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93-198 PDF 2004

THE IMPORTANCE OF HIGHLY 

QUALIFIED TEACHERS IN 

RAISING ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION 

AND THE WORKFORCE 

U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

April 21, 2004

Serial No. 108-51

Printed for the use of the Committee on Education and the Workforce

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/house 

or 

Committee address: http://edworkforce.house.gov 

(II)

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

JOHN A. BOEHNER, Ohio, Chairman

Thomas E. Petri, Wisconsin, Vice Chairman 

Cass Ballenger, North Carolina 

Peter Hoekstra, Michigan 

Howard P. ‘‘Buck’’ McKeon, California 

Michael N. Castle, Delaware 

Sam Johnson, Texas 

James C. Greenwood, Pennsylvania 

Charlie Norwood, Georgia 

Fred Upton, Michigan 

Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan 

Jim DeMint, South Carolina 

Johnny Isakson, Georgia 

Judy Biggert, Illinois 

Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania 

Patrick J. Tiberi, Ohio 

Ric Keller, Florida 

Tom Osborne, Nebraska 

Joe Wilson, South Carolina 

Tom Cole, Oklahoma 

Jon C. Porter, Nevada 

John Kline, Minnesota 

John R. Carter, Texas 

Marilyn N. Musgrave, Colorado 

Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee 

Phil Gingrey, Georgia 

Max Burns, Georgia 

George Miller, California 

Dale E. Kildee, Michigan 

Major R. Owens, New York 

Donald M. Payne, New Jersey 

Robert E. Andrews, New Jersey 

Lynn C. Woolsey, California 

Rube ́n Hinojosa, Texas 

Carolyn McCarthy, New York 

John F. Tierney, Massachusetts 

Ron Kind, Wisconsin 

Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio 

David Wu, Oregon 

Rush D. Holt, New Jersey 

Susan A. Davis, California 

Betty McCollum, Minnesota 

Danny K. Davis, Illinois 

Ed Case, Hawaii 

Rau ́l M. Grijalva, Arizona 

Denise L. Majette, Georgia 

Chris Van Hollen, Maryland 

Tim Ryan, Ohio 

Timothy H. Bishop, New York 

Paula Nowakowski, Staff Director 

John Lawrence, Minority Staff Director 

(III)

C O N T E N T S 

Page

Hearing held on April 21, 2004 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of Members: 

Boehner, Hon. John A., Chairman, Committee on Education and the 

Workforce ....................................................................................................... 2

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 4

Miller, Hon. George, Ranking Member, Committee on Education and 

the Workforce ................................................................................................ 5

Statement of Witnesses: 

Bailey, Tracey, 1993 Teacher of the Year, National Projects Director, 

Association of American Educators ............................................................. 32

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 34

Landgraf, President and Chief Executive Officer, Educational Testing 

Service ............................................................................................................ 12

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 14

McCown, R. Gaynor, Executive Director, The Teaching Commission .......... 7

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 10

Mitchell, Eileen, Teacher, The William T. Davis School (P.S. 31), Staten 

Island, New York .......................................................................................... 27

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 29

Wiener, Ross, Policy Director, The Education Trust ..................................... 19

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 22

Additional materials supplied: 

American Occupational Therapy Association, Statement submitted for 

the record ....................................................................................................... 59

Higher Education Consortium for Special Education, Letter submitted 

for the record ................................................................................................. 62

Norby, Stephanie L., Executive Director, Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies, Smithsonian Institution, Statement submitted for the record ..................................................................................... 65

(1)

THE IMPORTANCE OF HIGHLY QUALIFIED 

TEACHERS IN RAISING ACADEMIC 

ACHIEVEMENT 

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

U.S. House of Representatives 

Committee on Education and the Workforce 

Washington, DC 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:37 a.m., in room 

2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Boehner (Chairman of the Committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Boehner, Petri, Ballenger, McKeon, 

Castle, Johnson, Ehlers, Isakson, Biggert, Osborne, Musgrave, 

Burns, Miller, Kildee, Owens, Payne, Woolsey, Hinojosa, Tierney, 

Kucinich, Holt, Majette, Van Hollen and Bishop. 

Staff present: Julian Baer, Legislative Assistant; Amanda Farris, 

Professional Staff Member; Kevin Frank, Professional Staff Member; Sally Lovejoy, Director of Education and Human Resources 

Policy; Paula Nowakowski, Staff Director; Deborah L. Samantar, 

Committee Clerk/Intern Coordinator; Rich Stombres, Professional 

Staff Member; Ellynne Bannon, Legislative Assistant/Education; 

Alice Cain, Minority Legislative Associate/Education; Tom Kiley, 

Minority Press Secretary; John Lawrence, Minority Staff Director; 

Ricardo Martinez, Minority Legislative Associate/Education; Alex 

Nock, Minority Legislative Associate/Education; Joe Novotny, Minority Legislative Staff/Education; Lynda Theil, Minority Legislative Associate/Education; and Daniel Weiss, Minority Special Assistant to the Ranking Member. 

Chairman BOEHNER. A quorum being present, the Committee on 

Education and the Workforce will come to order. We’re holding this 

hearing today to hear testimony on the importance of highly qualified teachers in raising academic achievement. Under the Committee rules, opening statements are limited to the Chairman and 

Ranking Member. And with that, if any other members have opening statements, the hearing record will remain open for 14 days to 

allow those statements and any other extraneous material referenced during today’s hearing to be submitted in the official hearing record. Without objection, so ordered. 

I want to welcome each of you to our hearing today as the Committee continues its focus on the implementation of the bipartisan 

No Child Left Behind Act. Before I begin my opening statement, 

I want to take a moment to congratulate Mrs. Kathy Mellor for reVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
2

ceiving this year’s National Teacher of the Year award. Mrs. 

Mellor, a Rhode Island middle school teacher, reshaped the 

English-as-a-second-language program in her school district. And 

I’d like to congratulate the teachers who’ve received this honor in 

their individual states, as well. 

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN A. BOEHNER, CHAIRMAN, 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

The purpose of today’s hearing is to discuss the importance of 

highly qualified teachers in improving academic achievement for all 

students—regardless of race, income, geography, English fluency, 

or disability. 

The success of education reform efforts is increasingly seen as directly dependent on the quality of classroom instruction, and ensuring the quality of America’s 3.2 million teachers is an essential 

part of providing an excellent education to all of our children. A 

growing number of studies provide conclusive evidence that teacher 

quality is the primary school-related factor affecting student 

achievement. Students who are taught by effective and competent 

teachers excel quickly, while those who are assigned to the least effective teachers lag behind and often never catch up. 

Especially troubling is the evidence that disadvantaged students 

whose future depends most on a positive school experience are 

often assigned the least qualified teachers. For example, a report 

from one of our witnesses today found that in every subject area, 

students in high poverty schools were more likely than other students to be taught by teachers without even a minor in the subjects 

they are teaching. 

The No Child Left Behind Act asked each state, in exchange for 

billions of dollars of Federal teacher quality aid, to develop and implement a plan to place a highly qualified teacher in every public 

classroom by the end of the ’05-’06 school year. States have vast 

flexibility in defining what constitutes a highly qualified teacher, 

and at a minimum, teachers must have full state certification, a 

bachelor’s degree, and demonstrate competence in core academic 

subjects they teach. Individual states, not the Federal Government, 

design and implement measures to assess subject matter competency, which may include rigorous state academic tests; a bachelor’s degree in a core academic subject; or the High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation or HOUSSE procedure for veteran teachers. 

Since No Child Left Behind was enacted more than 2 years ago, 

Congress and the President have continued to provide record teacher quality aid to states and local school districts at levels far higher 

than provided prior enactment of the bill. Federal teacher quality 

aid has been increased by more than 35 percent by this President, 

who requested nearly $3 billion in annual teacher quality funding 

for states and teachers in his ’05 budget, compared with just about 

$787 million provided under the previous Administration. 

In addition, the President and Congress have taken numerous 

steps since the enactment of No Child Left Behind to help teachers, 

local education agencies and states meet the law’s highly qualified 

teacher provisions. 

3

In 2003, the House, led by Representative Joe Wilson, passed 

legislation to more than triple the amount of Federal student loan 

forgiveness available to highly qualified reading specialists, math 

teachers, science and special ed teachers who commit to teaching 

in high need schools for 5 years. Representative Wilson’s legislation, the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act, would increase 

maximum Federal loan forgiveness for such teachers from the current $5,000 per to $17,500 per year. 

And the House, led by Representative Phil Gingrey, a member of 

our Committee, also passed legislation in 2003 to strengthen teacher training programs at America’s colleges. The Ready to Teach Act 

would authorize and strengthen teacher training programs under 

the Higher Education Act to ensure that tomorrow’s highly qualified teachers are prepared to meet the needs of our nation’s students. 

To provide further incentives for good teachers to remain in the 

teaching profession, President Bush and Members of Congress in 

2002 enacted legislation allowing teachers to take a $250 tax deduction when they pay money out of their own pockets for classroom expenses such as crayons and books. We’re currently working 

to expand the so-called ‘‘Crayola credit’’ to $400 or more hopefully 

in an upcoming tax bill. 

Recognizing that outdated Federal rules are pushing some good 

teachers out of the classroom, the House last year passed legislation authored by our Subcommittee Chairman, Mr. Castle, to revamp the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and reduce paperwork burdens for special ed teachers who are striving to 

meet the No Child Left Behind standards. And the bill includes a 

proposal originally introduced by Congressman Ric Keller to reduce 

paperwork for special ed teachers by allowing parents of children 

with special needs to select a 3-year IEP for their children instead 

of an annual one, solely at their discretion. 

And last month, the Department of Education provided states 

with new guidance on the highly qualified teacher requirements 

giving additional flexibility to teachers in rural school districts; 

streamlining procedures for veteran teachers to demonstrate subject matter competency; and clarifying state authority over requirements for science teachers. 

Also, the Department today will announce a new outreach initiative to recognize teachers’ outstanding accomplishments. The fourpart initiative includes teacher roundtables, teacher-to-teacher 

workshops, research-to-practice summit, and teacher updates on 

the top topics affecting teachers in today’s classrooms. 

So today, during the course of the hearing, we will examine the 

need for the No Child Left Behind Act’s highly qualified teacher 

provisions; review the inherent flexibility under the law; and learn 

more about the efforts to fundamentally upgrade teaching as a profession and ensure that teachers have adequate subject matter 

knowledge for the subjects they teach. 

We’ve got a distinguished panel of witnesses today. I want to 

thank all of them for being here and yield to my friend and colleague from California, the Ranking Member of the Committee, Mr. 

Miller. 

[The prepared statement of Chairman Boehner follows:]

4

Statement of Hon. John A. Boehner, Chairman, Committee on Education 

and the Workforce 

Good morning. I’d like to welcome each of you to our hearing today as the Committee continues its focus on implementation of the bipartisan No Child Left Behind 

Act. Before I begin my opening statement, I’d like to take a moment to congratulate 

Mrs. Kathy Mellor for receiving this year’s National Teacher of the Year award. 

Mrs. Mellor, a Rhode Island middle school teacher, reshaped the English-as-a-second-language program in her school district. I’d like to congratulate the teachers 

who received this honor in their individual states as well. 

The purpose of today’s hearing is to discuss the importance of highly qualified 

teachers in improving academic achievement for all students—regardless of race, income, geography, English-fluency, or disability. 

The success of education reform efforts is increasingly seen as directly dependent 

on the quality of classroom instruction, and ensuring the quality of America’s 3.2 

million teachers is an essential part of providing an excellent education to all our 

children. A growing number of studies provide conclusive evidence that teacher 

quality is the primary school-related factor affecting student achievement. Students 

who are taught by effective and competent teachers excel quickly, while those who 

are assigned to the least effective teachers lag behind and often never catch up. 

Especially troubling is the evidence that disadvantaged students, whose futures 

depend most on a positive school experience, are often assigned the least qualified 

teachers. For example, a report from one of our witnesses today found that in every 

subject area, students in high-poverty schools were more likely than other students 

to be taught by teachers without even a minor in the subjects they teach. 

The bipartisan No Child Left Behind law asks each state—in exchange for billions 

of dollars in federal teacher quality aid—to develop and implement a plan to place 

a highly qualified teacher in every public classroom by the end of the 2005–2006 

school year. States have vast flexibility in defining what constitutes a highly qualified teacher. At a minimum, teachers must have full state certification, a Bachelor’s 

degree, and demonstrate competency in core academic subjects they teach. Individual states—not the federal government—design and implement measures to assess subject matter competency, which may include rigorous state academic tests; 

a Bachelor’s degree in a core academic subject; or the high, objective, uniform state 

standard of evaluation—or HOUSE procedure—for veteran teachers. 

Since No Child Left Behind was enacted more than two years ago, Congress and 

President Bush have continued to provide record teacher quality aid to states and 

local school districts, at levels far higher than provided under President Clinton. 

Federal teacher quality aid has been increased by more than 35 percent under 

President Bush, who requested nearly three billion dollars in annual teacher quality 

funding for states and teachers in his 2005 budget request to Congress—compared 

with just $787 million provided under President Clinton’s final budget. 

In addition, President Bush and Congress have taken numerous steps since the 

enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act to help teachers, local educational agencies, and states meet the law’s highly qualified teacher provisions. 

In 2003, the House, led by Representative Joe Wilson, passed legislation to more 

than triple the amount of federal student loan forgiveness available to highly qualified reading specialists and math, science, and special education teachers who commit to teaching in high-need schools for five years. Representative Wilson’s legislation, the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act, would increase maximum federal 

loan forgiveness for such teachers from $5,000 to $17,500. 

The House, led by Representative Phil Gingrey, also passed legislation in 2003 to 

strengthen teacher-training programs at America’s colleges. The Ready to Teach Act 

would reauthorize and strengthen teacher-training programs under the Higher Education Act to ensure tomorrow’s highly qualified teachers are prepared to meet the 

needs of the nation’s students. 

To provide further incentives for good teachers to remain in the teaching profession, President Bush and congressional Republicans in 2002 enacted legislation allowing teachers to take a $250 tax deduction when they pay money out of their own 

pockets for classroom expenses, such as crayons and books. Republicans are currently working to expand this so called ‘‘Crayola credit’’ to $400 or more. 

Recognizing that outdated federal rules are pushing some good teachers out of the 

classroom, the House in 2003 passed legislation sponsored by Representative Mike 

Castle to revamp the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and reduce 

paperwork burdens for special education teachers, who are striving to meet No 

Child Left Behind’s high standards. The bill includes a proposal originally introduced by Representative Ric Keller to reduce paperwork for special education teachVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00008 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
5

ers by allowing parents of children with special needs to select a three-year Individualized Education Program—or IEP—for their children instead of an annual one. 

