The Education TrustDecember 2003
Also new from the Education Trust is this biting 12-page analysis of state-reported data on how many teachers are "highly qualified" under the terms of NCLB. On September 1, states were required to provide baseline data to the federal Education Department. This is, admittedly, a complex topic, considering that NCLB's teacher requirements are three and that the third of them ("demonstrated content knowledge in the subject they're teaching") can be met in a number of different ways. But EdTrust's analysis of state-reported data reveals many problems. The simplest is that seven states reported no data at all. The most vivid is the HUGE disparity among states in terms of the proportions of classes now allegedly being taught by "highly-qualified" teachers: from 98.6 percent in Wisconsin to 16 percent in Alaska, with twenty states above 90 percent and four below 50 percent. Says EdTrust: "It's reasonable to think that states vary in terms of teacher quality. . . . But not this much. Clearly, something else is going on." The authors accuse a number of states of having "abused the flexibility they have to decide how to address the content-knowledge requirements for veteran teachers by claiming simply that all certified teachers have met them." With less than 3 years remaining to get every teacher up to the "highly-qualified" bar, two big problems loom. One is real: in EdTrust's words, "there are a significant number of practicing teachers out there who need help in strengthening their subject matter knowledge and teaching skills." The other is the data problem: this information is not readily available (EdTrust had to use a Freedom of Information request to get it from the Department), much of it is cockeyed, and the Department isn't doing much of anything with or about it. "Adding an insult to injury, in October, the Department took credit for exposing the 'dirty little secrets' of teacher quality. Since the data remains [sic] unavailable via publication or web release to the general public, the Department itself hasn't 'exposed' anything. And even if it did, so much of the data misleads and obfuscates, one wonders exactly what dirty little secrets the Department thinks are revealed." Bravo for EdTrust--and let's be grateful that they're on the case. You can find this illuminating and upsetting expose at http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/C638111D-04E3-4C0D-9F68-20E7009498A6/0/tellingthetruthteachers.pdf.
