Tennessee Licensure Office

On an October afternoon in 2012, Haliday Douglas was surprised by a call from a headhunter floating a job for which Douglas seemingly had no background or experience. Though Douglas was living in Chicago, the opening was in Tennessee, managing the state educator licensing office within the state education agency. Earlier that year, Douglas had obtained a Master of Education at Harvard University, concentrating in education policy and management. As  his University of Chicago fellowship in charter school performance and curriculum was coming to a close and he was curious about the Tennessee job, Douglas drove to Nashville. The six Tennessee education department leaders assembled to interview him explained the job was to turn around the state’s educator licensure program. The job was urgent, the education commissioner said, because the agency’s failure to license educators quickly and efficiently was causing multiple problems. Until the office’s big backlog in licenses was eliminated, th