Last month, the Department of Education provided states with new guidance on 

the highly qualified teacher requirements giving additional flexibility to teachers in 

rural school districts; streamlining procedures for veteran teachers to demonstrate 

subject matter competency; and clarifying state authority over requirements for 

science teachers. Also, the Department of Education yesterday announced a new 

outreach initiative to recognize teachers’’ outstanding achievements. The four-part 

initiative includes teacher roundtables, teacher-to-teacher workshops, a research-topractice summit, and teacher updates on top topics affecting teachers. 

During the course of today’s hearing we will examine the need for the No Child 

Left Behind Act’s highly qualified teacher provisions; review the inherent flexibility 

under the law; and learn about efforts to fundamentally upgrade teaching as a profession and ensure teachers have adequate subject matter knowledge for the subjects they teach. 

We have a distinguished panel of witnesses for today’s hearing. I would like to 

thank you for your appearance before the Committee and I look forward to your testimony. 

STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE MILLER, RANKING MEMBER, 

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You have covered much 

of what our hopes and aspirations are for this legislation, for this 

hearing, and I’m going to ask unanimous consent to put my remarks in the record, my written remarks into the record, and just 

make a couple of comments. 

One, I agree with much of what you have said. This hearing for 

me is very exciting. A number of years ago, I offered an amendment that succeeded in Committee that said we would have a 

qualified teacher in every classroom. And when it got to the floor, 

I lost that vote 434 to 1. And we’ve come a long time since that 

vote where it is now the law that we will have a qualified teacher 

in every classroom. And this morning we’re having a hearing about 

what we can do to support that idea in the law, how we can improve upon it. And there is now general recognition, as you have 

pointed out, that the single most important factor that we have in 

student achievement is the ability and the talent and the qualifications of that teacher. 

And having recognized that, and to now continue the poor distribution of highly qualified teachers is something that we can no 

longer accept, because we have knowledge of the detriment to our 

children of doing that, and we now must make every effort to support getting all of our teachers to the level of professional development so they can meet the mandate of the state law. 

I do differ with you on a couple of points. I do not believe that 

we have provided the adequate funding to do this, and it’s a point 

that I would like to raise later with the panel on the manner in 

which we have provided the funding where maybe we can get some 

help with the funding that we have already provided. And I am 

also concerned that the Administration has not been helpful in implementing the so-called HOUSSE process for experienced teachers, and that we’ve got to make sure that we do not drive these 

individuals from the field in a premature fashion. 

So I look forward to the testimony of the panel. I think you’ve 

assembled a great panel, and thank you very much for holding this 

hearing. 

6

Chairman BOEHNER. Let’s now introduce all of our witnesses. 

Our first witness today, Ms. Gaynor McCown. Ms. McCown is currently the Executive Director of The Teaching Commission, an organization dedicated to keeping the best and brightest in the teaching profession, and to placing a highly qualified teacher in every 

classroom. 

Prior to her current position, Ms. McCown served as a Senior 

Vice President at Edison Schools, and earlier as the Senior Vice 

President for Education and Workforce Development at the New 

York City Partnership and Chamber of Commerce. 

She has classroom and policy experience, having both taught in 

public high school in New York City and having served in the Clinton White House as a senior policy analyst and adviser and special 

assistant to the Secretary of Education, Richard Riley. 

Now with that, let me yield to Mr. Holt for the introduction of 

our second witness. 

Mr. HOLT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And on behalf of the Committee, I’m pleased to recognize and welcome Kurt Landgraf, who 

is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Educational 

Testing Service, as he has been for the past three-and-a-half years. 

I think everyone on the Committee recognizes the leadership role 

of ETS as the world’s largest private educational testing and measurement organization and a leader in the true sense—that’s a word 

that’s been overused—but a leader in educational research with the 

organization developing and administering millions of tests worldwide. 

Mr. Landgraf comes with a bachelor’s degree in economics and 

three master’s degrees, and I will ask to put the details or some 

of the details of his distinguished biography in the record. 

I would like to call attention to a few things, though, from his 

background. He’s worked in the pharmaceutical industry, but he’s 

also throughout his career been an instructor in sociology and labor 

relations and was President of the National Consortium on Graduate Studies for Minorities in Sciences and Engineering, the GEM 

program, an important program, and I think it says a lot about Mr. 

Landgraf’s orientation. 

He’s published articles on topics such as minority access to higher education. He’s focused a great deal of his attention on teacher 

quality and certification, you know, what do we mean by teacher 

quality? How can we know a qualified teacher when see one, and 

how can we make more of them? 

He’s paid a great deal of attention to technology in the classroom 

and is, along with ETS, committed to making No Child Left Behind 

work. Today I think he’ll be talking to us about the need for standards as well as the need for mentoring and induction and emphasis 

on both methods and content for making a good teacher. 

And finally, and the reason I particularly wanted to introduce 

him, since he comes from my district, I wanted to point out what 

a good neighbor ETS is to the people of central New Jersey, what 

a civic leader the organization is and the members of the organization are in the local communities in central New Jersey. And we 

all appreciate that very much. 

Mr. BOEHNER. Our third witness today will be Mr. Ross Wiener. 

Since July of 2002, Mr. Wiener has been the Principal Partner and 

7

Policy Director at The Education Trust, a national organization focused on eliminating the achievement gaps in public education, and 

someone I would add for all of our Members, someone who has 

worked with both sides of the aisle and been a great resource to 

this Committee. 

Prior to his position at The Education Trust, Mr. Wiener worked 

in the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice as 

a trial attorney handling educational opportunities cases. And 

while working there, Mr. Wiener twice received the Civil Rights Division’s Special Achievement Award. 

He also has earlier experience working for the United States 

Court of Appeals in the First District, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice, and the United 

States District Court for the District of Maryland. Welcome. 

Then we will hear from Ms. Eileen Mitchell. Ms. Mitchell is a 

fifth grade teacher, a math specialist, at Public School 31, the William T. Davis School, located in Staten Island, New York. She has 

been teaching at the school for 9 years and also coaches high school 

track for the district. Ms. Mitchell earned her undergraduate degree and master’s degree from Staten Island College. 

And then we will hear from Mr. Tracey Bailey. Mr. Bailey is currently the Director of National Projects with the Association of 

American Educators, a professional association which assists teachers with professional development and with issues in the classroom. Mr. Bailey recently served as a member of the U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher Assistance Corps, a group of educators 

assigned with assisting states in understanding and implementing 

the highly qualified teacher provisions in No Child Left Behind. 

In 1993, he had the honor of being selected as National Teacher 

of the Year. In addition to being a science teacher, Mr. Bailey has 

overseen the Florida charter school program and has served as the 

Teacher Liaison and State Coordinator for the Florida Department 

of Education. 

For all of you who have not testified, the lights in front of you 

will be green for 4 minutes, yellow for a minute, and then red. That 

means you should be somewhere close to being finished, but we’re 

pretty easy here, so. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman BOEHNER. We’re more interested in what you have to 

say than worried about the lights. 

So with that, Ms. McCown, you can begin. 

STATEMENT OF R. GAYNOR McCOWN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, 

THE TEACHING COMMISSION, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 

Ms. MCCOWN. Thank you. On behalf of The Teaching Commission, I want to thank Chairman Boehner for inviting me here 

today. I’m honored to have the opportunity to speak before you and 

the rest of the Committee. The Teaching Commission was established by Lou Gerstner, who is a former chairman of IBM. It is a 

nonpartisan group of business executives, former Governors, a 

teachers union president, and leaders in philanthropy and education. 

The goal of The Teaching Commission is to fundamentally upgrade the quality of teaching in the United States by changing the 

8

way that teachers are trained, assessed, supported and compensated. 

The Commission’s report holds that quality teachers are the critical factor in helping young people overcome the damaging effects 

of poverty, lack of parental guidance and other challenges. The effectiveness of any broader education reform, including standards, 

smaller schools and choice, in our view is ultimately dependent on 

teachers in the classroom. 

The United States has entered the 21st century as an undisputed 

world leader. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the Nation will not continue to lead if we persist in viewing teaching, the 

profession that makes all other professions possible, as a secondrate occupation. 

Top quality teaching fosters high student achievement. High 

achievers can harness their talents and energies to become successful contributing citizens. Nothing is more vital to our future than 

ensuring that we attract and retain the best teachers in our public 

schools. 

As Kati Haycock, the Director of The Education Trust, points 

out, ‘‘A decade ago...we believed that what students learned was 

largely a factor of their family income or parental education, not 

of what schools did. But recent research has turned that research 

upside down. What schools do matters enormously, and what matters most is good teaching.’’ 

In a study led by Eric Hanushek of Stanford University’s Hoover 

Institution, the most effective teachers were found to boost their 

pupils’ learning by a full grade more than students taught by their 

less successful colleagues. Similarly, a study of Tennessee students 

by William Sanders and June Rivers reveals that the chances for 

fourth graders in the bottom quartile of performance to pass the 

state’s high-stakes exit exam were less than 15 percent if the students had a series of poor teachers. And I know that many of you 

know this, but it happens that children who are in poor areas and 

in urban areas have more than their fair share of poor teachers. 

The proven value of excellent teaching, in other words, all but 

demolishes the idea that socioeconomic status is the most important determinant of what kids learn. 

Many teachers are working incredibly hard to succeed, but their 

effectiveness is often undermined by inadequate, one-size-fits-all 

compensation, flawed preparation, ineffective leadership and poor 

working conditions. 

The nation, as you all know, has moved forward to set standards 

for what students must know and to hold schools and young people 

accountable for student performance. But how can we hold students accountable for performance unless they have the teachers 

they need in order to succeed? 

We say that quality teaching matters, but we treat quality teachers as if they don’t. 

In an attempt to remedy these problems, the Commission has 

put forth four recommendations, and I’d like to go over those briefly. 

One is compensating teachers more effectively. Money does matter. All we have to do is look at the countless teacher surveys and 

9

the large numbers of teachers who flock to affluent suburbs where 

pay is significantly better than in urban schools. 

The Teaching Commission also understands, however, that simply raising salaries for all teachers will not in and of itself raise 

student achievement. Therefore, in calling for an increase in base 

compensation, The Teaching Commission also urges a far-reaching 

break with tradition: a salary scheme that is also commensurate 

with excellence. That is, paying teachers more for high performance, as measured by fair evaluations and clear evidence of improved student learning. 

The Commission recommends that some version of value-added, 

a method used to measure gains in student performance, including 

student achievement, be used to move in this direction. 

Further, district schools and unions should agree to establish career advancement paths that offer teachers increasing levels of responsibility and compensation as their skills and effectiveness 

grow. 

And then finally, the Commission thinks that there should be differentiated pay for individuals who teach subjects that are hard to 

find individuals to teach, like math and science, and also individuals who choose to go into hard-to-serve areas. 

The second main recommendation that the Commission has put 

forth is bolstering accountability in teacher education. College and 

university presidents must revamp their teacher education programs and make teacher quality a top priority. 

The Commission also recommends that the Federal Government 

be prepared to withhold funds from colleges and universities that 

fail to show the effectiveness of their teacher recruitment and preparation programs. 

The third, strengthening state teacher licensing and certification 

requirements. States must improve or overhaul their licensing and 

certification requirements. The Teaching Commission calls on Governors and state education departments to ensure that every individual who wants to become a teacher passes a rigorous test of 

both content and essential skills. At a minimum, this will require 

raising the passing score on existing certification exams. The Commission also calls for streamlining the process. 

I haven’t set a very good example here, but I’m going to be done 

in just a second. Empowering school leaders as CEOs is our final 

recommendation, and that is that principals should have the ultimate authority to decide who teaches in his or her school. But with 

that authority they should also be held accountable—and I know 

some of my other colleagues will talk about this—for mentoring 

and induction programs, and the Commission believes that is very 

important that those responsibilities be devolved to the school. 

In closing, The Teaching Commission is not going measure it success based on these recommendations that are included in this report. What we hope to measure our success on is the effectiveness 

of bringing these ideas to the Federal, state and local levels. 

Finally, I want to just leave you with a quote from Lou Gerstner: 

‘‘If we don’t step up to this challenge of finding and supporting the 

best teachers, we’ll undermine everything else we’re trying to do to 

improve our schools. That’s a conscious decision that would threatVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00013 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
10

en our economic strength, political fabric and stability as a nation. 

It’s exactly that clear cut.’’ 

Again, Chairman Boehner, thank you very much for having me 

here today, and thank you to the rest of the Committee. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. McCown follows:]

Statement of R. Gaynor McCown, Executive Director, The Teaching 

Commission 

On behalf of The Teaching Commission, I want to thank Chairman Boehner for 

inviting me here today. I am honored to have the opportunity to discuss Teaching 

at Risk: A Call to Action, the report released by The Teaching Commission on January 14th 2004. 

The Teaching Commission, established by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., the retired 

Chairman of IBM, is a non-partisan group of business executives, former governors, 

a teachers-union president, and leaders in philanthropy and education. Our members include: Ken Chenault, Chairman and CEO of American Express; Sandra Feldman, President of the American Federation of Teachers; Former Governors Roy 

Barnes; James Hunt; Frank Keating and Richard Riley; Beverly Hall, Superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools; Scott Painter, High School Physics Teacher 

and Teacher of the Year in Atlanta; Barbara Bush and Vartan Gregorian, President 

of the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 

The goal of The Commission is to fundamentally upgrade the quality of teaching 

in the United States by changing the way that teachers are trained, assessed, supported, and compensated. 

The Commission’s report holds that quality teachers are the critical factor in helping young people overcome the damaging effects of poverty, lack of parental guidance, and other challenges. The effectiveness of any broader education reform—including standards, smaller schools, and choice—is ultimately dependent on the quality of teachers in the classroom. 

The United States has entered the 21st century as an undisputed world leader. 

That’s the good news. 

The bad news is that the nation will not continue to lead if we persist in viewing 

teaching—the profession that makes all other professions possible—as a second-rate 

occupation. 

Top-quality teaching fosters high student achievement—and high achievers can 

harness their talents and energies to become successful, contributing citizens. Nothing is more vital to our future than ensuring that we attract and retain the best 

teachers in our public schools. 

As Kati Haycock, Director of The Education Trust, points out, ‘‘A decade ago...we 

believed that what students learned was largely a factor of their family income or 

parental education, not of what schools did. But recent research has turned these 

assumptions upside down. What schools do matters enormously. And what matters 

most is good teaching.’’

