Does it matter where I go to college to become an elementary school teacher?

Hi! I am going into my junior year of college studying elementary education. The university that I am currently at is regionally accredited but isn’t NCATE or CAEP accredited. Is this a problem? Is it worth transferring to an NCATE accredited university? Does it matter where I go to college to become an elementary school teacher?

What matters is whether graduates of your program get jobs. Where are the student teaching placements? Are those in school districts that you might like to work in? Are students from your school routinely hired? Have that discussion with the faculty in your department and with your college’s career center.

It can matter if the state, region, or school district has specific certification requirements that some colleges (particularly those in or near the state, region, or district) specifically design their curricula to meet.

@happymomof1 Yes to all of the above questions

It matters very much depending on which state you want to live and work in. There are some states like MN where it is very difficult to even obtain certification with a degree from an out-of-state school of education. You may have to do a lot of repeat classes locally just to get past the licensing requirements. The education forums in MN are full of disappointed teachers who moved there from out of state and wound up teaching in private schools or doing things like Kaplan test prep because they con’t transfer their teaching license from another state without a lot of expensive repeat education.

Principals and school districts also tend to hire out of the pool of interns who are student teaching in their schools. It is like a long extended job interview. So attending a school of education that is close to where you want to live and work is probably a better move than going to some more “prestigious” school of education in another state and then trying to get hired cold.

On the other hand, states where there are teacher shortages due to low pay and poor working conditions, like Arizona. If you can fog a mirror and pass the background check you can probably get hired at some rural school there. But lifestyle mecca places with a big teacher surplus like say Boulder CO or Bend OR? Gonna be really tough to land a job.