New Mexico educator licenses — the full breakdown
Every detail of all 82,266 current licenses: types, levels, grade bands, specialties, and endorsements. Hover a row to isolate its slice. How this dataset was built →
The complete reference. This page breaks down every current New Mexico educator license in depth. For the licensed-vs-employed comparison see the compare page; for where educators work, the map.
Work in progress — updated as new data arrives. This is a living dataset and data story, built from several separate IPRA public-records productions. Gaps across those datasets — missing years, blank assignment fields, and roles the records don’t capture — have produced some erroneous or incomplete entries. We are reconciling these and will keep updating as additional data comes in.
The same 82,266, by license level
New Mexico licenses sit on a three-step ladder — Level 1 (novice), Level 2 (professional), Level 3 (master / instructional leader). Nearly half of all holders are at Level 3. Hover a row to isolate its slice.
Current licensure snapshot. Each person counted once, at the highest level they hold across all their licenses. 25 pre-Level-1 / unspecified holders omitted from the ladder.
Level isn’t the same ladder for every license type
The share at each level within each category (each person placed at their highest level in that category). Administrators are Level 3 by definition — the administrator license is a Level 3-B credential — so the “48% Level 3 overall” is partly that. Teachers skew to Levels 2–3; support providers carry the most Level 1.
Person-level; counts are people holding a license in that category. Bars are normalized to 100% to compare mix across categories of different sizes.
New teachers entering, 2021–2025
Level 1 is the entry rung, so counting people whose first New Mexico teaching license is a Level 1 — by year — is the cleanest read on new entrants. New Mexico licenses roughly 1,400–2,200 new teachers a year, and the alternative pathway (clay) has grown to rival the traditional provisional route — overtaking it in 2024.
Counts persons whose earliest teaching license is a Level 1, by issue year. The window is limited to recent years: a Level 1 license advances to Level 2 after about five years and then no longer appears as Level 1, so entrants before ~2021 have aged out of this snapshot. 2025 is partial (lighter bar) — the data was pulled in July 2025 (latest license date 2025-07-01), before the full 2025–26 entering cohort was licensed.
Inside the largest slice: 35,771 support-provider licenses
The biggest group isn't classroom teachers. Four in five hold a substitute, educational-assistant, or coaching license — not a clinical specialty.
Current licensure snapshot. Source: NM PED Current Licensure. Each person counted once; a person holding several support licenses is placed in their most specialized one.
Which support personnel also hold a teacher or administrator license?
All 43,612 support-license holders, by specialty. Many coaches and counselors are teachers too; clinical roles almost never are.
The simplest category: 5,390 administrator licenses
Administrators hold essentially one license type (PK-12 school administrator). New Mexico requires classroom experience to earn it, so effectively all of them taught — the pie shows how many still carry a current teacher license alongside it (92%); the rest no longer hold a current teacher license.
The clinical bench: 7,406 instructional support providers
The most varied category — 31 distinct license types. These are the school specialists: counselors, speech-language pathologists, and social workers make up nearly two-thirds.
Inside the 296 “Other” — mostly assistant-level and rarer clinical licenses:
The biggest category: 45,400 teachers, by grade band
By the grade levels they're licensed for. Special Education and Specialty Area cover all grades (PK-12), so they form their own category rather than a grade band.
Inside “All grades (PK-12)” — 7,750 teachers licensed for every grade:
Inside “Multiple grade bands”: 3,024 teachers
Teachers licensed for two or more grade levels. The most common pairing is Early Childhood + Elementary.
Specialty Area, by subject
All 6,247 holders of a Specialty Area license — licensed to teach one subject across every grade. (Some also hold a grade-band license, so they're counted under a band above.) Physical education, language arts, and TESOL lead; a specialist may hold several subjects, so these counts aren't additive.
Note: a specialty license is its own credential to teach a subject — different from an endorsement, which is a subject add-on attached to a base teaching license. The subjects here are the licenses themselves, not endorsements.
All teacher endorsements, by subject
An endorsement is a subject added to a teaching license. Each bar is the number of endorsements in that subject — not teachers. One teacher can hold several, so the subjects together add up to more endorsements than there are teachers. (34,084 of the 45,400 teachers hold at least one; 11,316 hold none.)