In a study led by Eric Hanushek of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, the 

most effective teachers were found to boost their pupils’’ learning by a full grade 

more than students taught by their least successful colleagues. Replacing an average teacher with a very good one, Hanushek and his coauthors concluded, nearly 

erased the gap in math performance between students from low-income and highincome households. 

Similarly, a study of Tennessee students by William Sanders and June Rivers reveals that the chances for fourth-graders in the bottom quartile of performance to 

pass the state’s high-stakes exit exam in ninth grade were less than 15 percent if 

the students had a series of poor teachers. But the chances for students from the 

same background who had a series of good teachers were four times as great, or 

60 percent. 

The proven value of excellent teaching, in other words, all but demolishes the notion that socioeconomic status is the most important determinant of what kids can 

learn. 

Many teachers are working incredibly hard to help children succeed. But their effectiveness is often undermined by inadequate, one-size-fits-all compensation, flawed 

teacher preparation, ineffective leadership, and poor working conditions. 

These systemic problems prevent teachers from achieving their goals and mire 

educators and their students in the quicksand of the status quo. 

Our methods of teacher preparation and licensure are often marked by low standards, while teacher induction is too haphazard to ensure that new teachers have the 

knowledge, skills, clinical experience, and support they need to succeed. Universities 

11

often derive considerable income from teacher preparation and professional development programs without providing the ongoing help that novice and experienced 

teachers need. 

Meanwhile, low, lockstep pay undermines the prestige of the profession and the 

ability to renew and replenish the field. Cumbersome and constantly delayed school 

hiring practices in our largest cities scare off the best applicants. Equally significant, principals and teacher leaders rarely get a chance to work together to build 

the instructional teams that schools need to reach challenging academic goals. 

The nation has moved forward to set higher standards for what students must 

know and to hold schools and young people accountable for performance. But how 

can we hold students accountable for results unless they have the teachers they 

need in order to help them meet these standards? 

Our current education system has few ways to build on teacher success or to use 

teacher evaluation and compensation in ways that will improve student performance. Effective teachers who dramatically raise student achievement and who make 

other teachers better through their knowledge, leadership, and skills are treated exactly the same as those who make no positive difference in their classrooms. 

We say quality teaching matters, but we treat quality teachers as if they don’t. 

In an attempt to remedy these problems, The Teaching Commission offers four 

closely linked recommendations that would help to ensure the resources, training, 

leadership and support that teachers need to be successful in helping students 

achieve. 

Specifically, the plan included in The Teaching Commission report includes: 

1. Compensating Teachers More Effectively. Money does matter! All we have to 

do is look at the countless teacher surveys and the large numbers of teachers 

who flock to affluent suburbs where pay is significantly better than in urban 

public schools. Simply put, broadening and strengthening the pool of people 

who are attracted to and remain in teaching will require paying salaries that 

come closer to what talented college graduates can earn in other professions. 

The Teaching Commission also understands, however, that simply raising 

salaries for all teachers will not, by itself, raise student achievement. Therefore, 

while calling for an increase in base compensation, The Teaching Commission 

urges a far-reaching break with tradition: a salary scheme that is commensurate with excellence. That is, paying teachers more for high performance, as 

measured by fair evaluations and clear evidence of improved student learning. 

While the specific details of any compensation system are best determined by 

individual states, districts, and schools, The Teaching Commission believes that 

all performance incentives should be large enough to influence behavior. The 

pay-for-performance system also must provide frequent and comprehensive individual teacher evaluations, including assessments of student achievement and 

other teacher skills, such as lesson planning and classroom instruction and 

management. 

The Commission recommends that some version of the ‘‘value-added’’ method 

be used to measure gains in student performance and that additional compensation for individual teachers be ultimately based on performance, including 

student achievement. However, districts or states may want to use a team approach that rewards all teachers in a specific subject matter, grade, or school 

for overall gains in student achievement. 

Further, districts, schools, and unions should agree to establish career-advancement paths that offer teachers increasing levels of responsibility and compensation as their skills and effectiveness grow. Teachers who serve as mentor 

or master teachers would be required to demonstrate highly accomplished 

teaching, including continued improvement in student performance, in order to 

maintain their positions. 

2. Bolstering Accountability in Teacher Education. Colleges and university presidents must revamp their teacher education programs and make teacher quality 

a top priority. The Teaching Commission calls on the presidents of all American colleges and universities to make a personal and institutional commitment, including resources, to tackle the problem of unskilled teachers. 

Ensuring that the best and brightest college graduates are encouraged to 

teach in public schools—and that they receive high-quality academic training—

must be among the top priorities of college and university presidents. That 

means raising standards for entry into teacher preparation programs, beefing 

up the academic content of those programs while ensuring a connection to real 

practice, and promoting teaching as an exemplary career path for new graduates who wish to become engaged citizens. And it means measuring results in 

order to ensure that teacher education programs are doing their job. 

12

The Commission also recommends that the federal government should be 

prepared to withhold funds from colleges and universities that fail to show the 

effectiveness of their teacher-recruitment and preparation programs. 

3. Strengthening State Teacher Licensing and Certification Requirements. States 

must improve—or overhaul—their licensing and certification requirements. 

The Teaching Commission calls on governors and state education departments 

to ensure that every individual who wants to become a teacher passes a rigorous test for both content and essential skills. At a minimum, this will require 

raising the passing score on existing certification exams. It should also entail 

replacing low-level basic competency tests with challenging exams that measure verbal ability and content knowledge at an appropriately high level. In addition, states need to streamline the cumbersome bureaucracy that often surrounds teacher licensure in order to make the profession more attractive to a 

wide range of qualified candidates. 

4. Empowering School Leaders as CEOs. School districts need to give principals 

ultimate say over personnel decisions, while principals must provide teachers 

with mentoring and ongoing professional development known to improve classroom instruction. We call on superintendents to ensure that school principals 

are given the authority they need to provide leadership through a coherent academic program and the fostering of teaching excellence. Using fair and agreedupon measures of performance, every principal should be given the responsibility and authority to hire, fire, and promote teachers. Principals should also 

be held responsible for ensuring that new teachers receive structured mentoring, and that all teachers benefit from scientifically based professional development opportunities that focus squarely on assessing and improving instructional practices and thereby raising student achievement. To ensure the effectiveness of this support, principals should create school environments that encourage teachers to get directly involved in decision making in these areas. 

In a study conducted for The Teaching Commission, economist Eric Hanushek 

points out that investing in teaching to address student achievement problems will 

go a long way toward paying for itself. Hanushek estimates that significant improvements in education over a 20-year period could lead to as much as a 4 percent 

addition to the Gross Domestic Product. In today’s terms, that would be over $400 

billion, an amount that rivals total current expenditure on K–12 public education. 

In closing, The Teaching Commission will not measure its success by what it recommends. Its effectiveness will be determined by its ability to bring these ideas to 

life at the federal, state, and local levels. 

The Commission is in the process of building partnerships with states, education 

organizations, policy groups, and college leaders to implement its agenda. The Commission is also working on a communications and outreach campaign at the national, state, and local levels to build political will and encourage support for our 

recommendations. 

Finally, I’d like to leave you with a quote from Lou Gerstner, Chairman of The 

Teaching Commission: ‘‘If we don’t step up to this challenge of finding and supporting the best teachers, we’ll undermine everything else we’re trying to do to improve our schools. That’s a conscious decision that would threaten our economic 

strength, political fabric and stability as a nation. It’s exactly that clear cut.’’

Again, I want to thank Chairman Boehner and the members of The Committee 

on Education and the Workforce for inviting me here today. I appreciate your taking 

the time to hear about the work of The Teaching Commission. I would be delighted 

to take any questions you might have. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Thank you, Ms. McCown. 

Mr. Landgraf, you may proceed. 

STATEMENT OF KURT M. LANDGRAF, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF 

EXECUTIVE OFFICER, EDUCATIONAL TESTING SERVICE 

Mr. LANDGRAF. Thank you, Chairman Boehner. I appreciate it. 

And Congressman Miller, thank you for the leadership— 

Mr. BOEHNER. You might want to hit your button. 

Mr. LANDGRAF. Thank you very much for inviting me here today, 

and Congressman, thank you very much for the leadership you 

both have shown in implementing No Child Left Behind, probably 

the most important educational initiative in the last 200 years. 

13

Congressman Holt, who has left, I appreciate his introduction. As 

we say in central New Jersey, we’re proud of Congressman Holt as 

our congressman, because he is in fact a rocket scientist. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. LANDGRAF. And to Congressman Castle, who was my longtime congressman when I was COO of DuPont. I just wanted to 

thank him for being here today. 

I’m here today to talk about No Child Left Behind and teacher 

certification. Let me be very blunt. This is one of the most extraordinary opportunities in domestic educational policy that this country has ever had. It’s an outstanding initiative, but it will fail if we 

do not put the resources and talent required in the certification 

place to ensure at a bottom line all children get a qualified, knowledgeable teacher who understands their subject matter and understands how to relate to children. 

It’s a very simplistic equation. No matter what else this Congress 

does, unless we ensure that all children get qualified teachers who 

understand subject matter, we will not improve teacher—we will 

not improve achievement in the school systems, and most importantly, we will not make measurable progress in reducing the 

achievement gap that we see so sadly with our lowest socioeconomic status cohorts. 

I want to make four recommendations: 

States should reevaluate their teacher licensure programs and 

begin raising their entry standards. It is essential in our view that 

teachers have rigorous, meaningful entry standards into the profession. 

All states should establish induction programs for beginning 

teachers. Providing mentoring and support during the first years of 

teaching are essential. The profession of teaching is not one where 

we can afford to have long-term training programs to bring people 

up to excellence. Each kid each year has a teacher that makes a 

difference in their lives. 

Our nation must deploy continuous, high quality professional development programs to develop and maintain high quality teachers. 

We must place greater emphasis on observing and evaluating 

teacher skills and content knowledge in their actual classrooms 

throughout the courses of their career. 

As I said, nothing in our view is more important than a highly 

qualified, highly motivated, highly compensated teacher in the 

complex matrix of education. 

ETS will release an issue paper, ‘‘Where We Stand on Teacher 

Quality.’’ We’ve made copies available to this Committee and also 

available for anyone else who would like to take a look at this. 

We believe that skilled teachers possess four types of knowledge 

and skill: 

Basic academic reading, writing and math. 

Thorough knowledge of the content of each subject they teach. 

Both generic and content-specific knowledge about how to teach; 

and 

Hands-on ability and skill to use this knowledge to engage students in learning and the master of curriculum. 

14

ETS, as has been discussed, is a leader in educational policy research with over 50 years of experience looking at the educational 

matrix. The conclusions we reach today come from that research. 

We also provide a series of products. Most notably for members 

of this Commission, we are the company that provides the assessment tool called Praxis, which is used in 39 states as the certification tool for entry level teachers. We also provide a series of 

products and services to prepare teachers to take the Praxis exam. 

ETS is working on several fronts to raise the standards for entering the profession. Most notably, I believe, we are cooperating with 

the National Center for Accreditation of Teacher Education 

(NCATE), to establish a professionally recognized and defensible 

range of common passing scores on selected Praxis content knowledge tests. This will make institutional accreditation decisions comparable state-to-state while recognizing that the demand and supply for teachers is different in each locale. 

National benchmarks defined by the teaching profession will enable more equitable accreditation decisions and help increase the 

quality of teacher preparation programs. 

To further that end, ETS now has a recognition of excellence 

award, where we provide to those candidates who earn high scores 

in any of our 11 Praxis tests, they will receive a certificate from 

ETS identifying that excellence, and also that will be reported on 

their Praxis report score out. 

We have Praxis assessment development guides that we provide 

to allow teachers a chance to do well on our assessments. We have 

a diagnostic preparation program, and ETS importantly supports 

the concept of alternative roots to teaching. This is to encourage 

talented candidates to enter the field of teaching sometimes midcareer. 

Mr. Chairman, I’d like to offer the Committee some policy recommendations for improving teacher quality that have emerged 

from the work we are doing at ETS: 

States should reevaluate their systems of teacher licensure. 

States should establish induction programs to ensure that new 

teachers are given appropriate mentoring. 

States must deploy high quality professional development programs. It’s not enough to hire the best. We must develop them as 

we do in all other sectors of our society. And we must place greater 

emphasis on teacher teaching skills. It’s not enough just to have 

outstanding concept knowledge and content knowledge. You must 

be able to teach in a real live classroom. 

In closing, let me thank you for being invited today, Mr. Chairman. It’s a pleasure for ETS to be part of your discussions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Landgraf follows:]

Statement of Kurt M. Landgraf, President and Chief Executive Officer, 

Educational Testing Service 

Good morning, Chairman Boehner and members of the committee. I am Kurt 

Landgraf, President and Chief Executive Officer of Educational Testing Service. 

ETS is the world’s largest private educational testing and measurement organization and a leader in education research. The company is dedicated to serving the 

needs of individuals, educational institutions, and government bodies in almost 200 

countries. My testimony today addresses the central role of teacher quality in our 

education system. 

15

Mr. Chairman, teacher quality is a key element of the No Child Left Behind Act, 

and it is central to our national objective of improving student achievement and reducing the achievement gap. As I have said before, the goals of the law—raising 

achievement, closing the achievement gap and improving accountability—are the 

right ones. I want to thank both Chairman Boehner and Congressman Miller for 

your strong leadership in education reform, including your keen interest in improving the quality of teachers in our nation’s schools. Working together we can succeed, 

and ETS stands ready to help. 

Today, I want to share our views on teacher quality and make four recommendations to promote quality in the nation’s teacher workforce: 

• States should re-evaluate their teacher licensure programs and begin raising 

their entry standards, including the passing scores required on licensure exams. 

ETS pledges to work with states to reduce differences in passing scores on 

Praxis tests across states. 

• All states should establish induction programs for beginning teachers, providing 

mentoring and support during the first years of teaching. 

• Our nation must deploy continuous, high-quality professional development programs to develop and maintain high-quality teachers. 

• We must place greater emphasis on observing and evaluating teachers’’ teaching skills and content knowledge in their actual classrooms throughout the 

course of their careers. 

Improving teacher quality is at the core of the work of ETS. For over 50 years 

we have been striving to elevate the level of teaching in our nation’s schools. We 

continue to develop teacher, administrator and paraprofessional assessments, 

produce related professional development products and services, and conduct program and policy research on education personnel and practices. 

Today ETS will release a position paper entitled Where We Stand on Teacher 

Quality, copies of which we have made available to members of the committee. It 

is the first in a series of issue papers from ETS on improving the quality of the 

teacher workforce in the United States. This first paper addresses aspects of teacher 

quality that we believe are fundamental. In the coming months, we will publish papers on specific topics related to teacher quality that warrant further examination. 

