New law threatens to leave schools behind

At Tillicum Middle School in Bellevue, Judy Thiel works mostly as a math teacher: She teaches four classes in the subject, which she has taught for years, and for which she earned a master's degree in math education.

This year, she's also teaching one art class. The school needed someone to fill the slot, she said, and it fit with her schedule.

"I'm kind of an artsy-fartsy person," she said. "I consider myself first and foremost an educator. To move to a different subject area doesn't throw me."

But by the definition in the federal No Child Left Behind Act -- the sweeping education reform law signed by President Bush in January 2002 -- the students in Thiel's art class are learning their skills from a teacher who is not "highly qualified."

That's because Thiel is not a trained art teacher. The state has not endorsed her qualifications in that subject as part of her professional certification.

No Child Left Behind makes more federal money available for K-12 education but holds educators accountable for failures in teaching the nation's 48 million public school students, particularly those from poor families.

The law authorizes the federal government to spend $26.5 billion. States that don't meet the mark face the loss of federal aid for educating disadvantaged students; in Washington, that amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

The law aims to place a highly qualified teacher in virtually every classroom in the country by 2006 and earmarks $2.8 billion for the undertaking. School districts in cities and suburbs should have a relatively easy time living up to the law because their secondary-school programs are big enough to hire teachers who specialize in individual fields of study, state education officials say.

But the legislation could prove especially burdensome for smaller, rural districts where teachers handle a range of assignments.

Districts such as Conway Consolidated in Mount Vernon, where 475 students attend elementary and middle school.

"I think we need to be held accountable to put the highest qualified person in each classroom," Conway Superintendent John Kinnee said. But, he added, "Where you have people that wear numerous hats in a small district, to make sure that people are endorsed in every single area they teach will prove to be a challenge."

One of his middle-school teachers has taught science for 28 years -- but her college major was in English literature.

"Is she going to jump through all these hoops?" Kinnee said. "I don't want to see us throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water."

The letter isn't in the mail

In strict compliance with No Child Left Behind, Bellevue school administrators should have notified the parents of Thiel's art students that she is not highly qualified to teach that class. But they haven't done that.

"We haven't done anything," Bellevue School District spokeswoman Ann Oxrieder said. "We didn't get to tell the parents this year because we didn't understand (the law). We will start afresh next school year, and do it then."

The Bellevue experience is typical among school districts in the Seattle area. Teacher-quality letters are not going home to parents; in part, that's because very few or none of the teachers in a given district fall into the category that triggers the notification requirement.

But it's also because administrators are still struggling to decipher a complex piece of legislation with myriad and far-reaching provisions.

No Child Left Behind "is a huge issue for schools," Issaquah School District spokeswoman Mary Waggoner said. "And it will be years before we understand what it means and what we have to comply with."

The linchpin of the drive to raise standards for teachers is the definition of highly qualified.

To be highly qualified, the law says, a teacher must hold a bachelor's degree and state certification and demonstrate thorough knowledge of the subject matter taught. An undergraduate major in the subject is proof of that knowledge; otherwise, the teacher must pass a "high objective uniform state standard of evaluation" -- that is, a test -- which the state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction is working to develop.

The requirement applies to typical elementary-school teachers and to middle- and high-school teachers of English, reading or language arts, math, science, foreign language, civics, economics, history, geography and arts -- in regular and special education.

Progressive goals

Among the provisions of the law:

As of January 2002, schools that receive any federal Title I anti-poverty money -- and in Washington state, seven out of 10 do -- must notify parents if their child is taught for more than four weeks by a teacher who is not highly qualified. This is the regulation that applies to Thiel.

As of September 2002, all new teachers supported by Title I funding must be "highly qualified." That affects teachers paid directly by Title I and any teacher in a school that spends its Title I money on school-wide programs, which is allowable if more than 40 percent of the students come from poor families.

By the end of the 2005-06 school year, every teacher must be highly qualified if they teach in the fields covered by the law. Districts must show progress toward that goal over the next three years. They can spend the federal teacher-quality money to get there, through professional development, faculty recruitment and retention and other means.

If a district falls short, it must agree with the state on a plan to do better. A laggard district also is barred from using Title I money to beef up its staff of instructional assistants or other paraprofessionals.

By 2005, the state will have put in place tests that should take care of compliance for both new teachers graduating from in-state college training programs and out-of-state applicants for Washington certification.

"The real challenge is the existing teacher pool," said Lin Douglas, OSPI director of professional education and certification.

Nonetheless, many of them will be in the clear, she said. Secondary-school teachers with subject-area endorsements, for example, typically majored in their fields in college. And the statewide test OSPI is developing could be used to qualify veteran teachers in subjects outside their area of academic study.

"We're just trying to sort that out among ourselves," Douglas said.

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND

YESTERDAY: The federal No Child Left Behind Act will require classroom instructional assistants to complete two years of college or pass a "rigorous" assessment set by the state or local school district. Thousands of instructional assistants in Washington who have not attended college could be affected.

TODAY: No Child Left Behind aims to place "highly qualified" teachers in virtually every classroom in the country by 2006 -- an ambition that could prove especially burdensome for smaller, rural districts where teachers handle a range of assignments.

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P-I reporter Gregory Roberts can be reached at 206-448-8022 or gregoryroberts@seattlepi.com

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