New Hampshire's National Education Association is suing the federal government over the No Child Left Behind law.
They say the legislation amounts to an unfunded federal mandate.
One part of the law requires all teachers to be highly qualified in the subjects they teach by this time next year.
But as New Hampshire Public Radio’s Amy Quinton reports, nearly a quarter of the state’s teachers fail to meet that standard.
Claudia Liedinger has been a middle school teacher for 17 years.
She has a Masters in Science Education, is certified with the state, and primarily teaches 8th grade science at Belmont Middle School.
But Liedinger also teaches math.
the reason I’m teaching math is that we’re a fairly small middle school and we need teachers to do multiple subjects it’s just the nature of the beast there are just times when class size demands that you teach out of your specialty.
But under the No Child Left Behind law, a teacher has to have either a college degree and state certification in a particular subject, or she must demonstrate competence the subject she teaches.
Under these rules, Liedinger is not highly qualified to teach math.
And the federal law requires parents be notified of that.
Claudia4 All the parents on the teams in eighth grade were sent letters saying that Ms Liedinger who has her bachelors degree from Wellesley and her masters degree from Leslie College is not highly qualified to teach your child in math. 16
(we believe all teachers should be highly qualified but we don’t believe that this is the way to get there)
Terry Shumaker is the executive director of New Hampshire’s National Education Association and one of the federal law’s biggest critics.
He calls the requirements costly, onerous and unfair to teachers.
(we all want good teachers in the classroom but imposing additional jump through the hoop type requirements on them, that are going to cost them, the school districts and ultimately the state of New Hampshire a lot of money is diverting money away from what we ought to be doing.)
To prove competency in each subject, teachers must have 30 college credits in the subject they teach, demonstrate they’ve had enough professional development in that subject since college, or take a state test.
Grace Jeffrey Nelson with NEA New Hampshire criticizes the law for excluding classroom teaching experience --which affects veteran teachers more than any other.
1019 :46 the fact that you have good evaluations, the fact that you’ve received awards, the fact that you have constantly gone above and beyond the requirements of your job, that has nothing to do with what we’re talking about, we’re talking about content, that’s what this law is about.
Federal education officials say there are too many teachers teaching outside of their field.
Michael Sentance with the U-S Education Department says just a few years ago, only 49-percent of Massachusetts math teachers actually had a math background.
In Vermont, only 40-percent did.
New Hampshire data wasn’t available.
But he says making sure teachers know the subject they’re teaching isn’t an unreasonable goal.
Most of us as parents would want a teacher teaching our child, even if that teacher only has one class but your child is in that class you want to make sure that that teacher has the depth of understanding of the subject in order to answer all the questions the child might have
But some educators worry schools may stop offering certain courses if they can’t find teachers highly qualified in more than one subject.
Smaller schools may not be able to afford to hire additional teachers.
The law is particularly arduous for special education teachers who also have to be highly qualified in each subject.
Middle and high school special ed teachers often pull students out of class to help them with several subjects.
Under the law those teachers would have to be highly qualified in each of those subjects as well as having state certification to teach students with disabilities.
Stacy Buckley, the Director of Special Education for the Shaker School District, says the law makes it difficult to determine who they should hire in any given year.
You may have students in the beginning of the year that need reading instruction and those students may leave and new students may come in and now you need math instruction so the teacher needs to be highly qualified in English and math.
(my heart is with the teachers I know it’s a lot of work)
Anne Davis is with New Hampshire’s education department and helps administer the highly qualified teaching aspect of the federal law.
She says 24 -percent of teachers in the state are not highly qualified in the subjects they’re teaching--which leaves a lot of work for teachers to be in compliance before the June 2006 deadline.
the goal is 100-percent, we’re going to get as close to it as we can but I’m a realist and I know we’re not going to make 100-percent in the next year, so we’re just going to keep working at it, we don’t know what will happen.
New Hampshire risks losing federal money if teachers don’t meet the standards.
But Davis says other states are in the same situation which may bode well for a deadline extension.
The federal government has given New Hampshire 14-million dollars for the past three years to help teachers become highly qualified.
But that money has gone only to so called Title One schools that serve a needier student population.
The NEA and state school administrators believe the state needs an additional 11 million dollars a year for teachers to meet the No Child Left Behind standards.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.