Teaching Quality Determines Education Quality 

Mr. Chairman, the quality of teaching determines the quality of education. And 

so we believe that the standards for those who pursue this important profession 

must be high and they must be rigorous—so our children are prepared as responsible citizens of a democracy and productive contributors to a competitive, global 

economy. Americans support improving the quality of teaching, and, according to 

the ETS-sponsored 2002 survey by Peter D. Hart–Robert M. Teeter, A National Priority: Americans Speak on Teacher Quality, they view improving the nation’s 

schools and improving teacher quality as synonymous. 

Defining Teacher Quality. We know that good teachers produce good students. 

This is the bottom line for effective teachers: their ability to improve student learning. Knowing one’s subject, knowing how to teach it, and actually being able to 

teach it are fundamental. In fact, we suggest that competent, skilled teachers should 

possess the following four types of knowledge and skill: 

1. Basic academic reading, writing and math. 

2. Thorough knowledge of the content of each subject taught, appropriate to the 

levels of their students. 

3. Both generic and content-specific knowledge in areas such as child development; classroom management; motivating children to learn; interpreting and 

using assessment data; individualizing instruction; aligning content to the 

state’s standards; developing appropriate instructional materials; and working 

with children with disabilities or from other cultures. 

4. Hands-on ability and skill to use the above types of knowledge to engage students in learning and mastery of the curriculum. 

ETS’s Roles in Improving Teacher Quality 

Research. ETS conducts a great deal of policy research. Since 1999, we have published five policy research reports on different aspects of teaching. (See Appendix.) 

Our long-term teacher quality agenda focuses on understanding the role of teacher 

quality in closing the student achievement gap. Specifically, for the next three years 

we will undertake a systematic investigation of the depth and breadth of teacher 

attrition and teacher quality in hard-to-staff schools, including consideration of the 

most effective district and state policies for recruiting and retaining math and 

science teachers in those schools. We will also examine the use of value-added modVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
16

els as measures of teacher quality. This research will be helpful in finding solutions 

to the persistent teacher-quality gap. 

As we move forward on this extensive research, we would very much welcome 

input from you, Mr. Chairman, and other members of this committee, to ensure that 

the questions we are asking are useful and relevant to the most important teacher 

quality issues facing this nation. 

Products and Services to Enhance Learning. ETS also develops a number of products and services to help improve teacher quality. These include the Praxis Series: 

Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers; the Parapro Assessment for paraprofessionals; assessments of accomplished teaching; the School Leaders Licensure 

Assessment; and the School Superintendent Assessments. In recognition of the importance of professional development throughout teachers’’ careers, we developed 

the Pathwise series of professional development materials, workshops, training sessions, software, and mini-courses for teachers. We are also working with a number 

of states, including California, providing induction programs for teachers during 

their first years in the classroom. 

The Praxis Series can play a crucial role in helping the nation move toward the 

NCLBA goal of a ‘‘highly qualified teacher’’ in every classroom. It is a system of rigorous and carefully validated assessments that generate accurate, reliable information for use in licensing decisions. Praxis tests are aligned with and reflect current 

K–12 and teacher preparation standards issued by national discipline-based associations. Offered in all the content fields covered by state teacher licenses, Praxis assessments are designed to evaluate each teacher candidate’s basic academic skills, 

subject knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and classroom performance. 

Promoting Quality Across the Continuum. It is important to address teacher quality across the continuum of teaching—from preparation through professional development and performance evaluation. ETS is involved in several key initiatives to 

help prepare, license and support teachers throughout their profession. These are 

described below. 

Raising Standards. ETS is cooperating with the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) to establish a professionally recognized and defensible range of common passing scores on selected Praxis 

content knowledge tests. Doing so will help make institutional accreditation 

decisions compatible from state to state, while recognizing local demand for 

and supply of teachers. National benchmarks, defined by the teaching profession, will enable more equitable accreditation decision making and will 

help to increase the quality of teacher preparation programs. 

Recognizing Excellence. ETS is working on several fronts to help districts, states, education leaders and policy-makers raise the standards for 

those entering the profession. Our new Recognition of Excellence program, 

similar to a college honors diploma, recognizes and encourages exceptional 

individual performance on select Praxis II tests. Candidates who earn very 

high scores—in the top 15 percent of test takers—on any of 11 Praxis II 

tests will receive a certificate from ETS, and their award will be noted on 

all Praxis score reports. 

Helping Candidates Succeed. To help teacher candidates prepare for 

Praxis assessments, ETS has written and by July 2004 will have published 

learning guides for 27 of the subjects we test. Each guide presents a diagram of the critical foundations of the content domain of each test. Our new 

Praxis Diagnostic Preparation Program provides detailed, customized feedback about candidates’’ performance so they may better understand their 

strengths and weaknesses and focus their test preparation efforts accordingly. 

Expediting Entry. ETS supports the concept of alternative routes to 

teaching in order to encourage talented candidates to the field, for instance, 

by reducing unnecessary barriers or expediting the licensing process. While 

the relative weight assigned to each of the three essential components of 

teacher licensure—education, experience and examination—may change in 

order to open the door to prospective teachers, all three components are 

needed. We believe that states should prescribe a uniform licensure standard for all candidates—a standard aligned to the state’s student content 

standards and to the knowledge and skill requirements the state has defined for teaching various subject areas and grade levels. 

Recommendations for Improving Teacher Quality 

Licensure Reform. ETS believes that licensure reform offers great potential to enhance the quality of teaching across the country. Because state practices and poliVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
17

cies vary considerably, a uniform national standard does not exist. Here are some 

proposals: 

Raising the Bar. States should re-evaluate their existing teacher licensure programs and begin raising the standards for entering the profession. 

Specifically, as The Teaching Commission advised in its report, Teaching at 

Risk, ‘‘states should agree on a common national standard for subject-area 

tests and set cutoff scores at a level that requires teaching candidates to 

demonstrate mastery reflecting at least two years of undergraduate study.’’

Uniformity, Comparability and Portability. The Praxis Series is a national program, with the same tests provided to all states that use them; 

only the variation in passing scores precludes comparability. Uniform passing scores would enhance portability of scores, and thus candidate mobility 

and reciprocity across states. We are working with an exciting model for the 

future: the Mid–Atlantic Regional Teachers Project, a regional collaboration 

to develop full regional licensure reciprocity, new-teacher mentoring programs, common regional standards for alternative certification, regional 

pension portability, and a new regional designation of ‘‘Meritorious New 

Teachers.’’

Streamlining the Process. We agree with calls to streamline the cumbersome bureaucracy that often surrounds teacher licensure in order to 

make the profession more attractive to a wide range of qualified candidates, 

as recommended in Teaching at Risk. ETS is collaborating with Teach for 

America, offering Praxis tests at convenient times to help accelerate TFA 

candidates’’ entry to the classroom. Further, we are offering flexibility in 

the Praxis registration process to accommodate teachers recruited by The 

New Teacher Project. 

Induction and Mentoring. ETS urges all states to establish induction programs for 

beginning teachers to provide them with mentoring and other support during the 

crucial first years of teaching. Research shows that teachers without such support 

leave the profession at rates almost 70 percent higher than those who receive it. 

With about one-third of new teachers leaving the classroom within three years and 

nearly one-half within five years, failing to provide induction is irresponsible. Yet, 

only 15 states both require and finance mentoring programs for all novice teachers, 

despite the availability of federal funds for this purpose. 

Ongoing Professional Development. Continuous professional development is critical to developing and maintaining high-quality teachers. Data show that without 

highly skilled support, even those with high qualifications will not remain in the 

profession long. Each of the ETS Pathwise products for professional development is 

designed to improve teacher and school leader performance and is grounded in what 

research studies define as ‘‘best practice.’’

Teacher Performance Evaluation. Evaluations of teachers’’ performance in the 

classroom occur at many points on the teaching continuum, at various times 

throughout a school year, and for a variety of purposes. ETS believes that teachers’’ 

teaching skills and content knowledge should be routinely observed in the classroom 

and evaluated throughout their careers. Unfortunately, performance evaluation is 

frequently a missing element of teacher development planning, even though when 

used to assist fledgling candidates it can mean the difference between leaving and 

staying. We urge that high-quality performance evaluations be required as a part 

of licensure and in the concept of states’’ High and Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation. We support The Teaching Commission’s recommendations for individual teacher evaluations for performance pay-determinations. As the commission 

states, such evaluations ‘‘should occur frequently and be comprehensive, including 

assessments of student achievement and other teacher skills, such as lesson planning and classroom instruction and management.’’

Conclusion 

ETS stands ready to work with policy-makers and practitioners to improve teacher quality and student achievement. From our perspective, strong content knowledge and knowing how to teach are both essential qualifications that beginning 

teachers must have to enter the classroom. We believe that teachers who meet high 

qualifications for entering the profession can grow and improve their practice as 

they progress in the profession. We recommend that states work together to achieve 

more commonality and comparability in qualifications for those entering and staying 

in this important profession. In addition: 

• States should re-evaluate their teacher licensure programs and begin raising 

their entry standards, including the passing scores required on licensure exams. 

ETS pledges to work with states on efforts to reduce differences in passing 

scores on Praxis tests across states. 

18

• All states should establish induction programs for beginning teachers, providing 

mentoring and support during the first years of teaching. 

• Our nation must deploy continuous, high-quality professional development to 

develop and retain high-quality teachers. 

• We should place greater emphasis on observing and evaluating teachers’’ teaching skills and content knowledge in their actual classrooms throughout the 

course of their careers. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to present ETS’s views. I would be 

pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. 

APPENDIX 

ETS RESEARCH ON TEACHER QUALITY

ETS has produced five policy research reports on different aspects of teaching 

since 1999. A brief overview of each of these reports follows. 

Preparing Teachers Around The World compares and contrasts teacher education 

and certification policies in the United States with those in Australia, England, 

Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, and Singapore. Students in those countries performed as well as or better than students from the United States in an 

international assessment of mathematics and science. The study presents the idea 

of filters, or points, along the teacher pipeline where people might be forced to exit 

the profession. Some filters that have come under attack in the United States—such 

as teacher education programs and tenure—are accepted and universal practices in 

some countries. Those same countries have more rigorous entry requirements for 

teacher education programs than are generally found in U.S. programs. And while 

much has been made in this country about deregulating teaching as a means of improving the teaching force, every high-performing country in this study employs significant regulatory controls on its teachers, almost all more rigorous than what is 

found in the United States. 

In How Teaching Matters: Bringing the Classroom Back Into Discussions About 

Teacher Quality, ETS researchers explored the possible influence of classroom practices on student achievement in mathematics and science. The study found that 

while teacher inputs, professional development, and classroom practices all influence student achievement, the greatest role is played by classroom practices, followed by professional development that is tailored to those classroom practices most 

conducive to the high academic performance of students. 

The effectiveness of institutions that prepare teachers was explored in Teaching 

the Teachers: Different Settings, Different Results. The study found that five characteristics of institutions and programs were conducive to higher teacher licensure 

scores: 1) private institutions outperformed public ones; 2) universities outperformed 

colleges; 3) teacher education programs with a higher number of traditional students outperformed those with fewer such students; 4) teacher education programs 

with ethnically diverse faculties outperformed those with overwhelmingly White faculties; 5) institutions with large proportions of education majors and minors and 

large proportions of their budgets devoted to teacher preparation performed worse 

than those with small proportions of education majors and minors and small proportions of their budgets devoted to teacher education. 

In How Teachers Compare: The Prose Document and Quantitative Skills of America’s Teachers were studied and compared to the literacy of other adults. While 

teachers display a considerable range of these skills (as all groups do), on the whole 

they perform quite well. Across all three National Adult Literacy (NALS) scales—

prose, document and quantitative, teachers performed significantly higher than the 

general adult population and scored at similar levels to other college-educated 

adults in all three domains. 

The Academic Quality of Prospective Teachers: The Impact of Admissions and Licensure Testing examined teachers’’ scores on college admissions tests and teacher 

licensure tests. The study found that teachers’’ academic ability varies widely by 

type of licensure sought, with those candidates seeking licenses in academic subject 

areas having the highest college admissions test scores, and those in non-academic 

fields such as elementary education having the lowest scores. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Thank you, Mr. Landgraf. 

Mr. Wiener? 

19

STATEMENT OF ROSS WIENER, POLICY DIRECTOR, THE 

EDUCATION TRUST 

Mr. WIENER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Miller, 

and Members of the Committee. Thank you very much for this opportunity to testify before you today on the importance of the 

teacher quality provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act. 

For decades, we’ve known that pubic education has accepted high 

levels of out-of-field teaching as inevitable and has systematically 

assigned its weakest teachers to its weakest students. Indeed, no 

matter the measure of teacher quality, the conclusion is always the 

same. Low income students and students of color are pervasively 

assigned to less qualified teachers than their peers. 

This Committee has exhibited great leadership in the effort to 

correct these unfair practices and improve teacher quality by including expansive teacher-related provisions in NCLB. 

These provisions represent the support side of this ambitious 

law, the substantive provisions with the most potential to actually 

improve teaching and learning in previously low performing 

schools. 

Before talking directly about the provisions of the law, let me remind you of some context. As Congress prepared to reauthorize 

ESEA in 2001, African American, Latino and low income high 

school seniors were graduating with skills in reading and mathematics that were virtually indistinguishable from other students at 

the end of middle school. 

These gaps in student skills threaten to undermine the nation’s 

economic vitality and have profound moral and civic implications 

for a democratic society that is committed to equality of opportunity. 

Your focus on teacher quality is critically important. The latest 

research establishes that teachers vary tremendously in their effectiveness, and that the most effective teachers can teach even the 

most disadvantaged students up to high standards. 

Congress has responded to this growing knowledge about the importance of quality teachers with a number of legislative initiatives, but none have been more significant or possess more potential for positive impact than the teacher quality provisions in 

NCLB. 

These provisions call on states to accept three fundamental responsibilities: 

1. To define what it means to be a highly qualified teacher and 

to adopt the goal of all teachers meeting this standard by 2006; 

2. To ensure that poor and minority children are no longer shortchanged in the distribution of teacher talent; and 

3. To report to parents and the public on progress toward meeting these goals. 

Despite widespread belief to the contrary, the teacher quality 

provisions in NCLB defer mightily to the states and include significant new resources to focus on improving teacher quality. These 

provisions establish a critically important principle. If a school has 

a persistent problem recruiting and retaining enough highly qualified teachers, the school district and state have a problem too. 

That’s good news for these schools and their students. 

