Superintendent Wayne Graybeal was pleased last year when 100 percent of the teachers in his southeastern Colorado school district met the federal definition of being “highly qualified.”
Then two of them, an English teacher and a science teacher, left. Trying to find highly qualified replacements – teachers with credentials in the subject areas in which they are teaching – to come to the Lamar School District proved difficult.
In the end, he hired one replacement that met his standard but not that of the federal No Child Left Behind education act.
He joins hundreds of administrators across the nation who are scrambling to meet the federal goal for each district to have 100 percent “highly qualified” teachers.
To add to the pressure, the Colorado Department of Education is poised to send letters to districts saying they need to outline a specific plan for each teacher who is not “highly qualified.” Districts without a plan risk losing federal dollars set aside for teacher-quality programs, said William Windler, an assistant commissioner of education for the state.
“We won’t release the dollars … unless the plan is very clear,” he said.
He said districts need to show how they would use the grant money to help bring teachers up to the highly qualified status.
Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, all teachers in core subject areas must be highly qualified in the subject in which they teach, said Bushrod White of the Colorado Department of Education.
The law requires that teachers have demonstrated expertise in their teaching areas, White said.
Teachers can become highly qualified by having a four-year degree in the core subject area they teach, he said. They also can acquire 24 semester hours in their core area, or they can take a state-approved test in the content area.
Initially, the U.S. Department of Education deadline to meet the standard was the end of the 2005-06 school year, but the Education Department extended it to the end of the 2006-07 school year, White said.
In Colorado, 37,437 teachers are required to be “highly qualified” if they want to teach in core academic subjects such as English, science, foreign languages, the arts or geography. The vast majority, 35,145, have met the requirement, according to White.
But with nearly 2,300 still not there, the federal government is pressuring Colorado and other states to show how they plan to meet those standards.
For rural districts, getting to 100 percent is difficult because teachers are often lured away to Front Range districts, where salaries are more competitive and amenities more enticing, Graybeal said.
In the Meeker School District, which serves 200 students on the Western Slope, Superintendent Dan Evig feels the pressure.
He is trying to help a Spanish teacher, whom he recruited from Chile, get her credentials to be “highly qualified.”
She has an associate’s degree from Chile and has implemented a strong Spanish program in the district, he said, but she still needs her bachelor’s degree.
He said the district is working with Mesa State College in Grand Junction to help the teacher but acknowledges that he will have to look elsewhere for a teacher if the efforts don’t work out.
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-820-1684 or krouse@denverpost.com.
