Federal Budget Bill Extends Flexibility to Count Teachers from Alternative-Certification Programs as "Highly Qualified"

As part of the agreement this week that ended the government shutdown and raised the debt ceiling, Congress extended states’ permission to count alternative-route teachers as “highly qualified” to the 2015-16 school year. In a provision of the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2014,  Congress allowed states to continue to include teachers from alternative certification programs such as Teach for America and the Teaching Fellows Programs as part of their educational improvement plans. Alternative-route teachers often do not have the requirements to be counted as “highly qualified” under the No Child Left Behind Act. The 42 states and D.C. that have waivers from NCLB must hire and evenly distribute “highly qualified teachers”—defined as having state certification and a degree in the subject that they teach. The Continuing Appropriations Act 2014 extends states’ ability to redefine NCLB’s highly qualified teacher requirement that Congress passed in 2010. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, authored the language in the 2010 bill and the extension in this week’s budget bill. Sen. Harkin’s spokesperson said that the flexible definition of highly qualified teachers “is a short-term fix until Congress can have a long-term conversation about the future of ESEA.” The extension of the flexible definition of “highly qualified” reignites criticism that it allows states to replace career teachers with cheaper, short-term teachers-in-training as education professor Kenneth Zeichner (University of Washington) wrote in an essay in the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet here.