missing coverage.
Florida Department of Education, Subject Area Examinations — full certification-subject-area to test table — read 10 September 2026Pennsylvania mathematics is 7-12 and Florida mathematics is 6-12, so a Pennsylvania mathematics teacher is asking Florida to authorise one grade MORE than Pennsylvania did — the easier direction of a grade-band mismatch.
Florida Department of Education, Subject Area Examinations — full certification-subject-area to test table — read 10 September 2026What it costs to get this corridor wrong
Every figure below is set by a rule or published by the agency, and cited on its row. These are not our estimates, and the largest single nonrefundable amount is $75.
Nothing here is a prediction about your file. It is what the published rules say happens, and what the agency charges, if a step is taken in the wrong order or on the wrong document.
Licence classes on this corridor
The requirements above are the ones that apply whatever you teach. These are the classes whose subject-specific requirements we have researched for Florida.
| Licence class | Corridor | Pack |
|---|---|---|
| Secondary mathematics | Pennsylvania → Florida | Facts on this page · pack not written yet |
| Elementary | Pennsylvania → Florida | Facts on this page · pack not written yet |
| Middle grades | Pennsylvania → Florida | Facts on this page · pack not written yet |
| Secondary science | Pennsylvania → Florida | Facts on this page · pack not written yet |
| Secondary English language arts | Pennsylvania → Florida | Facts on this page · pack not written yet |
| Special education | Pennsylvania → Florida | Facts on this page · pack not written yet |
A class listed without a pack is not a gap in the research — its facts are on this page and on the state pages. It means we have not yet written the step-by-step pack for it.
Where these facts come from
This page cites 9 sources. Every one is named on the card that uses it, with the date we read it. The full register, including what we archived and what we could not retrieve, is at every source we cite.
Everything we have verified about Florida → · About Pennsylvania →