According to 2002 regulations from the U.S. Department of Education, No Child Left Behind’s highly qualified teacher designation requires that all teachers, at all schools, be highly qualified by the 2005-06 school year. This can be applied to someone working on their certification. The rule allowed teaching interns and teachers in training to count as “highly qualified.”
In September 2010, however, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California threw out these regulations after a group of California parents and advocacy groups sued the federal Education Department saying that teachers working towards their education were most likely to be found at schools where the majority of students were minorities. The parents of these students had no way of knowing that their children’s teachers were still working towards their certifications, the suit said, because they were described as “highly qualified.”
In December 2010, however, Congress undid the California court’s ruling that interns and other teachers working toward their certifications should not be classified as “highly qualified.”
According to a blog by Education Week reporter Nirvi Shah, this move by Congress has “made groups representing children with disabilities, minority children and teachers—including both the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association—angry. Late last month, they sent a letter to President Barack Obama about their concerns.”
“Our concern with this provision (and with any federal policy that reinforces the unequal allocation of fully trained and certified teachers to all students) is that it disproportionately impacts our most vulnerable populations: low-income students and students of color, English-language learners, and students with disabilities who are most often assigned such underprepared teachers,” the letter said, according to Shah.
Still, according to Alexa Posny, assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education, classifying interns and teachers working towards their certifications as “highly qualified” may be necessary in coming years as the number of special education teachers in this country shrinks.
“”When we think about the teachers working with kids with disabilities, they need to be the most effective, the most highly qualified, the most skilled we have. If you can teach a child with a disability, I’ve always said you can teach any child,” Posny said in an interview with the website Disability Scoop. “What we’ve got on the other side, is we know that within five to 10 years, the majority of our teachers who are special educators are probably going to retire. I believe we’re going to need 40,000 to 50,000 more special educators in the next 10 years. That’s a big pool. We need to make sure that the alternative-route programs have teachers just as prepared as anyone else.”
Still, this statement leaves many wondering which is more important- quality or quantity?