2025 Teacher Credentialing Outside of the U.S. - Legislative Report

California Department of Education Report to the Legislature: Teacher Credentialing: Teacher Preparation Outside of the United States and H-1B Work Visas

Executive Summary

This report is required by California Education Code Section 44275.6. This statute was added by Assembly Bill 681 (Chapter 199, Statutes of 2017), which created a pathway for the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing to determine whether the national teaching credential standards of another country are equivalent to United States/California standards and expedited the credentialing process for out-of-country prepared teacher candidates. This report summarizes the H-1B work visa data collected annually from school districts, county offices of education, and charter schools. This data includes the number of teacher visa applications for persons excluded from the term “immigrant” for purposes of the federal Immigration and Nationality Act (Section 1101 of Title 8 of United States Code) pursuant to Section 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of Title 8 of United States Code.

This report contains the H-1B work visa data from the 2024–25 school year provided by California local educational agencies (LEAs). The H-1B federal program was created to assist employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed skills and aptitudes from the United States workforce by sanctioning the temporary employment of experienced individuals who are not otherwise permitted to work in the United States.1 California LEAs epitomize the type of employer that may benefit from this federal program.

In the 2024−25 school year, 110 LEAs submitted a request for H-1B teacher work visas in California. A total of 403 work visas were requested by LEAs, and 371 work visas were granted. Only 32 requests for H-1B teacher work visas were denied in 2024−25. Similar to the prior year (2023−24), the majority of submissions were generated by school districts. Specifically, in 2024−25, school districts accounted for 63 out of the 110 LEAs that requested teacher work visas.

You can find this report on the California Department of Education Recruiting Teachers of Color web page. If you have any questions, please contact Alexis Clift, Education Programs Consultant, Teacher and Leader Policy Office, at 916-319-0452 or aclift@cde.ca.gov.

Report to the Governor and Legislature (DOCX)

Footnotes

1 H-1B Program: Overview. U.S. Department of Labor: Wage and Hour Division.