This is the second of the annual teacher quality reports that the Secretary of Education is required by No Child Left Behind to submit to Congress. Like last year's, the news in this report is mixed. Thirty-five states have linked their teacher certification requirements to student content standards; six are in the process of doing so. All but eight states now require statewide assessments of beginning teachers, while 32 require teaching candidates to pass a content test in at least one academic area. All well and good. Yet cut scores for many of these tests are abysmally low - in fact, every state save Virginia sets is passing bar lower than the national median score. And despite all this effort, barely half (54 percent) of the nation's secondary public school teachers count as "highly qualified." That number is even lower in the two key NCLB subjects, math (47 percent) and English (50 percent). In the end, while assessments and content standards are a step in the right direction, they still focus on what teachers know and not on what their pupils are learning. As the Paige report itself notes, "[H]ow would you know a highly qualified teacher if you saw one (other than looking at the achievement of his or her students)?" Indeed. Find this telling report at http://www.ed.gov/offices/OPE/News/teacherprep/Title-II-Report.pdf.
