Self-Study Toolkit:
Highly Qualified Teachers (HQT)

By Regina Waugh and Jennifer Slivka

This is the fourth module of NDTAC's Self-Study Toolkit. The Self-Study Toolkit is designed to help facilities measure how they are doing and determine what they can do to improve. All modules in the toolkit contain background information on the issue, a printable data collection table, and a list of additional resources. Links to modules on other topics can be found in the Related Information bar to the right.

The Highly Qualified Teachers module is divided into three parts:

Part I.   Introduction

Part II.  Teacher Quality: How Am I Doing?

Part III. Resources

Part I outlines the background and requirements for being a highly qualified teacher and discusses how these provisions affect juvenile justice educators. Part II is designed to help you determine how your facility is doing in terms of staffing highly qualified teachers and offers suggestions on how to improve. Part III provides additional resources on HOUSSE, teacher training, and teacher quality.

I. Introduction: HQT Background

What is HQT?

“When it comes to recruiting and preparing future teachers, the two key principles are: raising academic standards for teachers and lowering barriers that are keeping many talented people out of the teaching profession.” —Rod Paige, former Secretary of Education

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) mandates all teachers in core academic areas (English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science, history, civics and government, geography, economics, the arts, and foreign languages), regardless of grade level, be highly qualified by the end of the 2005–2006 school year.

To be considered highly qualified, teachers must possess the following three highly qualified teacher (HQT) requirements:

1. A bachelor’s degree
2. Full State certification or license
3. Competency in each subject they teach

NCLB also requires States to measure the extent to which all students have highly qualified teachers, adopt goals and plans to ensure all teachers are highly qualified, and publicly report progress in meeting teacher quality goals. When Congress formed the teacher quality provisions of NCLB, it recognized that no teacher should be exempt—both new and experienced teachers must demonstrate that they are highly qualified.

Where Did HQT Come From?

While specific requirements for teacher quality at the Federal level are relatively new, teacher quality and qualifications have long occupied the attention of the educational establishment. (For more details on specific legislation and Federal programs see The Road to Highly Qualified chart below.) One of the questions at the forefront of the issue is whether or not pedagogical training or subject matter expertise is more important in producing effective teachers than having knowledge and experience in a particular area.

As noted above, the HQT provision in NCLB is intended to both raise the academic requirements for teachers (by requiring a bachelor’s degree and subject matter competency) and make it easier for those individuals who were not trained as teachers to enter the teaching profession (provided they can demonstrate expertise in their subject matter), in a sense responding to both sides of the teacher quality debate.

The Road to Highly Qualified
Year	Event
1950	Half of the Nation’s teachers do not have a college degree. Education is largely considered a local rather than national responsibility.[1]
1957	The Soviets successfully launch Sputnik, creating concern regarding the status of American education, particularly in the areas of math and science.
1958	Congress passes the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) which provides low interest loans and scholarships for college and loan forgiveness for students who train to teach in math, science, and foreign language. One billion dollars is allocated for professional development for teachers.
1965	The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and Higher Education Act (HEA) are passed. The HEA provides Federal funding to help poor and minority students go to college. This act is largely “credited with providing access to higher education for many of the women and African Americans who entered the teaching profession in the 1970s.”[2]
1980	The Schools of Education Assistance Act (SEAA) is included in the reauthorization of the HEA and calls for “the redesign and reorientation of teacher-education institutions.”[3]
1983	The National Commission on Excellence releases the report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, in which teacher education programs are criticized for being “weighted heavily with courses in ‘educational methods’ at the expense of courses of subjects to be taught.”[4]
1998	The reauthorization of the HEA creates the Teacher Quality Enhancement Grants and the Teacher Training Partnership Grants. The law also requires States “to become more active in ensuring the presence of qualified teachers in their schools.”[5]
2002	NCLB becomes law. The HQT provision shifts accountability for teacher quality from States and institutions of higher learning to schools and districts.

 

What Does This Mean?

While all teachers must meet the HQT requirements, the requirements are different for new and experienced teachers. All newly hired middle school and high school teachers must demonstrate their subject competency by taking State-developed tests in each subject they teach or by meeting college requirements (i.e., major or equivalent coursework, advanced certification/credentialing, or graduate degree). Elementary school teachers who are new to the field must show competency by passing State exams that test subject matter knowledge and teaching skills in language arts, writing, math, and all other areas of the basic elementary school curriculum.

Just like new teachers, teachers with experience must hold a bachelor’s degree and have full State certification, but the method by which they demonstrate subject competency can vary. Experienced teachers can meet the same mandates as new teachers for this last requirement (subject matter tests) or they can opt to go through a State-developed High, Objective, Uniform State Standard of Evaluation (HOUSSE). HOUSSE is different for every State; in general, current teachers can prove they are highly qualified through a combination of proven teaching experience, professional development, and knowledge in the subject attained over time by working in the field.

Where Do We Stand?

