Maggie Anderson teaches sixth grade at Greenfield School. Her principal, Paul Wilson, thinks she does a great job and is happy to have her. But until recently Anderson, a Vermont native who found a new home among the windswept grainfields of Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, had been inadvertently costing the school money and potentially harming its reputation.

That’s because she didn’t have a teaching license, even though she should have qualified and she and Wilson tried for months to get her one.

“I went and talked to Maggie, which was probably the hardest conversation because she’s teaching full-time, taking classes, mom of two kids, and I had to tell her [the state is] not going to issue your provisional license and we’re going to take an accreditation ding,” Wilson said. “She just felt so bad about it, that the school was going to take a hit because of something that was out of our control.”

Obtaining a full teacher license in Montana isn’t easy. As in most states, would-be educators have to demonstrate their experience, knowledge, and moral suitability through recommendations, transcripts, licensure exams, and criminal background checks, a multi-step undertaking that can take over a month in the best of circumstances. The process would be easier with clear directions and sufficient support from the state’s education department, which aren’t always forthcoming in Montana due to glacial bureaucracy, according to multiple sources.

During a recent meeting of the Montana Legislature’s Education Interim Committee, Rep. Linda Reksten, R-Polson, noted that during her years as a public school superintendent, it sometimes took the state six weeks just to process an applicant’s fingerprints. In some places, the multiple hurdles to licensure slow the process so much that they have exacerbated the state’s teacher shortage.

Read the full article about teacher licensing rules by Alex Sakariassen at The Hechinger Report.