From January through April 2021, Education Week tracked when K-12 educators, as a profession, became eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.
On March 8, 2021, teachers became eligible nationwide to receive the vaccine under the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program. However, some states continued to provide vaccinations at their state-run sites based on their own rollout plans, under which some teachers were not yet eligible.
Twelve states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia made teachers eligible for vaccinations statewide in January, eight states did so in February, and 16 in March. Other states did not make teachers eligible all at once but incrementally, based on where they lived or how old they were.
Montana was the only state that did not prioritize teachers as a profession, but all teachers became eligible when the state opened vaccinations to the general public.
As of April 5, 2021, all K-12 teachers in the United States were eligible to receive the vaccine.
For more coverage of COVID-19 vaccines, see our topic page.
Table: Search Vaccine Eligibility in Your State
Data file last updated: April 5, 2021 11:15 am ET
Data Notes/Methodology:
Updated April 5, 2021
- This review was focused on K-12 educators, and did not include school nurses, who were often included in a different phase with other health-care workers.
- The data tracked the vaccine eligibility of public school teachers. In some places, private school teachers were eligible at the same time, but in others they were not.
- Some educators experienced delays in scheduling vaccination appointments after becoming eligible.
- Some educators were vaccinated earlier than the “teachers became eligible” date because they qualified for other reasons, such as age or having a chronic health condition.
- The data were collected from official government communications and websites, rather than from local news outlets or other sources. In some cases, that meant the local landscape may have looked a little different than what the data showed.
- The data was collected from Jan. 15 through April 5, 2021. The data download file was updated once a week and contains each week’s data in a separate tab.
Contact Information
For media or research inquiries about this data, contact library@educationweek.org.
How to Cite This Page
Where Teachers Are Eligible for the COVID-19 Vaccine (2021, January 15). Education Week. Retrieved Month Day, Year from www.edweek.org/policy-politics/where-teachers-are-eligible-for-the-covid-19-vaccine/2021/01
