Can Teachers Measure Up?
Qualified teachers are in high demand, but critics say new accountability rules are full of loopholes
After graduating from New Mexico State University in May, 23-year-old Ted Frigillana is teaching geography and world history this fall at Omaha North High School--his pick of five different job offers. Math teacher Michael Tewksbury was wooed by three school systems last summer just halfway through Virginia Commonwealth University's two-year education master's program; he jumped and did his student teaching on the job. Less than a month before starting work at East Burke High in Icard, N.C., newly minted English teacher and East Carolina University grad Lea Mull fielded five recruiting calls from schools "I've never even heard of."
Sharp young teachers are in a seller's market these days--and not just because of shortages plaguing many parts of the country. While the testing requirements of No Child Left Behind may have received more attention, the federal law is equally clear that all kids deserve fine teachers and that staffing solutions of years past--too many people with subpar credentials or assigned to subjects out of their field--no longer pass muster. By the end of this school year, all teachers of core academic classes must be "highly qualified" in their content area, and administrators are racing to beat the deadline.
Hot prospects . With the clock ticking, they're coming up with all the incentives they can muster to lure new grads who meet the law's standards by having majored in their subjects or passed a competency test. Frigillana was drawn to Omaha by the promise of a free master's degree, fully paid health insurance, and job-search help for his wife. Fast-growing Clark County, Nev., sends more than 100 recruiters on the road during the year in search of 2,000-plus hires, dangling relocation bonuses and generous retirement benefits. Mull's district in North Carolina--a state that will need 30,000 teachers over the next three years and produces just 3,500 annually--recruits at university job fairs up and down the eastern seaboard and reels in candidates with signing bonuses and southern hospitality. "We help them apply for their license, help them find places to live," says personnel director Steve Demiter. "I'll find them a significant other if I need to!"
Fruitful as these hiring efforts may be, success boosting teacher quality depends even more heavily on the veterans already in the classroom. But the rules on how they can prove their content knowledge are decidedly murky, leading many experts to question how much real progress will be made by spring. Under No Child Left Behind, each state gets to determine what brings its own teaching veterans up to snuff--and most excuse them from passing tests or taking substantial subject-area course work if they can show they've logged a certain number of points for years in the classroom or a range of professional activities. The result? Well over half of states now report that 90 percent or more of core classes are taught by highly qualified teachers.
But critics like Michael Petrilli, a former U.S. Education Department official who is now vice president for national programs and policy at the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, says the state rules are so filled with loopholes that they are doing little to ensure that veterans really have what it takes. A recent analysis by the National Council on Teacher Quality found plenty of examples of ways someone lacking subject-area expertise can be deemed highly qualified by accumulating credits for such activities as mentoring, studying pedagogy, and being a member of an education organization. Alaska gives 5 points to anyone fluent in a foreign language, for example; Maine allows credit for sponsoring an academic club. And a number of states give seasoned teachers a pass for positive evaluations. By next spring, says Kate Walsh, NCTQ president, "states that don't report that 100 percent of classes are taught by highly qualified teachers are the only ones anybody should believe."
The rationale for crediting experience and pedagogical know-how is that mastering a subject on paper isn't the same as being able to teach it. Indeed, many veterans bristle at the suggestion that without more content courses, their expertise is lacking. "It's very humiliating," says Ellen Gervase, a teacher with 36 years' experience in Pomona, Calif., whose bachelor's is in special education and who lacks sufficient course work in each of the several subjects she covers with her secondary special-ed students to meet NCLB standards. Gervase clears California's bar based on her master's in English, years in the classroom, recognition as Pomona's Teacher of the Year, and time spent mentoring other teachers. She's expert, she says, at conveying academic content to her students on a level that puts it within their grasp.
As the debate continues, administrators in the trenches all over the country insist that they're making strides in the face of chronic shortages, particularly in math, science, and special education. The schools in rural Bridgewater and Emery, S.D., 6 miles apart, are prepping a plan to coordinate schedules and share teachers if they need to. In Richmond, Va., which three years ago began providing free courses so veterans could obtain 18 to 21 hours of credit in their fields, all are now highly qualified--about half through Virginia's alternate 180-point system. Harold Fitrer, the assistant superintendent who oversees hiring, points to gains in student achievement as a sign that his teachers know what they're doing: Two years ago, just half of schools made adequate yearly progress under NCLB; last year, 80 percent did.
In Chicago, Nancy Slavin, the district's director of recruitment and workforce planning, believes that this year well over 90 percent of classes will have highly qualified teachers--though she starts the year some 800 people short. She credits a combination of careful hiring and generous starting pay of nearly $42,000, "extremely aggressive" firing (500 nonqualified teachers have been axed over four years), a mentoring program that has improved job satisfaction, and the fact that plenty of her veterans have pursued course work in their disciplines.
Going strong. Like Chicago, many districts acknowledge that providing kids with better teachers isn't just about finding those instructors--it's also about keeping them happy. "What we've realized is that there are all kinds of teachers on the books who are highly qualified--they're just choosing not to teach," says Terry Knecht Dozier, director of the Center for Teacher Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth's ed school. Indeed, research shows that only about half of those who enter the classroom remain after five years. To better support beginners, about 100 districts around the country have committed to an intensive induction program, developed at the University of California- Santa Cruz, in which a mentor huddles weekly with each new teacher for two years--observing, coteaching, modeling techniques, and helping plan lessons. In Santa Cruz, some 88 percent of the program's grads are still going strong six years out.
Such efforts, and NCLB's clear expectations for new teachers, lead even critics to be hopeful about the future. There's no chance of meeting next spring's deadline with genuinely qualified teachers nationwide, says Kate Walsh, but "if you're looking 20 years out, we're better off."
This story appears in the September 12, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.