20

It’s important to keep in mind that there are no monetary penalties or other sanctions for failing to meet the teacher quality 

goals in NCLB. States and districts have pledged to work on these 

issues and to publicly report on their progress. But no systems or 

individual teachers will be punished if the goals are not achieved. 

Before highlighting some examples of states and districts that 

are making progress on raising teacher quality, I have to mention 

some of the progress we are not seeing. Unfortunately, many states 

have resisted fully acknowledging the teacher quality problems on 

which NCLB directs the public’s attention. They’ve responded to 

the requirements of the law by adopting specifications that are so 

weak they make it appear as if there are no pressing problems on 

which to focus. 

Compounding this resistance in the field, the U.S. Department of 

Education has not shown sufficient leadership in the area of teacher quality. Consequently the teacher quality provisions, the provisions that emphatically embrace teachers as the most important resource in helping students learn and to allocate substantial resources to help them get even better, have frequently been cast as 

anti-teacher. And a law that stresses both accountability and support gets misunderstood as being focused only on accountability. 

Now let me briefly describe a couple of districts and states that 

have embraced the teacher quality challenge and are seeing some 

promising results. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania NCLB is 

strengthening the hand of education leaders who are willing to 

tackle the problem head on. 

Because of NCLB, all of Pennsylvania’s middle school teachers 

who had not previously demonstrated subject knowledge were required to take the state’s teacher exam in their subjects. The results brought attention to the fact that many of Philadelphia’s middle school teachers need additional assistance and support to 

strengthen their subject knowledge. In fact, more than half of all 

middle school teachers and almost two-thirds of the middle school 

math teachers did not pass the test. 

Philadelphia school district and its superintendent are to be commended for their positive and constructive response to these results. The superintendent publicly referred to the test results as a 

wake up call. The school district announced a major initiative that 

will provide intensive training and assistance to help these teachers. Without the teacher quality provisions in NCLB, this important issue would have received little or no attention and fewer resources. 

An initiative in Chattanooga, Tennessee is focused on helping 

nine high poverty elementary schools, each of which previously 

ranked among the bottom 20 statewide in terms of achievement. 

The core strategy is a bonus plan that provides an extra $5,000 for 

highly effective teachers who agree to teach in the targeted schools, 

and the results have been impressive. 

High teacher turnover, a perennial problem in these schools, has 

greatly declined. The percentage of third grade students reading at 

grade level increased by nearly 50 percent, while the targeted 

schools have improved much faster than other schools both in the 

district and the state in all five subjects tested. 

21

Other districts are now emulating this example, including a program in Mobile, Alabama that is using their Title II NCLB funds 

to pay substantial bonuses to highly qualified teachers who agree 

to work in the lowest performing schools, and additional bonuses 

if these teachers meet ambitious goals for raising student achievement. 

Finally, the Ohio Partnership for Accountability is a newly 

formed consortium of all 50 teacher preparation institutions in the 

state, the Ohio Board of Regents and the Ohio Department of Education. The Partnership has secured participation of both major 

teacher unions in the state as well as the business community. 

This groundbreaking project would evaluate the preparation, inschool support and effectiveness of Ohio’s teachers using field studies and a comprehensive data base that is being built for this purpose. 

There is no question that NCLB has brought added energy and 

urgency to understanding good teaching and ensuring that more 

students get it. 

Finally, I’d like to quickly make three recommendations to the 

Committee. But first, the U.S. Department of Education needs to 

better meet its responsibilities to explain the teacher quality provisions, monitor compliance, and share best practices. 

This last responsibility is critically important to conveying a 

sense of hope and possibility in the face of credits who claim the 

law’s goals are unreachable or unreasonable. 

The specific actions that Congress could take include the following: 

1. Ask GAO, the Government Accounting Office, to report on 

Title II allocations and programs. Congress has increased funding 

for teaching quality improvement activities by nearly 50 percent 

after enacting NCLB, from approximately $2 billion to approximately $3 billion for year. The funding formula in Title II specifically targets most of this money to the schools with the fewest 

highly qualified teachers. 

However, many public reports suggest that the existence of these 

additional funds is not widely known and are not being effectively 

targeted to the neediest schools. Congress should request an accounting on this issue. 

2. Support value-added data systems. Many states had not previously collected data on the distribution of qualified teachers. This 

is an imperative first step to identifying the most serious problems 

and tracking progress over time. Better information management 

systems and technology could help states identify which of their 

teachers are most effective and learn from them. 

A small investment to help states develop and implement better 

data systems would greatly enhance the knowledge base on which 

states design and evaluate education improvement strategies. 

3. Commit additional resources to teacher quality initiatives. 

Federal resources could provide incentives to recruit more teachers 

with strong backgrounds in math and science as well as teachers 

who are skilled at helping students with disabilities, teachers with 

bilingual skills, and more underrepresented minorities into the 

teaching profession. 

22

Specifically, high poverty schools do not have the resources they 

need to compete for the most qualified teachers. States need to step 

up to their responsibilities on this issue, but Congress could help 

with significant incentives for teachers who have proven to be effective and who are willing to take on the toughest challenges in the 

highest poverty schools. 

In conclusion, the teacher quality provisions in NCLB represent 

an important extension of the Federal Government’s efforts to improve public education, in particular for low income and minority 

students. This focus is based on a strong record of research. Moreover, these provisions embody the best elements of federalism. 

They identify a problem of national significance, they provide some 

resources to state and local education leaders to focus on these 

problems, and they call on states to address their own unique circumstances with their own standards and strategies. 

In essence, getting enough qualified teachers for our nation’s 

public schools needs to be everyone’s business. By placing teacher 

quality squarely on the nation’s agenda, Congress has made it 

more likely that public K-12 systems will get the help they need 

from their state legislatures, institutions of higher education, business communities and other sectors of society. 

Thank you very much. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wiener follows:]

Statement of Ross Wiener, Policy Director, The Education Trust 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to 

testify before you today on the importance of the teacher quality provisions in the 

No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). 

My purpose today is to emphasize why the subject of teacher quality should remain high on your agenda; to provide a report on implementation of NCLB’s teacher 

quality provisions, including some early images of progress; and to make some recommendations for oversight and legislative activities Congress could undertake to 

ensure these provisions are implemented with the greatest possible benefits to students. 

For decades, we’ve known that public education has accepted high levels of outof-field teaching as inevitable, and has systematically assigned its weakest teachers 

to its weakest students. Indeed, no matter the measure of teacher quality—certification, major or minor in-field, years of experience, performance on certification or 

licensure exams—the conclusion is always the same: low-income students and students of color are pervasively assigned to less qualified teachers than their peers. 

This Committee has exhibited great leadership in the effort to improve teacher 

quality and correct these unfair practices by including expansive teacher-related 

provisions in NCLB. These provisions represent the first major federal commitment 

to ensuring that all students are taught by qualified teachers, and constitute important progress in the quest for educational excellence and equality. They are the 

‘‘support’’ side of this ambitious law—the substantive provisions with the most potential to actually improve teaching and instruction in previously low-performing 

schools. 

I. CONTEXT

Before talking directly about the provisions of the law, let me remind you of some 

context. As all of you know, this country made a lot of progress during the 1970s 

and 80s in raising both achievement among poor and minority students and narrowing the gaps that separated them from other students. Beginning about 1988, 

however, that progress stopped and the gaps between groups started widening 

again. 

This pattern would have been troubling at any time. But it was especially distressing that these gaps began widening at a time when education was becoming 

more important than ever before. In today’s economy, young workers who don’t have 

strong skills are shut out of most jobs that pay a living wage, no matter how hard 

they work. 

23

1See Good Teaching Matters: How Well–Qualified Teachers Can Close the Gap, Education 

Trust, Summer 1998. 2Steven G. Rivkin, Eric A. Hanusheck, and John F. Kain, Teachers, Schools, and Academic 

Achievement 2002. 

Yet, as Congress prepared to reauthorize ESEA in 2001, African American, Latino 

and low-income high school seniors were graduating with skills in reading and 

mathematics that were virtually indistinguishable from other students at the end 

of middle school. These gaps in student skills threaten to undermine the nation’s 

economic vitality, and have profound moral and civic implications for a democratic 

society committed to equality of opportunity. 

II. THE FOCUS ON TEACHER QUALITY IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT

When ESEA was originally enacted in 1965, education research seemed to suggest 

that socio-economic status and parental education level had an overwhelming impact on student achievement. Conventional wisdom was that not much of what 

schools did affected student achievement. 

By the time Congress reauthorized the law in 2001, however, more sophisticated 

data analysis techniques had established that schools make a huge impact on 

whether students learn, and the single most important factor is good teachers. 

Through value-added analysis pioneered by Dr. William Sanders at the University 

of Tennessee, and replicated in districts across the country, we now know that the 

quality of teachers varies tremendously and that the most effective teachers can 

teach even the most disadvantaged students up to high standards. 1

Analyzing large-scale databases, economists have concluded that assigning highly 

effective teachers to the neediest students could virtually eliminate the gaps in student proficiency on state assessments of English/language arts and mathematics.2

I cite this research not to suggest that poverty and external factors are irrelevant 

to student achievement. The fact is some students face more disadvantages outside 

of school than others. The tragedy, however, is that public education reflects and 

actually exacerbates these inequalities. Instead of giving more to the students who 

are most dependent on schools for their learning, public education consistently gives 

them the least. 

Nowhere is this practice more damaging than in the inequitable distribution of 

qualified teachers. Yet, despite public commitments to ensuring that all students 

would be educated up to state standards, and despite the research establishing that 

teachers were the key to meeting this goal, most States and districts continued to 

assign their weakest teachers to their most vulnerable students. 

III. TEACHER QUALITY PROVISIONS IN NCLB 

Congress has responded to the growing knowledge about the importance of quality 

teachers with a number of legislative initiatives, including important new teacherrelated provisions in the Higher Education Act of 1998. But none have been more 

significant or possess more potential for positive impact than the teacher quality 

provisions in NCLB. These provisions call on States to accept three fundamental responsibilities: • to define what it means to be ‘‘highly qualified’’ and adopt the goal of all teachers meeting that standard by spring 2006; • to ensure that poor and minority children are no longer taught disproportionately by inexperienced, unqualified, and out-of-field teachers, and; • to report to parents and the public on progress toward meeting these goals. 

Despite widespread belief to the contrary, the teacher quality provisions in NCLB 

defer mightily to the states and include significant new resources to focus on improving teacher quality. Essentially, NCLB sets up a low-stakes system of goals and 

public reporting to support improvements in teacher quality and in the equitable 

distribution of qualified teachers. 

States are required to adopt definitions of who is qualified to teach. In addition 

to their ordinary requirements (which typically include at least a bachelor’s degree 

and certain education coursework), NCLB includes only one substantive requirement: demonstration of content knowledge. • States that don’t already do so are required by NCLB to assess content knowledge of elementary teachers through a state test that covers the range of knowledge that the state determines to be necessary to deliver the elementary curriculum. • For middle and high school teachers, NCLB demands that states assess subjectknowledge separately in each of the subjects to which the teacher is assigned. 

For secondary teachers who don’t have a major, advanced degree, or advanced 

24

certification in a particular subject, states must adopt tests to assess teachers’’ 

subject knowledge. 

These are very common sense requirements—teachers can’t teach what they don’t 

know well. 

Then, based on their own definitions, States were required to collect data on the 

percent of classes throughout the State that were taught by highly qualified teachers, and compare the highest-poverty districts with the lowest-poverty districts. This 

data was to form a baseline for measuring progress and was supposed to be widely 

distributed to parents, the public and policymakers. 

Most significantly, states and districts have been asked to adopt plans for ensuring that all students are taught by teachers that the State considers ‘‘highly qualified.’’ This provision establishes a critically important principle: states and districts 

are responsible for providing all students with qualified teachers. Under NCLB, if 

a school has a persistent problem recruiting and retaining enough qualified teachers, then the district and State have a problem too. That’s good news for these 

schools and their students. 

Among the teacher quality provisions in NCLB, there is one which has been littlenoted, but carries more simple power and moral authority than all the others combined. It demands that States articulate the specific steps they will take to: 

ensure that poor and minority children are not taught at higher rates than 

other children by inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers, and 

the measures that the state educational agency will use to evaluate and 

publicly report the progress of the state educational agency with respect to 

such steps. 20 U.S.C. § 6311(b)(8)(C). 

This provision, and the analogous requirement for school districts (see 20 U.S.C. 

§ 6312(c)(1)(L)), are appropriate and reasonable requirements for participation in 

federal programs aimed at helping disadvantaged children. After many years of providing federal funds without any progress on the unequal assignment of teachers, 

Congress realized that it could not expect improved results for poor and minority 

students unless these students were taught by qualified teachers. 

It is important to keep in mind that there are no monetary penalties or other 

sanctions for failing to meet the teacher quality goals in NCLB. States and districts 

have pledged to work on these issues and to publicly report on their progress, but 

no systems or individual teachers will be punished if the goals are not achieved. 

There is no incentive under the federal law for states to lower their standards or 

obscure the extent of the problem—unless public reporting itself is construed as punitive. 

IV. Implementation Progress 

Before highlighting some examples of states and districts that are making 

progress on raising teacher quality issues, I have to mention some of the progress 

we are not seeing. Unfortunately, many states have resisted fully acknowledging the 

teacher quality problems on which NCLB directs the public’s attention. Perhaps because they are worried about the political and financial costs of tackling these 

issues, many state education leaders and policymakers have mischaracterized and 

maligned NCLB’s teacher quality provisions. They’ve ‘‘responded’’ to the requirements of the law by adopting specifications that are so weak they make it appear 

as if there are no pressing problems on which to focus. 

Sadly, when this happens, both teachers and students suffer. Teachers, because 

the resources set aside to invest in increasing their knowledge and skills aren’t focused on this after all. Students suffer because many of their teachers need the additional help and support envisioned under NCLB. 

The U.S. Department of Education has not shown sufficient leadership in confronting the misinformation, in building support for the teacher quality provisions, 

or in sharing widely some of the best things states and districts are doing. Indeed, 

at times the Department has denied the existence of key NCLB provisions related 

to teacher quality, including the requirement that states and districts do more to 

distribute teacher talent equally. 

Consequently, the teacher quality provisions—provisions that emphatically embrace teachers as the most important resource in helping students learn and allocate substantial resources to help them get even better—have frequently been cast 

as anti-teacher. And a law that stresses both accountability and support gets misunderstood as being focused only on accountability. 

Early Images of Positive Impact 

Already, in states and districts that have embraced the teacher quality challenge, 

we are seeing some promising progress since the enactment of Title II. 

