Facing a growing population and the demands of No Child Left Behind, the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) is finding itself destitute in the recruitment and certification of highly-qualified educators. Because of extremely low average salaries and the existence of critical-need areas, the MDE has decided over the past decade to create an overabundance of alternate route teacher-certification programs, as well as to grant a larger number of emergency one-year licenses. With the May 2006 authorization of the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence's Passport to Teaching, the chair of teacher certification for the MDE has acknowledged a complete failure in the system. The purpose of the present study was to examine MDE statistics, licensure policy, and interviews with officials to determine the current state of teacher certification in Mississippi. Questions guiding the research included: (1) What is the current state of the teacher certification system in Mississippi? (2) Is the system indeed "broken," and, if so, what steps should be taken to repair it? Throughout the research loopholes in licensure were examined in order to determine the overall quality of candidates being produced by the MDE.