Lawsuit alleges NCLB loophole allows government to misrepresent teacher preparedness
A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco alleges that a loophole in the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) allows the government to misrepresent how prepared teachers are for their jobs, perpetuating a pattern of clustering inexperienced teachers in the neediest schools. As a result, the suit says, about 59,000 teachers across the country are considered "highly qualified" by the government even though they don't yet have a teaching credential. NCLB requires that all public school students have "highly qualified" teachers in core academic subjects. It also requires that states make an effort to spread teachers equitably among schools so that disadvantaged children are not more likely than others to be taught by underprepared teachers. The federal Department of Education (ED) allows teachers to be labeled "highly qualified" even if they are interns, working in a classroom while in the process of earning a teaching credential. "This violates both the letter and spirit of No Child Left Behind," says Jenny Pearlman, an attorney with Public Advocates, the legal group that filed the suit. "The act clearly defines a highly qualified teacher as one who has obtained full state certification." The lawsuit challenges the regulations that detail how the No Child Left Behind law is applied. It seeks to lift the "highly qualified" label from intern teachers so that public reports will more accurately describe teachers' experience. David Gordon, superintendent of schools for Sacramento County, says some intern teachers are very good at their jobs. He developed an intern program in the 1990s as superintendent of the Elk Grove Unified School District. "It's a mistake to say as a blanket statement that no intern could be deemed highly qualified. It's idiosyncratic both to the type of program and the type of people you're recruiting into the program," he says. An ED spokeswoman could not comment because the department had not yet been served with the lawsuit.
Sacramento Bee
By Laurel Rosenhall
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: The legal complaint is below.]
[Complaint in Renee et al. v. Spellings]