Students in suburban Maryland schools are more likely now than they were six years ago to be taught by a teacher deemed “highly qualified” but experts worry the designation may be misleading and meaningless.
Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, schools face punishments for not getting all of their teachers to the “highly qualified” label.
But the steps to getting there are less than demanding: A bachelor’s degree, a state teaching license, and a passing score on a test of the material they are slated to teach.
“The definition of highly qualified as determined by No Child Left Behind is a minimal standard,” said Bonnie Cullison, president of the Montgomery County teachers union. “Passing a test, while it might tell you something about your content knowledge, doesn’t really say anything about your ability to convey information in ways that students can learn it.”
Even so, school districts are striving to reach the standard, which some argue is better than none at all.
In Prince George’s County, a record-setting 73 percent of teachers in core subject areas like math and reading are highly qualified. In their poorest elementaryschools, 88 percent of the teachers have earned the label.
In 2004, however, more than half of the Prince George’s classes were without a highly qualified teacher.
In Montgomery County, one-quarter of the classes in 2004 were led by a teacher without the designation, but by last year that number had dropped to 10 percent.
In their poorest elementary schools, 100 percent of teachers are labeled highly qualified.
District spokeswoman Kate Harrison said numbers weren’t yet available for the current school year, “but we fully expect that it will be an even higher percentage systemwide.”
University of Maryland education professor Linda Valli argued the designation doesn’t hurt, but it doesn’t correlate to good teaching.
“There’s research to indicate that it’s not until about 10 years of teaching that teachers reach their peak expertise,” Valli said.
She said districts need to rethink the amount of responsibility placed on young teachers. “Otherwise, we’ll keep replacing them, and even if [early teachers] have a highly qualified designation, they’re not nearly as prepared.”