25

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 

For years, out-of-field teaching has been a closely guarded secret in public education. Many states and districts have been loathe to acknowledge this problem, but 

NCLB is strengthening the hand of education leaders who are willing to tackle the 

problem head-on. 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania offers one such example: Because of NCLB, all of 

Pennsylvania’s middle school teachers who had not previously demonstrated knowledge in the subjects to which they were assigned were required to take the state’s 

teacher exam in their subject(s). The results brought attention to the fact that many 

of Philadelphia’s middle school teachers have been teaching without sufficient 

knowledge of the subjects they were assigned to teach. In fact, more than half of 

all middle school teachers who took the tests, including almost two-thirds of the 

middle school math teachers, did not pass. These teachers need additional assistance and support to strengthen their subject knowledge. 

Philadelphia’s school district and its superintendent are to be commended for 

their positive and constructive response to these results. The superintendent publicly referred to the test results as a ‘‘wake-up call,’’ and explained that, while the 

assessments are rigorous and demanding, they represent knowledge that teachers 

need to possess. The school district announced a major initiative that will provide 

intensive training and assistance to help these teachers, supported with both public 

and private funds. Without the teacher quality provisions in NCLB, this important 

issue would have received little or no attention and fewer resources. 

Chattanooga, Tennessee 

Recent initiatives in school districts like Chattanooga, Tennessee provide powerful 

evidence that bringing highly effective teachers together with low-performing, lowincome, and minority students can successfully raise achievement. Chattanooga recently embarked on a concentrated effort to help students in nine high-poverty elementary schools, each of which previously ranked among the bottom 20 statewide 

in terms of achievement. The core of their strategy was a series of steps to greatly 

increase the quality of instruction. An innovative salary bonus plan provided an 

extra $5,000 for teachers who were rated as highly effective under Tennessee’s nationally-recognized ‘‘value-added’’ system of measuring teacher effectiveness, and 

who agreed to teach in the targeted schools. 

The results have been impressive. High teacher turnover, a perennial problem for 

hard-to-staff schools, has greatly declined. The percentage of third grade students 

reading at grade level increased by nearly 50% over two years, while the targeted 

schools have improved much faster than other schools both district and statewide, 

in all five subjects tested. Chattanooga is showing that teacher-focused strategies 

to close the achievement gap can work. Other districts are emulating this example, 

including a program in Mobile, Alabama, which is using NCLB Title II funds to pay 

substantial bonuses to highly qualified teachers who agree to work in the lowestperforming schools, and additional bonuses if these teachers meet ambitious goals 

for raising student achievement. 

State of Ohio 

In March 2004, the formation of the Ohio Partnership for Accountability was announced, which is a consortium of all 50 teacher preparation institutions in the 

state, the Ohio Board of Regents, and the Ohio Department of Education. The Partnership has secured the participation of both major teacher unions in Ohio as well 

as the business community. This ambitious project will evaluate the preparation, inschool support, and effectiveness of Ohio’s teachers using field studies and a comprehensive database that is being customized for this purpose. 

News reports surrounding the announcement of the Ohio Partnership credited 

NCLB for getting states more keenly focused on issues of teacher quality, and projected that Ohio could become an example for other states to follow. There is no 

question that NCLB has brought added energy and urgency to understanding good 

teaching and ensuring that more children get it. 

V. RECOMMENDATIONS

While the teacher quality provisions have garnered significant attention, their actual impact on changing practices and procedures in the field has been limited. To 

some degree, this is understandable as states and districts have devoted significant 

time and energy to getting their accountability systems up and running. The U.S. 

Department of Education needs to step up to its responsibilities in at least three 

areas: (1) ensure that states, other key stakeholders, and the public have an accurate understanding of NCLB’s teacher quality provisions; (2) monitor compliance 

26

3The Real Value of Teachers, The Education Trust, Winter 2004, Washington, D.C. 

with the law more conscientiously; and (3) identify and disseminate best practices. 

This last responsibility is critically important to conveying a sense of hope and possibility in the face of critics who claim the law’s goals are unreachable or unreasonable. 

Congress should undertake proactive oversight activities to ensure these provisions are being implemented, to learn about shortcomings that should be addressed 

in the next ESEA reauthorization, and to explore areas where additional federal legislation and financial support could accelerate progress on teacher quality issues. 

Specifically, Congress should consider the following: 

1. Ask GAO to Report on Title II Allocations and Programs 

Title II funds are intended to help current teachers attain highly qualified status 

and to help hard-to-staff schools recruit and retain more highly qualified teachers. 

Congress increased funding for teacher quality improvement activities by nearly 

50% after enacting NCLB, from approximately $2 billion to $3 billion per year. The 

funding formula in Title II specifically targets most of this money to the highestpoverty districts and then to the schools with the fewest highly qualified teachers. 

However, many public reports continue to bemoan the establishment of federal 

teacher quality goals without any federal resources to help solve the problems, suggesting that the existence of these additional funds is not widely known. 

Additionally, in part because many states have not had reliable data collection 

systems and practices, many states have reported that the overwhelming majority 

of classes are being taught by highly qualified teachers, even in the highest-poverty 

schools. This contradicts years of research and survey data, and raises a concern 

that Title II funds are not being effectively targeted to the neediest schools. Too little is known about how Title II’s $3 billion annual appropriation is being used. Congress should request an accounting on this issue. 

2. Support Value–Added Data Systems 

Many states had not previously collected data on the distribution of qualified 

teachers. This is an imperative first step to identifying the most serious problems 

and tracking progress over time. Even some states that have reliable statewide data 

do not have systems that are needed for sophisticated data analysis. Better information management systems and technology could help states better understand which 

of their teachers are most effective, and learn from them. Indeed, some forwardthinking districts such as Chattanooga, Tennessee are already using value-added 

data in just this way.3 Under current fiscal constraints, however, many state educational agencies are unable to invest in high-quality data systems. A small investment to help states develop and implement better data systems would greatly enhance the knowledge base on which states design and evaluate education improvement strategies. 

3. Commit Additional Resources to Teacher Quality Initiatives 

Raising the quality of teaching in the nation’s public schools requires a long-term 

commitment of political leadership and monetary resources. Federal resources could 

provide incentives to recruit more teachers with strong backgrounds in mathematics 

and science, as well as teachers who are skilled at helping students with disabilities, 

teachers with bilingual skills, and more under-represented minorities into the teaching profession. 

Long-standing patterns of unequal distribution of qualified teachers are particularly hard to change, and high-poverty schools do not have the resources they need 

to compete for the most qualified teachers. States need to step up to their responsibilities on this issue, but Congress could help with significant incentives for teachers who have proven to be effective and who are willing to take on the toughest 

challenges in the highest-poverty schools. Right now, we don’t know enough about 

what really works in attracting and retaining the most effective teachers into our 

hardest-to-staff schools. A competitive grant for those districts willing to experiment 

and provide examples and lessons for the rest could make a significant contribution 

in this area. 

VI. CONCLUSION

The teacher quality provisions in NCLB represent an important extension of the 

federal government’s efforts to improve public education, in particular for low-income and minority students. This focus is based on a strong record of research establishing teacher quality as the sine qua non of educational improvement efforts. 

Moreover, the teacher quality provisions in NCLB embody the best elements of fedVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
27

eralism: they identify a problem of national significance, provide some resources to 

state and local officials to focus on these problems, and call on the states to address 

their own unique circumstances with their own standards and strategies. 

By placing teacher quality squarely on the nation’s agenda, Congress has made 

it more likely that public K–12 systems will get the help they need from their state 

legislatures, institutions of higher education, business communities, and other sectors of society. In essence, getting enough qualified teachers for our nation’s public 

schools needs to be everyone’s business. Congress has made an important contribution by elevating the prominence of the issue, and by providing some resources to 

spark innovation. 

Most importantly, Congress has taken a significant step forward in the quest to 

ensure that systems of public education better respond to the needs of all students—

especially low-income students and students of color. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Thank you, Mr. Wiener. 

Ms. Mitchell. 

STATEMENT OF EILEEN MITCHELL, TEACHER, THE WILLIAM 

T. DAVIS SCHOOL (P.S. 31), STATEN ISLAND, NEW YORK 

Ms. MITCHELL. Good morning, Chairman Boehner, Ranking 

Member Miller, Congressman Owens, and Members of the Committee. My name is Eileen Mitchell, and I teach fifth grade at P.S. 

31 on Staten Island. I’m also a member of the United Federation 

of Teachers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers. 

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss teacher quality. Let me start by saying that I agree with the 

goal of NCLB that all students should be taught by well supported 

teachers who know their subject matter and how to teach it. But 

the real question is, what path do we take to achieve this goal? I 

will draw from my experience as a teacher and tell you what I believe will and will not work. 

Some call for weakening or even eliminating schools of education. 

I disagree with this view. The best way to ensure an adequate supply of well trained teachers is not by avoiding collegiate teacher 

education, but rather by acknowledging its faults and strengthening its rigor. 

I would like to take a few minutes to talk about a report released 

by the AFT which recommends strategies for reshaping the teaching profession. I would like to share some of them and indicate how 

they interact with NCLB. First, I believe that teachers must know 

their subject matter and how to teach it. The intent of NCLB is to 

ensure that teachers have mastered the subject matter knowledge 

required to teach in their subject areas. Many veteran teachers 

who met the existing state requirements when they entered the 

profession have demonstrated mastery in their subject areas by 

participating in professional development, completing graduate 

courses, and by their years of successful teaching. 

NCLB wisely recognizes this by allowing veteran teachers to 

demonstrate that they are highly qualified by meeting a High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation, or HOUSSE. However, the United States Department of Education has issued guidance saying that states may choose to offer the HOUSSE to these 

veteran teachers. Many states have not yet developed the 

HOUSSE, which makes it more difficult for teachers to demonstrate that they are highly qualified by the law’s deadline. States 

28

should be required to develop the HOUSSE in order to ensure that 

veteran teachers can demonstrate their qualifications. 

Second, to be effective in the classroom, knowledge of subject 

matter alone is not enough. Teachers have to learn the craft of 

teaching and be exposed to instructional strategies that help students learn. 

Third, all beginning teachers need to participate in a high quality mentoring program. 

Fourth, the same standards that apply to traditional teaching 

preparation programs should apply to alternative routes to certification, and this option should not be synonymous with lower standards. Proper implementation of the teacher quality provisions in 

NCLB, including those prohibiting emergency licensure, will help 

ensure that all students are taught by qualified teachers. 

We saw the dangers of emergency licensure in New York in response to an acute shortage of qualified teachers. At one point, 

more than 17 percent of our teaching staff lacked the required credentials. I’m glad to say that this is no longer the case. 

And a few words about out-of-field teaching. Teachers do not 

choose to teach subjects that they are not qualified to teach, but 

all too often, administrators assign individuals to teach courses 

outside of their licensure area, and teachers are not at liberty to 

decline such assignments. To the extent that NCLB can rectify this 

problem, it would be one of the best outcomes of the law. However, 

teachers should not be penalized in the process. 

One example of the problems in implementing NCLB concerns 

the requirements for special education teachers. Under current interpretations, special education teachers who are fully certified in 

their field are also required to meet separate subject matter requirements for each core academic subject they teach. This is unrealistic, particularly in the case of those who teach multiple subjects 

in self-contained classrooms. The burden placed on special education teachers is likely to exacerbate the shortage of teachers in 

this field. 

Another way to help teachers to succeed is to support effective 

professional development programs. I also want to speak directly 

about teacher compensation, because it underlies many teacher 

quality problems, and addressing this issue will do more than anything else to help us meet the teacher quality goals of NCLB. 

Despite the strong emphasis placed on education in our nation, 

current teacher salaries do not reflect recognition of the pivotal role 

teachers play. It is worth noting New York City now offers more 

competitive salaries, particularly at the entry level. This has attracted a higher percentage of qualified teachers in city classrooms. 

Last fall we witnessed the positive impact that salaries have on 

improving teacher quality. Ninety-six percent of the 9,400 newly 

hired teachers were certified, compared to only 50 percent in fall 

2001 before the salary increase. Our experience in New York City 

reminds us that in striving to improve teacher quality, we must 

work to make teacher salaries competitive with other professions. 

But recruitment is only half the battle. In New York City, we 

lose more than one-third of our new teachers after only 2 years. To 

reverse this trend, we must provide ongoing supports and opportunities for professional growth. 

29

Teachers are the most basic educational resource that communities provide to students. Competitive salaries, rigorous preparation and licensure qualifications, mentoring programs and ongoing 

professional development are important to ensuring that all students have qualified teachers. Anything less denies students access 

to the quality education they deserve. 

Thank you again for the chance to talk about teacher quality 

from the perspective of teachers. I would like to invite you to come 

visit me or the teachers in your district in our classrooms. We are 

hard at work every day trying to meet the admirable goals of 

NCLB. 

I welcome any questions. Thank you again. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Mitchell follows:]

Statement of Eileen Mitchell, Teacher, The William T. Davis School (P.S. 

31), Staten Island, New York 

Good morning Chairman Boehner, Ranking Member Miller, Congressman Owens 

and members of the committee. 

My name is Eileen Mitchell, and I am currently a fifth-grade teacher at P.S. 31 

on Staten Island and have been teaching for 9 years in New York City. I am also 

a member of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), an affiliate of the American 

Federation of Teachers (AFT). 

I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss teacher quality. 

I have followed with great interest the debate around—and implementation of—the 

No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Let me start be saying that like most classroom 

teachers across the country, I agree with the goal that all students should be taught 

by well-supported teachers who know their subject matter and how to teach it. But 

the real question is what path do we take to achieve this goal? I would like to draw 

from my experience as a teacher in New York and tell you what I believe will—

and will not—work. 

One school of thought calls for weakening, deregulating, and even eliminating 

schools of education that currently educate the vast majority of our teachers. This 

view holds that there is little beyond subject matter that teachers need to know and 

that pedagogy does not matter or can be acquired on the job. I disagree with this 

view. The best way to ensure an adequate supply of well-trained teachers is not by 

avoiding collegiate teacher education, but rather by acknowledging its faults and 

strengthening its rigor. Focusing on the way teacher education programs screen and 

prepare teaching candidates, as well as on higher standards for entering the profession, will ultimately lead to a better qualified teaching force that will benefit all students. 

I would like to take a few minutes to talk about a report that was released by 

the American Federation of Teachers in 2001 (Building a Profession: Strengthening 

Teacher Preparation and Induction), which recommended strategies for reshaping 

the teaching profession. These recommendations still hold today. I would like to 

share some of them with the Committee and indicate how they may interact with 

NCLB. 

