For Teachers, Being 'Highly Qualified' Is a Subjective Matter

Maria Lewis Ramadane at Graham Park Middle School became "highly qualified" to teach language arts in Virginia after doing extra coursework. (By Gerald Martineau -- The Washington Post)

The Bush administration has pushed aggressively to hold schools accountable for raising student test scores and narrowing achievement gaps, but it has been more flexible on teacher quality.

In late 2005, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings pushed back a June 2006 deadline for states to reach full compliance with the highly qualified teacher requirement, giving them a one-year pass if they could demonstrate progress. Spellings said states would not lose federal funding if they submitted a plan with an acceptable definition of highly qualified teachers, accurate data and steps to ensure that experienced and qualified teachers are spread equitably among rich and poor schools.

By August, only Maryland and eight other states had plans that met all requirements. The rest, including Virginia, had to make revisions to address the equity issue, as did the District.

U.S. education officials and independent analysts cite some advances. Data show that about nine out of 10 classrooms nationwide in 2005 were headed by a highly qualified teacher; in 2003, the rate was closer to eight out of 10. Experts note that states have created incentives and opportunities for teachers to obtain additional training and have reversed a long-standing reliance on emergency credentials to fill classrooms. In some cities, including the District, school systems have fired teachers who are not fully licensed.

Spellings said the drive for content expertise has improved the workforce.

"The whole notion that you have to have grounding in the subject area that you're teaching makes a lot of sense to policymakers and to moms and dads," she said. "You know, the old you-can't-teach-what-you-don't-know philosophy."

According to the federal law, to become highly qualified, a first-year teacher must have a college degree, a full state license and some mastery of content -- provable by coursework or a standardized test.

The first two requirements are straightforward. The third has been interpreted in many ways, particularly for veteran teachers -- defined in Virginia and Maryland as those with at least one year of experience -- for whom the law is more lenient.

To prove expertise, teachers can choose from a menu of options that often have little to do with subject matter.

In Maryland, teachers can show they know their subjects in part by taking education courses or earning teaching awards. Virginia offers credit for developing curricula, mentoring other teachers or attending a 30-hour "content knowledge institute."

Last year, the Bush administration objected to a Virginia policy allowing new high school special education teachers to take a less-rigorous middle school content test. It also faulted a policy letting veteran teachers assert that they are sufficiently knowledgeable if they hold an advanced degree in any subject, not just in the subject they teach. Virginia tightened the rules, but state officials said the policies in question affected only about 155 of the state's 99,000 teachers.

Virginia officials report only a small teacher-quality gap, with 6 percent of classrooms in the state's poorest schools lacking highly qualified teachers, compared with 3 percent in the richest schools.

In Maryland, the disparity is greater: Nearly 40 percent of classes in the poorest schools lack highly qualified teachers, compared with about 10 percent in the richest schools. Especially in Baltimore and Prince George's County, administrators often must resort to hiring inexperienced teachers who move on after a few years.

But Maryland has made progress -- the portion of classrooms with highly qualified teachers rose from 67 percent in 2004 to more than 79 percent in 2006.

At Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, the compliance rate rose from 52 percent in 2004 to 76 percent in 2006. But the hunt for highly qualified teachers remains intense.

As this school year approached, Principal Karen Coley said she found herself waiting for a seventh-grade science teacher to "drop from the sky."

The school system's recruiter, known as the "rainmaker," found a candidate who was promising but not rated highly qualified. One recent morning, that teacher quizzed students about the difference between chemical and physical properties. "A natural," Coley called her.

But in the future, Coley is hoping to find a more reliable stream of highly qualified teachers.