Common sense and research alike tells us that students perform better and have more academic success when they have an experienced, highly skilled and knowledgeable teacher. It is also a well known truth that schools with large ratios of minority students and/or low income students have a difficult time getting and keeping the teachers that they need.
Determining how to get and keep skilled, experienced, good teachers is not an easy task. Many groups have different views on how this should be accomplished.
Some believe that the teachers with high performance ratings should be paid more. Others feel that a good school leader is the key to keeping teachers. Some feel that teachers leave schools or the profession in general because of a lack of respect and not high enough pay.
At the heart of many debates is the No Child Left Behind Act. Under NCLB, all school districts must have every teacher highly qualified. This typically means that the teachers must hold a bachelor’s degree, be state certified, and prove that they are knowledgeable in their subject area.
Recent statistics have shown that about 17 percent of America’s public school districts did not meet this requirement.
Some challenge the benefit of the requirement.
In a survey, more than half of the states in America and around two-thirds of the school districts feel that the requirement of highly qualified teachers has not improved the performance or achievement of the students.
It was also found that many states were cutting corners and making teachers appear to be highly qualified due to lack of finding highly qualified teachers to fill positions.
One problem with the highly qualified provision is that it focuses solely on qualifications and not on performance. It assumes that a person qualified to teach is a good teacher.
The NCLB Act will be up for evaluation this fall.
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