First, I believe that teachers must know their subject matter and how to teach 

it. This is essential. Teacher candidates should be required to complete an academic 

major in addition to pedagogical studies and general liberal arts coursework. The 

major must be rigorous and comprehensive enough for prospective teachers to gain 

mastery in their field of study so they can ultimately help students meet rigorous 

K–12 education standards. 

Again, the intent of NCLB to ensure that teachers have mastered the subjectmatter knowledge required to teach in their subject areas is sound. Many veteran 

teachers who met the existing state requirements when they entered the profession 

have demonstrated mastery in their subject areas by participating in professional 

development, completing graduate courses and by their years of successful teaching. 

NCLB wisely recognizes this by allowing veteran teachers to demonstrate that 

they are highly qualified by meeting a ‘‘high objective uniform State standard of 

evaluation’’ (HOUSSE). However, the U.S. Department of Education has issued 

guidance saying that states may choose whether to offer the HOUSSE to these veteran teachers. Many states have not yet developed the HOUSSE, which makes it 

more difficult for teachers to demonstrate by school year 2005–06 that they are 

highly qualified under the law’s definition. States should be required to develop the 

30

HOUSSE in order to ensure that veteran teachers can demonstrate their qualifications in the manner that the law intended. 

Second, to be effective in the classroom, knowledge of subject matter alone is not 

enough. Teachers have to learn the craft of teaching and be exposed to instructional 

strategies that help students learn. Although NCLB gives weight to mastery of subject-matter knowledge, it does not emphasize the acquisition of pedagogical skills 

that are necessary for a high-quality teaching force. Any teacher will tell you that 

if an individual knows her subject, but doesn’t know how to teach it, she will not 

be successful in the classroom. 

Third, all beginning teachers need to participate in a high-quality mentoring program that includes a selection process for identifying outstanding mentor teachers; 

adequate training and compensation for these mentors; and time for them to genuinely teach and support beginning teachers. Mentoring for teachers is a critical piece 

of the teacher quality puzzle, particularly in schools that are struggling academically. NCLB recognizes the value of mentoring by allowing states and districts to 

use Title II funds to develop teacher mentoring programs and by requiring districts 

with schools ‘‘in need of improvement’’ to provide mentoring programs for the teachers in these schools. In addition, the House-passed Ready to Teach Act (H.R. 2211) 

wisely provides grants that can support mentoring. The availability of these programs reflects an understanding that new teachers must be supported and that we 

can no longer throw them into the classroom to sink or swim. 

Fourth, the same standards that apply to traditional teacher preparation programs should apply to alternative routes to certification. Alternative routes to certification should not be synonymous with lower standards. State departments of 

education should recognize alternative routes that, at a minimum, admit only prospective teaching candidates who pass exams in the appropriate content areas. In 

addition, such programs must provide pedagogical coursework to alternative route 

candidates, monitor their performance in the classroom, and provide other services 

to support the development of effective teaching skills and strategies. 

Proper implementation of the teacher quality provisions in NCLB, including those 

prohibiting emergency licensure, will help ensure that all students are taught by 

teachers who are adequately prepared in the subjects they teach, are armed with 

instructional skills, and are fully and appropriately licensed. We saw the dangers 

of emergency licensure in New York. Although the city and state had rigorous entry 

requirements in place, for years they were compromised by the issuance of waivers 

for more than half of each year’s recruits. This was done in response to an acute 

shortage of qualified teachers. At one point, more than 17 percent of our teaching 

staff lacked the required credentials. I’m glad to say this is no longer the case. 

I think it is also appropriate to say a few words about out-of-field teaching. This 

practice should be eliminated. Teachers do not choose to teach subjects they are not 

qualified to teach. But all too often administrators assign individuals to teach 

courses outside their licensure area, and these teachers are not at liberty to decline 

such assignments. To the extent that NCLB can rectify this problem, it will surely 

be one of the best outcomes of the law. However, we must be sure that teachers 

are not penalized in the process. 

One example of problems in implementing NCLB concerns the requirements for 

special education teachers. Under current interpretations, special education teachers 

who are fully certified in their field are also required to meet separate subject-matter requirements for each core academic subject they teach. This is unrealistic, particularly in the case of those who teach multiple subjects in self-contained classrooms. The burden placed on special education teachers is likely to exacerbate the 

shortage of teachers in this field. 

Another way to help teachers succeed is to support meaningful professional development programs. Effective professional development programs must: 

• Help teachers deepen and broaden their content knowledge by keeping pace 

with new advances in their discipline. Those who do not know content well cannot teach it well, so a prime purpose of professional development must be deepening the content knowledge of teachers. This is especially important now that 

standards for students are becoming more rigorous. 

• Include a strong foundation in pedagogy. Simply knowing content, while crucial, 

is not sufficient. Teachers must be able to present the difficult concepts within 

their disciplines in a manner that students can grasp and then apply to their 

studies. Effective professional development programs should help teachers acquire strategies that help students make this connection. 

• Provide knowledge about the teaching and learning process. Teachers must 

know how to manage a classroom of youngsters so that teaching and learning 

can take place. Professional development programs must be research-based and 

provide practical skills that teachers can use in their classrooms. 

31

• Be aligned with the standards and curriculum teachers use. Significant changes 

in practice should not be instituted on the basis of unfounded preferences or because an idea is highly publicized. Practice should be examined and change considered on the basis of sound research. In addition, too many times there is no 

connection between the performance that particular states and school districts 

expect of students and the curriculum and professional development they provide to teachers. Professional development should help teachers understand 

what standards mean, how they will know that their students meet the standards, and the differences between standards-based and other forms of instruction. 

There are other components that are essential to effective professional development programs. They should be intellectually engaging and address the complexity 

of teaching; provide sufficient time, support and resources to enable teachers to 

master and integrate new content and pedagogy; and involve teachers at all levels 

of expertise. If states and districts adopt meaningful professional development programs that incorporate these guidelines, we will take a big step forward in our efforts to improve teaching and learning. 

Now, I also want to speak directly about teacher compensation because it 

underlies many teacher quality problems, and addressing this issue will do more 

than anything else to help us meet the teacher quality goals of NCLB. Despite the 

strong emphasis placed on education in our nation, current teacher salaries do not 

reflect recognition of the pivotal role teachers play in educating our children. We 

know from data included in the AFT’s 2002 Teacher Salary Survey that average 

teacher salaries for new teachers start well below those in many other professions. 

For example, the survey shows that the average new teacher earns $30,719 while 

a starting accountant or engineer makes an average of $41,162 and $49,702 respectively. In addition, this gap is maintained, and in some cases even grows, over time 

as the average salary for a teacher is $44,367 compared to $54,503 for an accountant and $76,298 for an engineer. These figures make a strong statement about the 

value we place on teaching in America. 

It is also worth noting New York City now offers more competitive salaries, particularly at the entry level. This has attracted a higher percentage of qualified 

teachers into city classrooms. Last fall, we witnessed the positive impact that salaries have on improving teacher quality—96 percent of the 9,480 newly hired teachers were certified, compared to only 50 percent in fall 2001 before the salary increase. Our experience in New York City reminds us that in striving to improve 

teacher quality, we must work to make teacher salaries competitive with other professions. 

But recruitment is only half the battle. I know from firsthand experience that in 

New York City we lose more than one-third of our new teachers after only two 

years. To reverse this trend, we must focus much more on providing the ongoing 

supports and conditions and opportunities for professional growth. Experience is a 

big part of quality teaching. As eager as newcomers may be, they need a few years 

on the job to fully realize their potential. If teachers leave before that point, our students never receive the benefit of their fully developed skills. 

Teachers are the most basic educational resource that communities provide to students. By ensuring a competitive salary base and schedule, together with rigorous 

preparation and licensure qualifications, mentoring and induction programs, and ongoing professional development, all students can have access to well-prepared, qualified teachers. Anything less denies students access to the quality education they deserve. 

Strengthening teacher quality will take political will, resources, and a greater seriousness of purpose among all involved in the policies and practices related to the 

preparation of teachers. The answer on how best to recruit and retain high-quality 

teachers is professionalism: Outstanding preparation, strong induction programs 

and competitive pay, administrative support and ongoing opportunities for professional growth. 

Thank you again Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Miller for the chance to 

talk about teacher quality from the perspective of teachers. I would like to invite 

you to come visit me—or teachers in your district—in the classroom. We are hard 

at work every day trying to meet the admirable goals of NCLB. I welcome any questions that members of the Committee may have in regard to my testimony. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Thank you, Ms. Mitchell. 

Mr. Bailey. 

32

STATEMENT OF TRACEY BAILEY, 1993 NATIONAL TEACHER OF 

THE YEAR, NATIONAL PROJECTS DIRECTOR FOR THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN EDUCATORS 

Mr. BAILEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee. Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak. 

I’ve been asked to address a fairly specific and limited list of 

issues this morning regarding the current implementation of the 

highly qualified provisions of No Child Left Behind. My experience 

in this comes primarily over the last seven or 8 months in having 

served as a citizen member of the U.S. Department of Ed’s Teacher 

Assistance Corps. 

And I think most of you know that that Teacher Assistance 

Corps was put together primarily of people outside the Department, about 45 or 50 individuals, teachers, professors, folks with 

expertise in teacher quality. And our goal, our assignment was to 

travel out to states and to find out from them where they were 

having trouble implementing the highly qualified provisions. 

Now we really had, I guess, three or four avenues in this. The 

first really was to listen. We were instructed—we were not an auditing team. We were not a monitoring team. We were there simply 

to listen, to learn where they were having trouble, to offer some of 

those best practice or promising practices that other states had 

identified, and to be able I think to encourage them to use the flexibility they had under state-based decisionmaking. 

There were a lot of areas I was surprised to find out where states 

actually had a little more flexibility than what they were using initially. I’m going to describe some of those visits and some of the 

issues that came up on those, but I will say that I think both sides, 

the TAC team from the Department of Ed, and the state leadership 

team, usually the Commissioner of Education and six to a dozen of 

his leadership team, we had I think a mutual appreciation for a 

problem-solving session. 

Again, we were not there to audit or monitor. As I understand, 

the monitoring phase of this begins next month or so with the Department of Education. This was basically a heads up to say there’s 

one area there you have that probably isn’t consistent with the law, 

and better that we tell you about it now than you find out a year 

or two down the road when teachers have been put through some 

unnecessary grief or when they’re told then they don’t meet the requirements of the law. 

Now I have three areas about those visits that I’d like to highlight. 

First, I do think that the Teacher Assistance Corps was helpful 

in being able to kind of head off some of the most serious problems 

that the states on a few occasions were headed into. I mean, a good 

example is—not often, but a few of the states had written into the 

HOUSSE provisions, and primarily HOUSSE issues were prominent because that is the mechanism by which the vast majority of 

veteran teachers are going to be deemed highly qualified in many 

states—some states were taking liberties and saying if you’ve been 

teaching for 5 years, you’re highly qualified under the HOUSSE 

with no other criteria. 

Now that was just a misreading of the law. The law says that 

experience in the classroom can and should be a significant indiVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
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cator, a significant part of the criteria, but it cannot be the primary 

or majority. And to my knowledge, all states have amended their 

HOUSSEs in that way. 

Again, I think that we were as helpful not in pointing out where 

they may have been going too far in areas, but areas where they 

weren’t going far enough; areas where they literally didn’t understand that they had the flexibility to make some decisions. 

I think one of the leaders in the Department of Ed mentioned 

that in this topic that 80 to 85 percent of the decisions about highly 

qualified teachers are made at the state level. My colleague, Mr. 

Wiener here, mentioned that teacher quality decisions in No Child 

Left Behind defer mightily to the states, and I found out that was 

true. 

Second, there is a problem. There is a high rate of variability 

among the HOUSSE standards that different states have created. 

Now, obviously, in laboratories of democracy, we should expect a lot 

of variability. But I would say that there are areas where there’s 

a balance, there is a balance between wanting—in fact, our goals, 

Ms. Mitchell mentioned that some states had not yet developed 

HOUSSEs, and I understand that’s true. At last check, it was 30 

to 40 states that have them and only ten or so that have not or 

don’t have them in serious development. 

In my written testimony I say typically we in the TAC team encourage the use of an appropriately designed HOUSSE since one 

of our foremost goals was to encourage states to use all of the 

available flexibility in order to give teachers the most fair opportunity to be determined highly qualified with the least professional 

disruption. We’re advocates of that flexibility. 

But the variability that I’m referring to goes to the point of in 

some states their HOUSSE provisions begin to lose focus, particularly in those words of high standards, objective standards and uniform standards. 

Case in point. I don’t know how many of these provisions you’ve 

seen, how many of the HOUSSE matrices. Typically they take the 

form of a rubric where a teacher in the first three categories is 

fully entitled to take credit for professional experience, for college 

coursework, for professional development in that subject area. 

Those are wonderful categories to include in a HOUSSE provision. 

But then the rubrics tend to go on, and they get into areas that 

are less subjective; issues like service and organizations, service to 

the teaching community, awards that a teacher may have received 

that may not have been in the subject area; seminars or conferences that a teacher might have attended that were not in the 

subject area. 

Now those areas where in the TAC team we pointed out to 

states, you ought to be a little careful. We didn’t tell them you can’t 

do this, but we pointed out that those requirements have to be related to the subject area, and that was of critical importance. Now, 

again, it’s a state decision, and I think we as a team deferred to 

states’ rights, but that’s something that you as Committee obviously will be looking at, I’m sure the Department will be looking 

at when it follows up. I can talk more about this in the questionand-answer period. 

34

I think the last area that I’d like to just touch on is that the TAC 

team did identify five or six areas of serious difficulty, of genuine 

difficulty for states to implement even with the best and the most 

sincere good faith efforts. Special education is one of those that was 

mentioned. Rural schools is one. Some issues with middle schools, 

science and social studies teachers. 

The list is not a long one, and the Department’s response to this 

was taking that feedback that came from the state visits and very 

quickly, as recently as a month and a half ago, issuing new sets 

of guidelines for flexibility in those areas. I think I included in my 

comments attached to my testimony was a press release and a 

DOE factsheet announcing the new flexibility for rural schools, for 

science teachers, and for teachers that teach in multiple subject 

areas. 

I think the Department has been responsive in that area. We can 

talk about more. On the back side of that factsheet, the Department has highlighted four areas where states have always had existing flexibility, and it’s encouraging them to use that, and that 

includes the HOUSSE provisions that we’ve mentioned. It also includes some suggestions on how to work with special ed. 

In closing, I’d simply like to say this. One major problem of implementation to this point is that rank-and-file teachers in the 

classroom have not been given good information from any level of 

the bureaucracy—not from their states, not from their districts. 

