MACTE — the Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education — accredits Montessori teacher education programs and has been recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education since 1995.
It accredits the training program itself, from Infant & Toddler through Secondary II plus an Administrator level — not the college that houses it.
Whether your training needs MACTE accreditation comes down to the credential you pursue and the schools you want to work in; here is what MACTE covers and how to check a program.
What MACTE is
MACTE stands for the Montessori Accreditation Council for Teacher Education.
It accredits Montessori teacher education programs across levels from Infant & Toddler through Secondary II, plus an Administrator level, and it has been recognized by the U.S. Secretary of Education since 1995.
Two boundaries define what it is.
First, MACTE accredits the Montessori teacher education program itself — not the college, school, department or other administrative unit that houses it.
Second, MACTE is not itself a training course: your certificate or diploma comes from the program you complete, and MACTE accreditation is a status that program holds.
That division of labor explains how the word shows up in practice: as a descriptor — a MACTE-accredited program — rather than as the name of a credential.
The credential is issued by the training organization; the accreditation is the program's reviewed status.
If you are starting from the credential side — what a Montessori certificate or diploma is and which organizations issue them — the Montessori teacher certification guide covers that.
This page stays on the accreditor.
Why accreditation matters
For a teacher, MACTE accreditation is a checkable fact about the specific program you complete.
Because it attaches to the program rather than to the institution, it answers a question a school can act on directly: what is the status of this training — not of the building it sits in.
Accreditation also reaches into how a program runs, not just what it calls itself.
One concrete example: a MACTE-accredited program that delivers most of its academic content online — more than 50% — must still require at least 120 residential (in-person) hours.
That is a delivery standard, and it is the kind of commitment a status check can hold a program to.
For a director or owner doing the hiring, the same check runs in reverse.
A resume line like "Montessori trained" is only as specific as the program behind it, and the program's accreditation status is something you can look up yourself rather than take on faith.
It also gives you one fair, consistent question to ask every candidate: which program, at which level, and what is its status?
What accreditation does not decide is the other half of the picture: MACTE accreditation is not a state license or staff qualification.
Whether it counts toward your state's childcare staff-qualification rules is decided by your state child care licensing agency — the callout below covers that layer.
Accreditation is not a state qualification
How to check a program
The check is per-program, and it takes minutes.
Do it before you put money down.
Search MACTE's directory
MACTE publishes an accredited-programs directory on its website. It is a dynamic search rather than a published list — our research could not confirm a total count of MACTE-accredited programs — so search for the program, level and format you need instead of expecting a ranked list.Check the program, not the institution
MACTE accreditation attaches to the Montessori teacher education program itself, not to the college, school or department that houses it. A well-known institution name is not the check; the program's own status is.Match the level to the classroom you want
MACTE accredits programs from Infant & Toddler through Secondary II, plus an Administrator level. The level you train for should match the age band of the classroom you want to lead.Check the online share if you need remote coursework
MACTE's directory filters programs by online share — more than 50% online, or 10-50%. Remember the floor: a program delivering more than 50% of its academic content online must still include at least 120 residential hours, so plan for the in-person block.Confirm with the program and the schools you target
Ask the program to confirm its current status and the details that vary by program. Then read the postings of the schools you actually want to work in and note which training and level they name — that is the demand side of the decision.
If you need a mostly-online format, the online Montessori teacher training guide walks through what can legitimately happen online and what the residential-hours rule means in practice.
Unaccredited options
"Unaccredited" here means one thing: training whose MACTE status you have not confirmed.
It describes a gap in what you know about a specific program, not a verdict on any training organization.
Our research did not verify the accreditation status of any individual AMI or AMS-affiliated program, so this page makes no claim about which programs hold MACTE accreditation.
The AMI vs AMS comparison covers what separates those two routes; for this page's question, the move is the same either way — check the specific program.
Choosing a route whose accreditation you have not confirmed is not automatically wrong: a school that knows and accepts a particular course is making its own hiring decision.
What the status check above separates is "accredited" as a marketing word from "accredited" as a fact.
This page is career information, not licensing or legal advice. Rules about staff qualifications are set state by state — confirm the current requirements with your state child care licensing agency.