A number of studies have been conducted to determine where States are in relation to meeting the HQT requirements under NCLB. Each year, States are required to report their HQT progress to the Federal Department of Education from which the Secretary of Education then releases an annual report on teacher quality. The most recent report, Meeting the Highly Qualified Teachers Challenge: The Secretary's Third Annual Report on Teacher Quality, released in July 2004 and reporting on data from 2003, noted that “overall, State progress in raising standards for prospective teachers is mixed, and significant barriers still exist for teachers pursuing traditional routes to certification and licensure.”[6] Specific findings include:

• Forty-nine of 54 States and territories have developed standards necessary for teacher licensure or certification.
• Thirty-nine States and territories require a content-specific bachelor’s degree for initial certification.
• Thirty-four States and territories require teachers to take academic content exams for initial teacher certification.
• Sixteen States experienced a decrease in number of teachers receiving their initial certification (new teachers) between 1999–2000 and 2001–2002.
• Forty-four States implement alternative routes to teaching.[7]

Another report of interest is the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) paper, Searching the Attic: How States Are Responding to the Nation’s Goal of Placing a Highly Qualified Teacher in Every Classroom, released in December 2004. The report provides an overview of what individual States are requiring of their teachers in order to become highly qualified and specifically evaluates the HOUSSE plans that States can develop to help their veteran teachers become highly qualified. The authors found that the existing HOUSSE plans fall into four main categories:

• Point system: Thirty States base their HOUSSE system on requiring teachers to each a certain number of points (100 in most States). Points can be earned by such activities as completing coursework, mentoring another teacher, or participating in a professional development workshop.
• Performance evaluation: Seven States base their HOUSSE systems on “some version of the traditional teacher performance evaluations,” in which teachers are observed and evaluated based on demonstration of content knowledge and other criteria.[8]
• Current certification: Eleven States have not constructed a separate HOUSSE plan and contend that the current State certification system is sufficient for ensuring teachers are highly qualified.
• Coursework: Two other States have not developed a separate HOUSSE plan to qualify veteran teachers. Instead, they maintain that veteran teachers become highly qualified in the same way new teachers must, that is through coursework/professional development or testing.

Searching the Attic also provides letter grades and accompanying analysis of each State’s existing HOUSSE plan, as well as descriptions of the common pitfalls that keep some HOUSSE plans from being effective indicators of teacher quality.

Challenges for Juvenile Justice Teachers

Many of the challenges that juvenile justice teachers face in the classroom impact their ability to meet the Federal HQT requirements. In many facilities, a single high school or middle school teacher may be required to teach all subjects, raising the question of whether that individual must be highly qualified for each subject. In addition, that teacher may have both middle school students and high school students in his or her classroom, which would, under Federal law, require that teacher to be highly qualified as both a middle school and high school teacher.

Finally, another issue that impacts teachers in juvenile justice and neglected facilities is the question of whether to count students in a certain grade according to their age or according to their ability. For example, a student might be 15 years old, which would place him in the 10th grade according to his age; however, that student might be reading at the 5th-grade level. This raises the question of whether that student’s teacher should be highly qualified as a high school teacher (as that is the age of his or her student) or whether he or she should be highly qualified as an elementary school teacher (as that is the level of the subject matter he or she is teaching). Unfortunately, at this time, there are no agreed upon ways of addressing these issues, as teacher preparation programs, requirements for certification, and HOUSSE systems differ from State to State. And, as the authors of the NCTQ report note, “even the research that examines the relationship between teachers’ subject knowledge and effectiveness, while quite conclusive for some teacher levels and some subjects, does not offer much guidance for policies that must apply to all grades and all subjects.”[9]

Next: II. Teacher Quality: How Am I Doing?

[1] Ramirez, H. A. (2004). The shift from hands-off: The federal role in supporting and defining teacher quality. In F. M. Hess, A. J. Rotherham, & K. Walsh (Eds.), A qualified teacher in every classroom? Appraising old answers and new ideas (pp. 49–79). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: National Commission on Excellence in Education.

[5] Ramirez, H. A. (2004). The shift from hands-off: The federal role in supporting and defining teacher quality. In F. M. Hess, A. J. Rotherham, & K. Walsh (Eds.), A qualified teacher in every classroom? Appraising old answers and new ideas (pp. 49–79). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

[6] U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education. (2004). Meeting the Highly Qualified Teacher challenge: The Secretary’s third annual report on teacher quality. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Office of Postsecondary Education.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Walsh, K., & Snyder, E. (2004). Searching the attic: How states are responding to the nation’s goal of placing a highly qualified teachers in every classroom. Washington, DC: National Council on Teacher Quality.

[9] Ibid.

 

Published July 2005

 

Self-Study Toolkit
View the other modules in the Self-Study toolkit:

1. Records Transfer and Maintenance
2. Comprehensive Assessment at Entry
3. Academic Assessment and Curricula
4. Highly Qualified Teachers (HQT)
5. Collecting and Using Data

 

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