Special Report – July 3, 2025

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Report Summary

Background

On April 22, 2025, The Delaware News Journal published an article by journalists Kelly Powers and Esteban Parra titled: “Hundreds of Delaware teachers found to be working on expired licenses in public schools”. The article included data from the Delaware Department of Education (DOE) showing that 453 Delaware public school teachers, or approximately 4% of the Delaware public school teacher population, were unlicensed to teach by the State as of March 5, 2025. The DOE provided the Office of Auditor of Accounts (AOA) the licensure status of 63 special education teachers who appeared on this list of 453 unlicensed teachers.

As a response to this information, DOE and the AOA began a cooperative inquiry. This special report examines licensing and certification practices for 62 Delaware educators identified as having a Special Education certificate while experiencing lapses in licensure status. Analysis was conducted using data from the Payroll Human Resource Statewide Technology (PHRST) system and the Delaware Educator Data System (DEEDS). The observations reveal a potential for persistent gaps in licensure and credential verification and maintenance.

AOA chose to focus specifically on special education for this report because of the additional job responsibilities and federal and state regulatory burden placed on special education teachers.

Key Information and Findings

In this report, AOA notes the following results:

62 educators who hold a Special Education certificate were identified by DOE as having experienced a lapse in licensing.

• DOE provided records that identified 47 of those 62 as having been employed by school districts, charter schools, and alternative schools without proper licensing.
  • Collectively, according to the record provided AOA, these educators were employed approximately 26,289 calendar days without appropriate licensing credentials.

• AOA could not match the DOE provided license expiration dates to the DEEDS data set due to the limited history provided in DEEDS and presents the data as received from DOE.

• AOA identified nine (9) educators that currently do not have teaching licenses as of June 25, 2025, and noted four (4) of those identified are teaching Special Education classes.

• AOA identified ten (10) educators that did not hold a valid certificate aligned with both the academic subject and grade level for their currently held teaching position for the 2024-2025 academic school year and nine (9) that do not hold a valid certificate as of June 25, 2025.

• AOA identified ten (10) educators who did not hold a valid certificate aligned with the Special Education requirements for their currently held teaching position for the 2024-2025 academic school year, all of which hold a valid certificate as of June 25, 2025.

• AOA identified 16 educators that did not have a certificate to teach the academic level or subject assigned for the full length of the currently assigned position.
  • Collectively, these educators operated approximately 12,845 calendar days without the appropriate certificate to teach the academic level or subject.

• AOA identified 12 educators serving as special educators without the appropriate certificate credentials for the full length of the currently assigned position.
  • Collectively, these educators worked approximately 2,803 calendar days without the appropriate Special Education certificate credentials.