As Nevada appears to be finally turning the corner on its long-running issue of high teacher vacancies, new data shows that state public schools are seeing a surge in teachers with less than three years of experience and teaching subjects they are not licensed in.

At the same time, data from the Nevada Department of Education shows the state has seen a small increase in the share of teachers rated as “highly effective.”

The findings shed light on the potential implications of recent policy changes — particularly the bill from the 2023 legislative session that vastly bolstered teacher pay — with an increase in younger, inexperienced teachers entering the workforce alongside educators being tapped to cover subjects they are not licensed to teach.

The state has seen an increase in retention rates and a decrease in vacancies since the passage of the pay increases (up to 20 percent) rolled out across Nevada school districts.

In interviews with The Nevada Independent, school district officials across the state said the numbers are expected considering the state’s vacancy trends. When positions are open, they are more likely to be filled with new teachers or people who are not licensed in that particular subject area.

Brad Marianno, an education professor at UNLV, said the increase in inexperienced teachers is not necessarily a bad thing — “inexperience doesn't necessarily mean ineffective” — but he has concerns about the rise in “out-of-field” teachers.

“When you’re staffing classrooms with educators who may not have — at the secondary level, in particular — significant backgrounds like in math and science, then that quality of instruction is going to decline there, and that’s worrisome,” he said.

More inexperienced teachers

In the 2023-2024 school year, about 6 percent of Nevada public school teachers had less than three full years of licensed, contracted teaching experience — which the state defines as an “inexperienced” teacher. That jumped to 10 percent the following year.

There are a few caveats. The state data has a cutoff of Oct. 1, so if a teacher begins after that date, it’s not considered a year of teaching experience. It also asks new teachers in Nevada to report their prior teaching experience — if they do not, the state considers them a new teacher.

Still, the data reflects a clear trend in teacher experience — particularly in charter schools.

Last school year, charter schools significantly outpaced statewide averages with about 18 percent of teachers considered inexperienced. That rate is 7 percentage points higher than the prior year. 

In a Nov. 5 interview, State Public Charter School Authority Executive Director Melissa Mackedon said it might be because of the loss of veteran teachers that some charters experienced when they could not compete with the raises offered at other school districts. The 2023 law to bolster teacher pay excluded charter schools.

“So those teachers all of a sudden were leaving charter schools because Clark County or wherever was offering so much more money,” Mackedon said. 

The Legislature in 2025 passed a bill (AB398) to fund equivalent raises for charter school teachers.

Mackedon added that some charter schools prefer hiring new teachers who they can mold, versus hiring teachers out of a traditional, district school setting. 

The number of inexperienced teachers is also on the rise in Clark and Washoe counties, albeit to a smaller degree, and they are still below the statewide rate. Both counties — which make up the vast majority of Nevada’s student population — saw decreases in inexperienced teachers during the 2023-2024 school year but jumps the following year.

The Clark County School District reduced its teacher vacancies to less than 300 positions out of about 18,000 positions for licensed educators, according to the district’s data dashboard. 

Clark County School District’s Chief Human Resources Officer RoAnn Triana said it’s a testament to the district’s recruitment efforts, which includes the 2023 teacher pay increase. 

The pay raises were also a double-edged sword for veteran teachers, who in some cases found they were making less than newer teachers with the same qualifications after the district adopted the new salary schedule.

But Triana said the district hasn’t seen data suggesting this has led to a wide swath of veteran teachers leaving the district. 

In the Clark County Education Association’s latest contract with the district, the district agreed to set aside $20 million over the next two years for pay adjustments for eligible teachers, until the funding runs out.

“We know that it may not solve it at this point,” said Deputy Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Jesse Welsh. “But we’ve made some steps in that direction to hopefully address some of those issues with compaction so that our experienced teachers are getting compensated at a rate that they should be, compared to where people who are coming in new, even if they’re coming with experience.” 

Triana said the district is also using incentives supported by state funding (from AB398 passed this legislative session) to draw more teachers, including veteran teachers, to Title I schools — those serving low-income neighborhoods and have been understaffed in past years and historically have higher rates of inexperienced teachers. Triana said principals at Title I schools have told her that this school year, for the first time, they had multiple candidates lined up for interviews. 

“That just always benefits our kids,” she said. “It’s not like you’re just looking for warm bodies to fill classrooms anymore. You truly are able to pick the best of the best.”

More out-of-field teachers, but methods disputed

Charters also had the highest level of out-of-field teachers, at about 17 percent. 

The state defines an out-of-field teacher as an educator whose license doesn’t match their current position — such as a teacher with an endorsement in physical education teaching an English class. 

But it can also include teachers with temporary licenses. 

Those trends don’t worry Mackedon.

Last year, 85 percent of charter schools earned three stars or higher on the state’s five-star scale, and more than half had four or five stars. 

“I don’t want to ever say that we can just put anyone in front of kids,” Mackedon said. “These things do matter, but nothing matters more to me than outcomes … If 85 percent of schools are meeting standards in the state, I don’t know that we do care that they also have the highest percentage of out-of-field teachers.”

A 2025 bill (SB460) made tweaks to licensing requirements for charter school teachers, but still kept some flexibility. School districts, on the other hand, generally require all teachers to hold some type of license. 

But Mackedon said more than 90 percent of charter school teachers already have some type of license or endorsement to teach, and ones that aren’t are teaching specialized, elective classes such as Taekwondo. 

She also pushed back and said just because a teacher is licensed, it doesn’t guarantee that students will perform well. 

“If teacher licensure was the answer to our problems, all kids would be meeting standards,” she said. 

In Clark County, the rate of out-of-field teachers more than doubled in the 2024-2025 school year. 

But the district and the department disagree on whether these figures are accurate. 

Triana and Welsh said they had concerns about the state methodology potentially “inflating” the district’s data, and stated that they believed the district’s rate for last school year should be more in line with historical data.

Triana said the district’s hiring practice prevents teachers from being placed or reassigned to  jobs that they don’t have the proper license or endorsements to work in.

“My team is relentless,” she said. “My team will block a transfer if they are not qualified by license to take a job at a school they're transferring to.”

But in a Thursday statement, the department said it stood by its data and said it hasn’t changed the codes it uses to track out-of-field teachers.  

However, the district said in a Friday statement that CCSD and the education department are using different codes to track out-of-field teachers and is working to resolve this issue.

Effective teachers

Last school year, about 16 percent of teachers statewide were rated as highly effective, a slight increase from the previous year.

The ratings largely come from the state’s performance framework for public school teachers, which is based mostly on observations in classrooms.

Charter schools do not have to adopt the statewide framework. Additionally, the Washoe County School District — which significantly outpaced statewide averages in share of highly effective teachers — uses a different framework, but will fully convert to the state system in fall 2027.

However, Marianno from UNLV, who conducted a study of the teacher rating system in 2020, cast doubt on elements of the grading framework. He said there is an over-reliance on principals observing teachers and an underreliance on other data, such as student performance.

In the 2021-2022 school year, there was an even larger reliance on teacher observations because the student performance was temporarily suspended as a metric on teacher evaluations to give teachers a reprieve during the pandemic, which had disrupted testing and related metrics. Ratings increased across the board during that year. 

“When the primary source of performance is based on one or two or maybe three observations of a very busy principal stepping into a classroom to observe instruction, when that educator knows that principal is coming in and can put their best foot forward, we're not really able to distinguish instruction very well,” he said.