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Illinois School Board Journal
July/August 2006
Assignment: Define 'highly qualified'
Outline school board role
by Sharon Mosley
Sharon Mosley, a former newspaper reporter and editor who has covered education issues in Central Illinois, is a freelance writer who lives in Shelbyville.
For Jerry Moenster, assistant superintendent at Collinsville CUSD 20, it all comes down to the hiring.
"If you hire the right people to meet the Illinois standards, they'll meet the federal guidelines," Moenster said.
Administrators across Illinois have been working with existing teachers and paraprofessionals and looking closely at new hires as the state works to come in compliance with federal "highly qualified" teacher guidelines.
What is a "highly qualified" teacher? By definition, it's a teacher who is teaching in his or her area of college major or endorsement. That's not a problem for most Illinois schools.
But in other areas around the country, finding the right teacher for the right job has been difficult. In Alaska, for instance, with its large teacher shortage, only 34 percent of teachers met the requirements at the beginning of this year.
School administrators say providing a supportive, positive environment helps them attract quality teachers who meet the highly qualified standards. While some Illinois school districts, primarily in rural or poor districts, did struggle to fill positions, as of May 15, 2006, the state had more than 98 percent compliance with the federal mandate that teachers in core classes of math, history and language be highly qualified.
Often, the biggest losers in the race for highly qualified teachers are so-called "second career" teachers — those who come to teaching after time spent in another profession. Travis Wilson, superintendent of Arthur CUSD 305, said meeting the "highly qualified" label can be hard for those second-career teachers, and for small school districts like his that might want to hire someone with the depth of experience such teachers could bring to the classroom.
"Say you have an individual who's a second-career teacher, maybe who was first an engineer," Wilson said. "That person has an intensive math background. They understand the practical applications of math; they understand the need for math in the business world. It could be they are just the right person to teach Title I math to fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders, to get them excited about learning math. But because of this requirement, they can't."
Paperwork challenges
Another problem has been the paperwork involved in getting the teachers certified as "highly qualified." Most schools required teachers to submit their paperwork for evaluation and then made teaching placements based on that paperwork.
Even though Arthur schools didn't have to rearrange teachers, Wilson said paraprofessionals did make adjustments.
"We had aides who had to get additional training to work in their areas," he said. "We chose to see it as a good opportunity to make sure we had the most qualified person in every position."
In larger school districts like Collinsville, as assistant superintendent for human resources, Moenster went directly to his 400-plus teachers to meet the challenge.
"The thought of getting all this paperwork in and making sure it was in compliance by a certain deadline was a nightmare," Moenster said. "I went to the buildings and met with the teachers during their prep periods in the computer labs."
Some schools required only a morning of work, but others required multiple visits to process the online forms. Moenster said teachers were cooperative.
"Getting the 100 points necessary to be ranked as a highly qualified teacher isn't that difficult," he said, "but it was quicker and easier to organize their paperwork by going directly to them."
Moenster said careful hiring also helped his district meet the challenge.
"If a teacher can meet the requirements to be certified by the state of Illinois, and has experience and a certain number of hours of course work, they meet the federal mandate," he said. "If our teachers have experience, if they're teaching their major or if they have the endorsement, they meet that 100-point threshold and are highly qualified."
The 100-point threshold refers to the number of points teachers can earn based on experience, credits in content courses, certifications and professional development under Illinois' High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation (HOUSSE).
What's ahead?
While Illinois schools have been successful in meeting the current standards, most school professionals agree that further planning is needed to provide the best teachers for students. The National Academy of Education (NAE), an elected body of education researchers, recommends districts adopt guidelines to make sure they are providing the best education for their students.
"Everyone agrees that good teachers matter, but there is a disagreement about whether and how we can afford to get highly qualified teachers prepared and distributed to all students in this nation," said NAE president Nel Noddings. "Only when we implement these recommendations will education do its part to close the achievement gap, give poor and minority students a level playing field, and improve the performance of our schools."
Nodding is asking school boards to lobby their legislators for federal support of the highly qualified teacher program.
"We call on the federal government to do with teaching what it has done with medicine — support and leverage higher-quality training and provide incentives to get teachers trained and working in the communities that need them most."
Recommendations include:
Providing subsidies for recruitment. The NAE is asking the federal government to provide service scholarships and forgivable loans to subsidize education for teachers who prepare to teach in shortage fields and in areas lacking qualified teachers. Like medical school subsidizes for high-need physician areas, these plans would require a minimum service requirement.
Develop high-quality programs in high-need areas. The NAE suggests programs in urban and poor rural communities that provide a pipeline from preparation to hiring. They are asking the federal government for professional development schools that function like teaching hospitals, providing state-of-the-art training and education to K-12 students, prospective teachers and veteran teachers.
Evaluate teachers based on actual performance. The NAE is asking for a federally funded, independent professional authority to work with state professional standards boards and licensing authorities to develop a national performance-based testing program. It also recommends incentives to states to incorporate the assessments into their licensing processes.
Provide support to beginning teachers. The plan would include trained mentor teachers, expert teachers in various fields, who through release time, can coach and model good instruction, reduced teaching loads and provide performance assessment to beginning teachers.
"Teaching is where medicine was in 1910," said Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of education at Stanford University and an author of the NAE report. "Most teachers lack access to knowledge about how people learn and how to teach effectively. And many teachers, especially those who serve our nation's most vulnerable students, do not ever go through a systematic preparation program.
"With two million new teachers entering the workforce in the next decade, we need to improve teacher education to give teachers the tools and training they need to teach all students."
Illinois has criteria to meet ‘highly qualified' under NCLB
The definition of "highly qualified" for teachers set out in the No Child Left Behind Act is very straightforward. "Teachers are considered ‘highly qualified' if they: (1) have a bachelor's degree; (2) have full State certification; and (3) have demonstrated subject matter competence in the area(s) taught."
Beyond that, however, the state has developed specific criteria that all Illinois teachers must meet, based on whether they are current teachers or new to the profession. "Current" teachers are defined as "those who were first certified in Illinois on or before June 30, 2002." "New" teachers are those first certified on or after July 1, 2002.
Current teachers who hold a valid certificate for the grade level where they are assigned also must meet one of five other options, according to ISBE:
The criteria for new teachers identify the certification the new teacher must hold for a given teaching assignment and the options available for demonstrating subject-area competence. In general, a candidate can demonstrate competence by passing a subject-area test, holding a master's or other advanced degree in the subject area, or having an endorsement in the subject area or coursework equivalent to a major.
For additional information on Illinois' requirements and definition of "highly qualified," see the Illinois State Board of Education Web site at http://www.isbe.net/nclb/htmls/edquality.htm.
Information taken from ISBE Web site at http://www.isbe.net/nclb/htmls/edquality.htm.