Nov. 15, 2007 - THE MIRACLE OF THE "HIGHLY QUALIFIED" TEACHERS
(Or, "Standards? We Don't Need No Steenkin' Standards")
An interesting bit of information - makes you feel better about your choice to homeschool, yes?
When the Kennedy/Bush "No Dollar Left Behind" education "reform" was passed virtually all teachers were supposed to be "highly qualified" according to standards to be developed by the states. California led the way by adopting a set of standards that effectively declared that if you were part of the system and could breathe, you were a "highly qualified" education professional.
Now the press has belatedly discovered that states are claiming teachers are "highly qualified" on the basis of criteria that have little if anything to do with quality. Well, did you really think that the education special interests were going to run the risk of losing some federal money or suffer embarrassment over something as trivial (to them) as the qualifications of their teachers?
Although education officials dreaded the Bush Administration’s allegedly two-fisted approach to public schools in its No Child Left Behind program, a new study shows that they seem to have found ways to work around it. “For one thing, the law included a number of loopholes that allowed states to claim that veteran teachers were highly qualified using a wide variety of criteria that might not be associated with quality,” the Aspen Institute found.
“For example, in Minnesota, all elementary teachers licensed before 2001 were deemed highly qualified, regardless of whether they demonstrated subject-matter competency (McClure, Piché and Taylor 2006).”
“Similarly, Wisconsin considered teachers highly qualified if they had completed an approved program at any college or university in the United States (Education Trust 2003).” It should be noted that the Aspen Institute is hardly a free-market think tank. Nonetheless, despite its bias towards government programs, the AI researchers found official measurements of teachers’ competence wanting, to say the least. “For example, a study examining the impact of certification on student performance of 150,000 Los Angeles 3rd, 4th and 5th grade teachers from 2000 to 2003 found little difference between the achievement of students taught by certified teachers and that of students taught by uncertified teachers,” AI reports. “Many non-certified teachers—those deemed not highly qualified under NCLB—taught students who exhibited substantial gains in achievement, while many certified teachers, who earned highly qualified status, taught students who showed small learning gains (Gordon, Kane and Staiger 2006).” “A study of teachers in New York City produced parallel findings.” So did another in North Carolina.
“Although teachers who passed licensure tests—those who met the criteria for ‘highly qualified’ status—produced, on average, larger learning gains than teachers who did not pass, the study found, the difference between the two groups was small,” AI reveals. “In addition, some teachers who passed the test were not effective, while some teachers who did not pass were effective in the classroom.” Thus, teachers whose students may actually learn something do not fare as well under NCLB as their union counterparts with seniority but not necessarily skill.
Nevertheless, for what its worth, both get to participate in taxpayer-funded professional development days. “Under Title II of NCLB, the U.S. DOE provides $2.9 billion annually in grants to states and districts to improve teacher quality,” AI reports. “ However, in a study of how eleven districts used their Title II funds, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that many districts did not target their resources on any group of teachers, such as those who were not highly qualified (GAO 2005).”
