No Child Left Behind and Highly Qualified Teacher

This is a very troubling topic. I am considered highly qualified as far as special education is concerned. I am certified in the areas of LD,BD, EMH and have an endorsement for early childhood special education. My teaching assignment for the past twelve years has been in a self-contained cross-categorical classroom for sixth through eighth grades. According to the current definition in order to be “highly qualified” I would need certification in English, reading, math, and social science. Ridiculous! It is not humanly possible for anyone to become highly qualified in all of those areas by 2005-06. Can you imagine the college hours required to be “highly qualified” in special education and in all areas taught at the middle and jr. high levels? I”m hoping that the higher powers that be are beginning to see the light. Unless there has been a decision made in the past few weeks, all the literature I have read concerns regular education teachers concludes with a sentence at the end of the lengthy information that states the information doesn’t pertain to special education. I’m not aware of any final decisions concerning our profession. What else is new?

You’ll want to check and make sure. This has come up on the librarians’ list-serv and it seems there are some peculiar inconsistencies… but also that some areas are less rigid than others, and I think special ed may be one of them. If you do a search in the LM_NET archives, the good librarians there have linked to the primary sources and interpretations of the laws.

I’ll just say that we have not been told this in our district. It is certainly impossible as secondary resource teachers frequently teach both English and math. Imagine getting certified in both those areas after teaching for years! I would refuse to do it. I think there will be a massive outcry against it if this is true. There is a shortage of special ed. teachers as it is. The only way to achieve this is to require every education major to double major in a subject area plus special ed. This would be a nice goal, but there is no way hundreds of thousands of current special ed. teachers can go back to school for certification in those other subject areas.

Janis

The highly qualified teacher portion of NCLB was done for two reasons:

1. To improve the expectations of students with disabilities. From what the state dept. of ed. in my state has told us is that we do not have high enough expectations for our students and that our current mindset on teaching these children is not improving the academic gap between them and their non-disabled peers.
2. This will force school districts to do away with resource altogether. Less funding is required for inclusion. Also our rep. in the state dept. of ed. stated that by doing away with resource this will improve testing scores for state and local districts.

:cry: Aren’t “Legalities” fun? :evil:

As a parent with a child with a LD…some of us have to “wade” our way through this all the time just to get our kids help.

:wink: But anyway…….as far as “Qualified”, “Highly Qualified”, or “Not qualified enough” ……these things don’t really prove to be important to me!!!! (I could be way wrong there)
What matters to me is our childs comfort with the person that is “assisting” with the learning process.
Right now there is a WONDERFUL aide that helps and our child just loves this lady. I’ve met her a few times and she seem to really care about the childs feelings. This teacher is very nurturing!!!! I watched her the other day with a child that had definite “attentention to task” issues. She redirected this child in a “soft” and “caring” manner…and from what I witnessed, got good work from the child.

My point being….sometimes legalities are what they are..just another piece of red tape. From this post and replies…I chalk this up as “red tape”.

And like I said..I could be Way Wrong..but this is only my opinion.
TY
BINKY 8)

Laurie,

Do you agree with the state’s version that by teaching students in a pull out it is, in essence, keeping them from achieving? I am of the opinion that merely pushing them into the classroom will not guarantee they achieve any more. I endorse having higher standards of achievement than has been the case, but our middle school language arts teacher (fully certified) does not have a better track record for remediating reading problems than I do in the resource room. I believe group size and the right mix of methodology for the group’s needs are the key points no matter where this takes place or by whom.

I think these are ridiculous for the following reasons:

>The highly qualified teacher portion of NCLB was done for two reasons:

>1. To improve the expectations of students with disabilities. From what the state dept. of ed. in my state has told us is that we do not have high enough expectations for our students and that our current mindset on teaching these children is not improving the academic gap between them >and their non-disabled peers.>

Being trained, taking courses in regular ed courses will NOT improve the expectancies of special ed kids. The only thing that will really improve things is if special ed teachers really are taught and then given the resources and training and student ratio to really remediate instead of keeping the kids going at the same level, and having them slip farther behind. You don’t improve things by pretending they are normal.
One might also take time and imagination to figure out how to mainstream special needs kids in with regular kids for regular subjects. IME, this isn’t happening.

>2. This will force school districts to do away with resource altogether. Less funding is required for inclusion. Also our rep. in the state dept. of ed. stated that by doing away with resource this will improve testing scores for state and local districts.>

I can think of away to actually do this and it is a bit scary. You simply eliminate the special needs kids from your statistical figurings!! And you also eliminate the funding for resource. Neat huh? This way the reading and math scores will rise and you will pay less money.

Not shooting the messenger here. Just pointing out how silly the reasoning the law has (or maybe has).

Highly qualified teachers will really be able to remediate special needs kids. Can’t be done with current special ed. university programs, for the most part.

—des

The issue isn’t whether we think this is ridiculous or not. We still have to comply.

:idea: First of all, we need to lobby our state and federal law makers to make the requirements reasonable and attainable. In New Jersey, we have to submit all our certificates and college transcripts and then take exams or courses to qualify. I teach 7th and 8th grade LD in a private school for LD students. NTE exams or certification for elementary ed cover most of us for reading and language arts because our students are mostly remedial and are on lower levels. I have to take the PRAXIS exams in social studies and math to be highly qualified or get two more degrees!!! Our school may hold review classes in these two areas and we’ll all take the tests together. :idea: The districts should be compelled to offer courses or seminars to help teachers meet the state requirements. It is up to the state education departments to establish more reasonable ways of meeting their criteria or to offer new qualifying exams that meet the demands of our actual jobs. Teachers need to get vocal to change the regulations, but we also need to offer some practical ideas.

Secondly, the teacher-education for special ed teachers [i]should[/i] be beefed up to include content area courses, particularly in language arts and basic math instruction, as well as basic US and world history courses. It really wouldn’t hurt to be more familiar with content. Adapting instruction can be facilitated if we know what works for the non-handicapped student, too. However, we must have a way of grandfathering teachers or education majors who are nearly finished into the system or offering them extended time to comply with new regulations.

Fern