NCLB Rules on ‘Quality’ Fall Short

Education Week's lead article reviews the implementation of the "highly qualified teacher" part of NCLB. It's a pretty good summary, if you don't mind the fact that it ignores or gives short shrift to the problems that "HQT" rules have caused for alternative and special educators and the children they serve; the poor correlation between ability to teach and the "HQT" requirements; the immense amount of time SEAs, administrators, and teachers have wasted on filling out paperwork; etc. A couple of snips from the article:

The end of the school year marks a deadline for states to meet a federal requirement that most teachers be “highly qualified.” But the cutoff holds little threat these days. And even one-time proponents of the provision are conceding their disappointment in its reach and are fixing their sights on new ways to raise teacher quality.

“I had hoped [the law] would push states to ensure [teacher] quality to a greater degree than it ended up doing,” said Lynn Cornett, the vice president for policy issues at the Atlanta-based Southern Regional Education Board, which pushes for better schools south of the Mason-Dixon line. “For instance, early on, we thought it would drive more teachers to go back and get content courses.”

All we can say is, "What would have ever made Lynn Cornett think that?"