Georgia teacher licensure for out-of-state applicants

In order to qualify, you must hold a valid or expired certificate in a field that is comparable to one of Georgia's certificate fields.

Georgia is not a member of the Interstate Teacher Mobility Compact on the Council of State Governments list captured 9 September 2026.

Effective July 1, 2026, all out-of-state educators applying for Georgia certification in teaching fields must meet the literacy assessment requirement by passing the appropriate Georgia state-approved literacy assessment or by passing a GaPSC-accepted literacy assessment approved by another state.

The freshest live change found anywhere in this project — ten weeks old at capture. Any guide, forum answer or search result written before July 2026 omits it. Neither page lists which other states' literacy assessments GaPSC accepts.

Official college transcripts cannot be uploaded online through your MyPSC account.

you must hold a valid or expired certificate in a field that is comparable to one of Georgia's certificate fields

The same position as California, whose leaflet says the out-of-state credential "does not have to be valid at the time of application" — and the opposite of New York, which requires the certificate to be "active in the state of issuance (at the time of application)". A teacher who let a certificate lapse is eligible here and not there.

If you hold only a temporary or provisional certificate, please visit the Become a Georgia Educator page.

Out-of-state certificates submitted with applications will be evaluated individually.

Look up your own state's row before applying. It also shows that "professional" in Georgia's sense includes certificates other states would call provisional: Texas "Standard; Provisional", California "Preliminary; Professional Clear", New York "Provisional/Initial".

Either Employer Assurance Form negates the $20 processing fee.

A Georgia employer may request 1-Year Non-Renewable or Induction certification should an educator not meet literacy testing requirements.

So the literacy rule blocks a teacher applying speculatively, not one who already has a Georgia employer willing to make the request.

Out-of-state professional certificate holders who were required to pass a content assessment for their out-of-state certificate;

The second exemption is the one most applicants will use: if your own state made you pass a content test for the certificate, Georgia does not make you sit another.

Veteran out-of-state educators moving to Georgia may be eligible to exempt all Special Georgia Requirements except the Standards of Conduct should the following be held prior to an application for initial Georgia certification:

The years need not be consecutive and may come from any point in a career, but each must be in the same state that issued the certificate and carry a satisfactory performance review.

The special education requirement mandated by House Bill 671 is satisfied by completing a course in the identification and education of children who have special educational needs.

Many out-of-state preparation programmes already include an acceptable survey course. Specific special education or gifted experience is not required to use the five-year route.

An FBI background check (fingerprint) is required for employment in Georgia public schools and a Georgia criminal history check is required every five years for certificate renewal.

Standards of Conduct is the one Special Georgia Requirement the five-year experience exemption never waives.

Verification of Lawful Presence Documentation;

The form must be filled out completely, including indication of satisfactory performance evaluations, by a representative of the Human Resources/Personnel department of your current or former employing school system;

The third destination in this project, after New Jersey and New York, whose route depends on a former employer completing state paperwork after the teacher has left. If HR policy blocks disclosure of performance, GaPSC accepts a supervising administrator's letter or copies of each yearly review with the form.

$20 processing fee: You must pay this fee online through your MyPSC account.

For comparison: Florida $75 per subject, Colorado $110, Pennsylvania $150, Texas $160, New Jersey $170.

Please note that once an educator is both certified and employed in Georgia utilizing their Georgia certification, they no longer qualify for full interstate reciprocity.

The practical consequence is sequencing: claim every field and every exemption in the first application. Coming back later to add a field from out-of-state experience does not work.

Florida | Professional; Official Statement of Status Eligibility (if the only outstanding requirements are employment in FL and fingerprinting)

Every other row names two to five acceptable certificates. Florida's names one certificate and one narrowly conditioned statement. A Florida teacher still on a Temporary certificate is not on Georgia's reciprocity list.

It is important to note that reciprocity does not mean that an out-of-state educator will automatically qualify for a Georgia certificate.

All years were full-time employment, defined as a minimum of 120 days per school year (partial years cannot be combined)

A teacher with six years of service that includes two half-years may hold only four qualifying years, not five.

should you have been assigned to two or more subject areas during a school year, only one may be exempted.

GaPSC's own example: five years of concurrent Mathematics and English experience exempts the Mathematics test or the English test, not both.

If you are submitting Praxis scores used for certification in another state, please do not have the scores submitted electronically to the GaPSC from the testing provider. Please order a hard copy of the score report, then submit a copy of that score report to the GaPSC through your MyPSC account.

The opposite of what every other state here wants — Pennsylvania explicitly tells applicants to ask the test administrator to transmit scores. An applicant who does the usual thing for Georgia has to redo the step.

Our Certification Call Center is open 8:00 am to 11:30 am and 12:30 pm to 4:30 pm on Mondays and Wednesdays, except for state holidays.

Fourteen hours of phone access a week. Plan a deciding-question call around it — a question that occurs to you on a Thursday waits until Monday.

Complete applications are processed in the order they are received.

ambiguous_confirm_with_state. No timeline is asserted on this site for Georgia.

An exact band match for Florida Mathematics (6-12) and Colorado Mathematics – Secondary (6-12).