Stipends, Training for Teachers Fuel Debate

Most grant-funded initiatives in the Washington area serve teachers and principals throughout their respective local school systems, the Post survey found. But there have been exceptions. Fairfax and Prince George's officials, for example, said they took poverty into account when deciding where to reduce class size.

Local officials said maintaining a wide reach for teacher-quality funding was important because the core aid program in the federal law, known as Title I, directly targets disadvantaged students. "You might have a very inexperienced teacher who doesn't happen to be at a Title I school," said Terri Breeden, Fairfax's assistant superintendent for professional training. "Does she not deserve quality professional development?"

The funding debate also underscores questions about a requirement in the law for "highly qualified" teachers in every core academic classroom. To satisfy that mandate, new teachers need a college degree, full state certification and proof that they know their subjects, through college credit or a standardized test.

Those standards only scratch the surface of what constitutes good teaching, said Kate Walsh, president of the D.C.-based National Council on Teacher Quality. She said the federal law has failed to adequately address "the real systemic failures in how we prepare and recruit and retain teachers."

Many experts are calling for a change in the law to emphasize "highly effective" teachers, who would be evaluated according to how they perform in the classroom and how their students perform on tests over time.

In the meantime, several local school systems are using their teacher-quality funds to help teachers meet the "highly qualified" standard. Howard County is spending some of its $1.1 million grant to hire tutors to help teachers pass content exams and to pay tuition for paraprofessionals who are seeking certification. Loudoun, with a grant of about $650,000, and Prince William County, which received about $1.5 million, also use their funding, in part, to help teachers take college classes or gain certification in hard-to-staff subjects.

Even with such federally funded efforts, school systems scramble every spring and summer to recruit excellent teachers. In July, Prince George's announced an advertising campaign, dubbed "America's Classroom," to entice highly qualified teachers to the county.

"We cannot wait for the best teachers to find us," Prince George's Superintendent John E. Deasy said in a statement. "Instead, we are aggressively competing for the limited supply of teachers, particularly in critical-need areas."