Novice teachers can still count as "highly qualified" in California

A challenge to federal rules defining a qualified teacher has fallen short in federal court. A judicial panel in the 9th Circuit ruled this week that community groups and public-interest attorneys had no legal standing to bring their case.

Their decision allows to stand a federal regulation broadly defining when a teacher can be considered qualified under the No Child Left Behind Act. The rule in question allows California, in effect, to count novices as highly qualified, even if they are, for example, first-year teachers lacking a teaching credential. As long as they are on track within an appropriate program that would lead to a credential, they pass muster.

The distinction is meaningful because to comply with federal law, schools, school districts and the state must report what percentage of their teachers are highly qualified.  And parents must be notified when a child does not have such a teacher. In addition, federal law mandates an “equitable” distribution of qualified teachers. In fact, Congress has ordained that only highly qualified instructors should teach students in core academic classes such as English, math, science and social studies.

The appeals panel did not base its decision, which was filed Wednesday, on the inherent merits of the argument. Instead, Judge Dorothy W. Nelson wrote that the case should be dismissed because revoking the contested regulation would not help students who lacked adequate teachers.

“There is simply no evidence that the revocation of the regulation would have a coercive effect upon California,” Nelson wrote. Joining in the majority opinion for the three-jurist panel was Judge Richard C. Tallman. The judges noted that individual states have wide latitude for defining what makes a teacher qualified.

Judge William A. Fletcher dissented.

Civil rights attorneys had argued that a change in federal law would force California to change as well. California is not, in fact, enforcing its own standards by defining as highly qualified a teacher who has not met the state’s certification standards, said John Affeldt, managing attorney for the San Francisco-based nonprofit Public Advocates.

The case was filed in August 2007, when the federal education secretary was Bush administration appointee Margaret Spellings, but the Obama administration continued to defend the regulation before the panel of judges in February.

In public remarks and interviews, Education Secretary Arne Duncan has talked of moving toward the practice of evaluating the quality of teachers by the results they deliver rather than by focusing on more narrowly academic qualifications.

Los Angeles schools are notable for having clusters of inexperienced teachers at schools with a high percentage of poor and minority students. That pattern often results when schools have a high turnover and are harder to staff. In the recent budget crisis, these schools also suffered more layoffs because these inexperienced or not fully credentialed teachers lacked seniority protections.

Many of these laid-off teachers have been praised as motivated, talented and energetic. Critics of seniority rules have characterized the less-experienced teachers as superior to some protected veteran teachers who may be unmotivated or ineffective. Leaders of the teachers union have decried the layoffs, but also defended the caliber of the veteran teachers who have displaced the non-tenured instructors. They have insisted that that some schools will benefit from the arriving veterans.

-- Howard Blume

Comments

[Thomas M.]

The heart of the problem is on full display now, our administrators in the California educational system do not want change. They are content with establishing bar so low for teachers and students alike that our state will rapidly sink into educational hell within a few short years.

[myrose]

Emergency credentialed teachers are NOT highly qualified. For one thing, most did not participate in student teaching, wherein they spend at least 2 semesters teaching under the direct supervision of an experienced, credentialed teacher that is in the room with them at all times. If districts have a hard time staffing innercity schools, the answer is to provide incentives such as higher pay, etc., to get teachers to want to stay there in spite of the commuting problems. Most teachers do not live in the inner city, therefore they do not want to commute, especially on L. A. freeways. I did this for 2 years, and it was a nightmare. If I hadn't been able to transfer to a school closer to home, I would have quit the district and looked for some other kind of work.

[Mary Johnson]

It seem like even the court don't have best interest of students that attend API ranges 1-3 schools. This year we were asking to save all teachers with the stimulus fund with, so what rubric do we use to measure quality teachers? Their should be only one rubric to measure quality. There should be no waiver, that allow some area to have least quality such as intern students and novice teachers and suburban community have full credentials teachers. The researchers show that the most disadvantage students have least experience teachers. I believe paying a teacher his or her worthy but we need the know there only one standards for all teachers, so every students in California would have same opportunities to rigor curriculum. I truly, believe that credential can not be only mean of measurement of measuring quality of teachers, so we the parents of demand bottom up accountability to demand one standard for all teachers.

I like to thank Public Advocate for standing up for our children being left behind , while the Judges turn a blind eyes to Social Justice . EVEN AFTER BROWN VS BOARD OF EDUCATION, THE SAME CONDITION AND BARRIERS STILL EXIST.

Mary Johnson, President
Parent-U-Turn

[Peri ALLETTO]

This is a literal spit in face from the State of California and the school districts who required us to get teaching credentials and pile up tremendous debt do so, and then turn around allow the hiring of interns and emergency credentialed teachers to replace credentialed teachers because we are considered too expensive. The districts and some charter schools will claim that they could not find highly qualified teachers to make cuts in their bottom lines which impacts the education of our kids.