Highly Qualified Mess

Many of our state's best teachers -- the ones who teach students with the greatest need -- have been insulted, threatened, and distracted from their teaching. Who is doing this? Inflexible government bureaucrats.

Most of Oklahoma's alternative education and special education teachers are generalists -- they specialize in teaching rather than any specific content area. Under the new federal regime, states are not permitted to employ generalists any more. Now, all teachers must be content specialists in every subject they teach.

This doesn't translate to anything that makes sense. In classic government fashion, this translates to having the right paperwork. And it's a LOT of paperwork. Many of our alternative education teachers work with a small group of students all day. This means that they must be "highly qualified" in every single core content area in grades 6-12 -- that's 17 different qualifications. Since they can have no more than 15 students, they must fill out more "highly qualified teacher" forms than they have students!

Special education programs are disappearing in the name of paperwork. Students are being deprived of the special services they need -- instead, we're busy doing something called "collaborative teaching" in the regular classrooms. Some of the people in charge need to get out in the field because they'll hear one thing over and over -- it's not working.

Here's the really irritating part: We already know whether these teachers are effective! Both special education students and alternative education students must be evaluated each year. We know how much progress they've made! Why worry with all this insane "qualifications" paperwork, when we could just look at student achievement instead?

But that would make sense. It would require looking at situations individually. And the federal bureaucracy is no good at that!

So, here's to all those Oklahoma teachers who are forced to waste their time and energy filling out 13 or 17 HOUSSE forms. Here's to all of those teachers who have been doing a great job -- and have the evidence to prove it! Instead of thanking these people, our government has slapped them in the face.

The next iteration of NCLB is coming up. In that new law, states must be given the flexibility to make common-sense decisions.