WP,pg1: For Teachers, 'Highly Qualified' Is Subjective: 'No Child' Standards Widely Interpreted

[DeepModem Mom]

For Teachers, Being 'Highly Qualified' Is a Subjective Matter
'No Child' Standards of Content Mastery Widely Interpreted
By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 13, 2007; Page A01

To overhaul public education, the No Child Left Behind law required a massive expansion of student testing. But it also called for states to ensure that all teachers in core academic subjects are "highly qualified" to help students succeed -- an unprecedented mandate that has delivered less than promised.

The law, which turned five years old this week, has held schools to increasingly higher standards for student achievement. For teachers, however, standards meant to guarantee that they know their subjects are often vague and open to broad interpretation.

Legal loopholes and uneven implementation by states and the U.S. Department of Education have diluted the law's impact on the teaching workforce, some education experts say. They say that meeting the standards of quality is more about shuffling paper than achieving two vital goals: ensuring that teachers are prepared to help students succeed and reducing the teacher talent gap between rich and poor schools.

"Meeting the qualifications has become an exercise in bureaucratic compliance," said Andrew J. Rotherham, a member of the Virginia Board of Education and a former education adviser in the Clinton administration. "It's not a process that gets at the fundamental issues of quality or effectiveness." Congress may soon tackle those issues as it considers renewing the law....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/12/AR2007011202218.html

[GreenTea]

1. Six years of lies...all about an image...

A purposely, non thoughtful & non workable right-wing campaign to convince us (of bullshit) They learned, terminology....What, "No Kid Left".... No....totally non workable, less, never proved or even heard about (made up slogan)....and that there might be some soul & caring behind those dead BushCo eyes... And people believed it as a real option.

[LostInAnomie]

2. NCLB is one of the bills that the Dems should be destroying right now.

They never will though. Nevermind that it sets standards that are impossible to achieve. Nevermind that is gives no consideration to children with severe learning disabilities, or those that don't speak the language. Nevermind that it places such a heavy focus on Math and English that other subjects get ignored. Nevermind any of the hundreds of reasons why it should be destroyed. Politicians will never touch it because they don't want to be labeled as the politician that doesn't think all children are capable of learning, and parents who don't have a clue about what the modern classroom is like are too stupid to understand that it is a scam.