Note: holding no endorsement is normal, not a gap — an Elementary or Early-Childhood license authorizes teaching all subjects to its grade range, so no subject endorsement is required. All secondary teaching is subject-specific and requires an endorsement — including a special-education teacher working at the secondary level.
Special-education licenses, by subject endorsement
Of 9,867 special-education license holders, 5,326 carry a subject endorsement; the other 4,541 do not — no subject endorsement is required at the elementary and early-childhood levels. The bars show the subjects the endorsed holders carry — overwhelmingly the core academic areas. Each bar counts endorsements; a teacher may hold several.
Administrators' teacher endorsements, by subject
The administrator license carries no endorsement, but 92% of administrators also hold a teacher license. Of the 4,934 who do, 4,161 carry a subject endorsement — the subjects they are endorsed in. Each bar counts endorsements; a person may hold several.
Endorsements per person
Among the 34,182 teachers who carry at least one subject endorsement. (Another 11,515 eligible teachers — elementary, early-childhood, and special-education — hold none, and are left out here.) One or two endorsements is typical.
| Endorsements | Teachers | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 15,070 | 44.1% |
| 2 | 9,516 | 27.8% |
| 3 | 5,196 | 15.2% |
| 4 | 2,566 | 7.5% |
| 5 | 1,163 | 3.4% |
| 6 | 422 | 1.2% |
| 7 or more | 249 | 0.7% |
Endorsements held by administrators
The administrators who also hold an endorsed teaching license — 4,161 of the 4,934 administrators who ever taught. They skew toward more endorsements than classroom teachers: one and two endorsements are nearly even, where classroom teachers drop off sharply after one.
| Endorsements | Administrators | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1,328 | 31.9% |
| 2 | 1,240 | 29.8% |
| 3 | 782 | 18.8% |
| 4 | 441 | 10.6% |
| 5 | 203 | 4.9% |
| 6 | 95 | 2.3% |
| 7 or more | 72 | 1.7% |
The all-rounders: teachers with the most endorsements
Starting from the far end instead of the common middle. Of the 34,084 endorsed teachers, 92 hold eight or more subject endorsements — and one holds 14. Here is how steeply the tail thins out past five endorsements.
What those 92 all-rounders are endorsed in. Nearly all hold the core academic subjects — Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, Mathematics, TESOL — teachers certified to cover almost everything. (Share of the 92; not additive.)
Most common endorsement combinations
The 20 most common multi-subject combinations — teachers endorsed in two or more subjects. (Of the 34,084 endorsed teachers, 19,105 hold two or more, across 2,169 distinct combinations.) Humanities (Language Arts + Social Studies), STEM (Mathematics + Science), and language (Bilingual + TESOL) pairings lead. The long tail of rarer combinations comes next.
Anchor: Language Arts — what it pairs with
Thinking by anchor subject: of 11,781 teachers endorsed in Language Arts, 9,510 also hold another subject endorsement (2,271 hold Language Arts alone). This is how often each other subject appears alongside it — Social Studies and TESOL are the dominant partners. A teacher endorsed in several subjects appears once per partner, so the bars aren't additive.
Endorsements that almost never stand alone
For each subject, the share of its holders who also hold at least one other endorsement. Some are essentially always add-ons — Information Tech Coordinator, Computer Science, Health, and Gifted Education are almost never a teacher's only endorsement; they sit on top of another endorsement. (Subjects with at least 100 holders; the figure in parentheses is how many hold each.)
Anchor: Computer Science — predictable and maybe-unexpected partners
137 teachers hold a Computer Science endorsement — and just 3 hold it as their only one. The other 134 also hold at least one other subject, split here into the subjects you'd expect (STEM and technology, through Info Tech Coordinator) and the rest. Each slice is a co-occurrence; a teacher endorsed in several appears in several, so the two pies total more than 134.
Predictable partners — STEM & technology:
Maybe-unexpected partners:
Anchor: Health — what it pairs with
1,922 teachers hold a Health endorsement; just 64 hold it alone. The other 1,858 also hold another subject — overwhelmingly Physical Education (1,232), the common Health–PE pairing. A teacher endorsed in several appears for each, so bars aren't additive.
Anchor: Information Tech Coordinator — what it pairs with
324 teachers hold an Information Tech Coordinator endorsement; just 3 hold it alone. The other 321 also hold another subject, led by Technology Education (226). A teacher endorsed in several appears for each, so bars aren't additive.