Rolf K. Blank, Council of Chief State School Officers
November 2003
Rolf K. Blank of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is the author of this careful if depressing analysis of states' readiness to comply with the NCLB dictate that, by 2005-6, all teachers of core academic subjects in U.S. public schools must be "highly qualified." As readers no doubt recall, NCLB says a "highly qualified" teacher must (a) hold a bachelor's degree, (b) be fully state certified, (c) have passed "rigorous" tests of subject content and pedagogy, and (d) have majored (or the equivalent) in his/her subject (if a middle or high school teacher). Using federal "Schools and Staffing Survey" data from 1994 and 2000, Blank was able to gauge where states stood on (a) and (d) as of 1999-2000. The bottom line is that sizable problems lie ahead, particularly with reference to math and science teachers. Nationally, 88 percent of them were "fully certified" in those fields-and these rates ranged widely from state to state. (The corresponding rate for grade 7-12 English teachers was 91 percent, for social studies teachers 92 percent.) As for teachers who combine a subject-matter major with full state certification, the numbers are bleaker still: 63 percent in math (ranging from 90 percent in MN down to 38 percent in Nevada) and 67 percent in science. Moreover, the numbers worsened between 1994 and 2000. Blank's conclusion: the goal of meeting the highly qualified teacher criteria "appears very difficult to accomplish." He goes on to suggest policy steps that states could take - though none qualifies as courageous or imaginative, such as deregulating entry into teaching or sharply boosting the salaries of teachers in shortage fields. You can see for yourself by surfing to http://www.ccsso.org/content/pdfs/HighlyQualifiedTeachers.pdf.