They have been told that they might not be highly qualified, but 

they haven’t been able to find out what do I need to do? Are you 

certain? If there’s a draft policy in progress, teachers should be told 

that. I think that this kind of frustration and uncertainty and misinformation has exacerbated any of the implementation of the highly qualified teacher provisions. Teachers should be treated as professionals. They should be told early on, we don’t have it finalized 

it, but we’ll be in touch with you. Many teachers have been told, 

you’re not highly qualified. Yes, you are. Oh, but you might have 

to go back and take these courses. 

Finally, I agree with Ms. Mitchell and many of my colleagues 

that these provisions are designed to get teachers the help that 

they need in those few areas where teachers may not be highly 

qualified in a subject area, they have the time and the resources 

in order to fix that shortcoming. 

Most of the time, teachers do not ask to be put in out-of-field 

areas. These are placements that are imposed upon them by the 

district or by a staffing crisis. The highly qualified provisions that 

you have designed do give an opportunity for teachers to say I can’t 

go into that placement. I’m not highly qualified in it, or I’ve been 

there for 2 years, and it’s the district’s responsibility now to either 

get me the training or place me back where I’m more appropriately 

prepared. 

I appreciate your time on this, and I look forward to answering 

your questions. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Bailey follows:]

Statement of Tracey Bailey, 1993 National Teacher of the Year, National 

Projects Director, Association of American Educators 

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, 

35

Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the implementation of the Highly–

Qualified Teacher (HQT) provisions of No Child Left Behind. I have three experiences from which I approach this issue. The first is as a member of the USDOE 

Teacher Assistance Corps. As you know, the TAC Team was created by the US Department of Education last year in order to travel to states and help identify areas 

where states were having problems implementing or interpreting the Highly–Qualified Teacher provisions. I will describe this team and its actions more thoroughly 

in a moment. 

Second, for the last eight years I have helped to lead an independent professional 

teacher association, the Association of American Educators. In this capacity I have 

received calls from hundreds of teachers around the country about the misinformation, the uncertainty, and the lack of clear answers from their states or school districts about their status under the Highly–Qualified Teacher provisions. 

Third, I was a High School Physics, Chemistry, and Advanced Placement Biology 

teacher in Florida, and was fortunate to be named both Florida Teacher of the Year 

and National Teacher of the Year for the United States. This experience has given 

me a hands-on perspective and a sense of urgency about getting accurate information to the teachers who are on the front lines. 

A Teacher’s Story about the Highly–Qualified Provisions of NCLB 

Before I begin describing some of the activities of the TAC Team, let me share 

a brief anecdote about a call that came into our national office from a teacher in 

Nevada. This teacher is a long-time veteran and a consummate professional—certified for 20 years in New York State and for more than 10 years in Nevada. Above 

this, she has mentored and helped to train other mentor-teachers. 

Last fall, her principal came into a faculty meeting with a long list and a frown 

on her face. In what I can only imagine was a pompous voice, she said, ‘‘I have here 

a list of who is and who isn’t highly qualified!’’ And with that the principal went 

on to read the list aloud. ‘‘Mrs. Smith, Highly–Qualified! Mrs. Jones, Not Highly–

Qualified! Mrs. Brown, Not Highly–Qualified!’’ And so she went through the entire 

faculty. And when this humiliation finally came to an end, the principal had the 

audacity to remark something like, ‘‘Let me remind you that this is all because of 

No Child Left Behind.’’

Now this spectacle would have been bad enough, if the principal had even been 

correct about the Highly–Qualified status of these teachers. But she wasn’t. Nearly 

all the faculty were highly-qualified, a fact immediately verified on our teacher’s behalf with the state Department of Education. Now forgive me for questioning not 

only this principal’s lack of professionalism, but also the personal motives behind 

such a thoughtless and hurtful event. 

Yet scenes similar to this—misinformation and unnecessary anxiety for teachers—

have been played out across the country for the last year or more. This lack of accurate information to teachers about their own highly-qualified status has been one 

of the major contributors to stress and unnecessary anxiety in the implementation 

of this statute. In large part, this is why I agreed to join the TAC Team—to help 

provide states and teachers with accurate information. 

The TAC Team—State Visits 

As I mentioned, the TAC team was created by the US Department of Education 

last year in order to travel out to states and help identify areas where states were 

having problems implementing or interpreting the Highly–Qualified Teacher provisions. It was made clear to members of the TAC team from the beginning that we 

were primarily charged with ‘‘Listening’’ to the states, ‘‘Learning’’ what we could 

about their problems and their unique situations, and only then offering some ‘‘Suggestions or Promising Practices’’ that were possible within the law. These were often 

ideas which were being used in other states, or suggestions that might offer a better 

use of the state-based decision-making flexibility which the law allowed. We were 

also charged with bringing reports back to the USDOE about the most common 

problems, the most challenging issues, or the most frequently misunderstood portions of the law. 

It was surprising to me—and personally satisfying—how often the TAC team was 

able to point out to states areas where they had the ability to be more flexible than 

what they were originally proposing. Our goal was to eliminate any unnecessary obstacles or disruptions for teachers, while still keeping the standards high. Of the 

state visits that I personally attended, I can say that there was—without exception—mutual appreciation between the TAC Team and the State Department of 

Education leadership for the candor, the good faith effort, and the mutual problemsolving approach exhibited by all parties. 

36

One of the main areas in which the TAC Team offered guidance was in the creation of a well-defined and objective set of H.O.U.S.S.E. provisions. As you know, 

these High, Objective, Uniform, State Standards of Evaluation are the means by 

which NCLB allows states to locally decide and determine the criteria by which 

many teachers who are currently in the classroom are deemed highly-qualified. I do 

not think that it is an exaggeration to say that, in some states, the majority of existing classroom teachers are determined to be highly-qualified largely through the 

HOUSSE provisions. 

High Variability in Application of the H.O.U.S.S.E. Provisions 

In some states, I was surprised to find that they had not yet decided how to use 

the HOUSSE provisions—or in some cases, whether to use a HOUSSE option at all 

for their teachers. Typically, we encouraged the use of an appropriately designed 

HOUSSE, since one of our foremost goals was to encourage states to use all of the 

available flexibility under HQT in order to give their teachers the most fair opportunity to be determined as highly-qualified—with the least professional disruption. 

In a few cases, we were somewhat taken aback by the ‘‘excessive liberties’’ that 

seemed to be appearing in state policies, often caused by a temporary misreading 

of the law. For example, a few draft state policies gave highly-qualified status to 

any teacher who had been teaching a particular subject for five years or more, regardless of any other factors. Not only would this be an extremely questionable single indicator of teacher quality, but the law specifically states that any HOUSSE 

must ‘‘take into consideration, but not be based primarily on, the time the teacher 

has been teaching in the academic subject.’’ To my knowledge, these states changed 

their draft policies after being advised that they were inconsistent with the law. 

In other cases, a few states were giving excessive credit for questionable, vague, 

or highly variable kinds of activities. These include seminars not related to content 

matter, general awards, and membership in non- academic associations. 

Quality Professional Development in the Subject Area—Not ‘‘Cheap Points on Scorecards’’

For example, one principal—upon being told that his state’s HOUSSE provisions 

might give credit to teachers for a vague range of ‘‘seminars’’—made the comment 

to the State Department of Education staff that ‘‘I guess I’m going to go out and 

schedule a bunch of seminars.’’ The principal clearly intended to simply ‘‘rack up 

some easy points’’ for his teachers on the HOUSSE scorecards. 

Before finishing that state visit, the TAC Team made a strong statement that the 

law intends to provide the time and the resources to help teachers receive whatever 

quality professional development they need, not simply score cheap points on a 

scorecard. I asked the question of the professional development coordinators who 

were gathered in that room, ‘‘Would you rather have a principal like this trying to 

schedule an arbitrary number of questionable ‘‘seminars’’ on his own or would you 

rather have a teacher receiving well-planned, quality professional development in 

the subject area that he or she teaches?’’ To their credit, the State Department of 

Education made it emphatically clear to their constituents that they were committed 

to quality teachers and intended to strengthen that language before a final version 

of the HOUSSE matrix was approved. 

The point is, of course, that we should be certain that the state-designed HOUSSE 

matrices are truly encouraging helpful, subject-oriented staff development—and not 

simply encouraging ‘‘point-earning’’ activities of questionable value. 

Common Problems and Areas of Difficult Implementation 

We had known that several areas were going to present problems for some states. 

After the first few state visits, it became clear that there were four or five common 

areas that were creating the greatest difficulty for states. Without going into detail, 

these included Rural Schools, Middle Schools, Special Education, Science, and Social 

Studies teachers. (The issues on both science and social studies involve a question 

of whether a teacher can be a ‘‘broad field generalist’’ or must be specifically ‘‘highlyqualified’’ in each sub-topic of that subject area.) 

To their credit, the USDOE has provided clarification and significant flexibility 

in nearly all of these problem areas. I have provided copies of a USDOE Fact Sheet 

which summarizes several of these recent policy changes. Furthermore, on page two 

of this announcement, you can see how the Department is encouraging states to use 

all of their local, State-based decision-making power—with existing flexibility—to 

handle some of these problem areas. 

In some of these cases, such as Rural Schools, the Department has been able to 

provide more time for these teachers to become highly-qualified in each subject area 

that they teach. As you know, in many rural schools, teachers may have the responsibility for teaching multiple-subject areas and multiple-grade levels. In other probVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00040 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
37

lem areas, such as the issue of highly-qualified Science Teachers, the Department 

is pointing out that states may determine—based on their current certification requirements—whether to allow science teachers to demonstrate that they are highly 

qualified in ‘‘broad field’’ science or individual fields of science (such as physics, biology or chemistry). 

There are still problem areas for states that have not yet been fully addressed 

by these policy changes or clarifications. Chief among these may be clarifying how 

the highly-qualified provisions are applied to Special Education teachers. 

But globally, I would still have to say that the greatest single frustration to teachers about HQT—and a huge obstacle to a clear and effective implementation of 

these provisions—is that teachers have not received timely and accurate answers 

from many states and school districts about their Highly-qualified status. 

The expectation of most people is that the majority of current teachers in the 

United States are already highly-qualified, and this process will confirm that. And 

for those who are not currently highly-qualified, the goal of this law is to give them 

the time and resources to become highly-qualified over the next few years. We 

should be giving teachers clear answers and guidance now—and getting them the 

professional development they need—rather than waiting until a manageable training issue becomes a significant problem for teachers and schools. 

I look forward to answering your questions. Thank You 

[An attachment to Mr. Bailey’s statement follows:]

38


93198.001
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Chairman BOEHNER. Let me thank our distinguished panel of 

witnesses for your excellent testimony today and your experience 

and your expertise in how do we get highly qualified teachers in 

all of our classrooms. 

I just better get this off my chest right now. We’ve done these 

hearings during the development of No Child Left Behind, and for 

the last 2 years now we’ve done hearings on the implementation 

of No Child Left Behind, and every time we have one of these hearings, every time I go out and do a school visit, I see a 1957 Edsel 

wired together trying to teach our nation’s kids. 

I just can’t get over this. It is so frustrating to me to realize that 

we’re not talking about the auto industry in the late ’70’s and early 

’80’s that couldn’t make very good cars that didn’t last very long. 

We’re talking about children’s lives. And to think that the situation 


93198.002
40

that we have in far too many of our schools is dysfunctional and 

a teacher preparation system in our country that doesn’t produce 

people who can go into a classroom and teach, that we’re continuing day by day to ruin a kid’s chance at the American Dream. 

And I got it off my chest. I feel better now. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman BOEHNER. Let me say that if we do expect to get the 

best and brightest into the teaching profession, that we’ve got to 

pay people. We can’t violate the laws of economics. We’ve tried to 

do it for 200 years, putting teachers on a pedestal. Making them 

look as—they’re the pillars of our community and we look up to 

them, but, no, we’re not going to pay you. We’ve taken advantage 

of people in this profession for 200 years. 

So if we’re going to attract the best and the brightest into the 

field, we’ve got to pay them. We all know the problems about 

how—I don’t know, there are a lot of problems about where you 

come up with the money, but we know that we’ve got to pay them. 

And second, I agree with what several of you have said. If we’re 

going to have good teachers in poorer schools, there ought to be 

some incentive. Clearly, when you go into lower income schools, a 

school—let’s just leave it at that—that the effort, the work that’s 

required is significantly more than walking into an ultra white 

suburban wealthy school district. We all know it. But why can’t we 

get value-added pay plans in more of these districts? 

But I think the first question I’m going to ask, and I think I’ll 

ask Ms. McCown, the state of teacher preparation programs around 

the country. Tell me something. Give me some good news of some 

sort. 

Ms. MCCOWN. Well, I think the good news is, is there are some 

good preparation programs. I think there are obviously some excellent teachers who are going into schools. 

The Teaching Commission’s view is that what’s happened in 

many cases in states is that the preparation program or the certification process has created barriers to entry for good people going 

into the system. And in doing so, they’ve created a series of hoops 

that people have to jump through which are not necessarily correlated with good teaching. 

So I think it’s important to recognize that the point here is quality, not quantity. And what we have to think about are ways in 

which we can determine what it is that a good teacher needs in 

order to be a good teacher and then make sure that the states provide some opportunity for those individuals to go into teaching. 

The other piece with regard to preparation is that colleges and 

universities right now, one thing that nobody can argue with is 

that the one institution in this country that has an impact on who 

goes into teaching are colleges and universities. That is the place 

where every single person has to go through in order to become a 

teacher. They have to go through a college or university. Nobody 

denies or nobody argues with the fact that an individual needs an 

undergraduate degree in college to become a teacher. 

But what’s happened is that the college and university presidents more often than not devolve the responsibility down to the 

school of education, and I don’t mean that in a negative way, but 

they devolve the responsibility down to the school of education with 

41

no real indication of what the standards at schools of education 

are. 

So unfortunately—and this is not across the board, because there 

are some good schools of education, and I think Ms. Mitchell referred to that—but unfortunately, many times schools of education 

are not the places that have the highest standards and they’re not 

the places that recruit the brightest students. 

So what we’re saying is that college and university presidents 

need to be directly involved in that process. And frankly, that the 

Federal Government needs to hold colleges and universities accountable for that process, and that’s whether they have a school 

of education or not. 

There are vehicles through which an individual can go in order 

to become—or go through in order to become a teacher that may 

not necessarily require school of education. And I’m not saying at 

all that anybody can teach, but I am saying that there should be 

opportunities in schools, in colleges and universities that don’t have 

schools of education where if an individual decides he or she wants 

to teach, there should be a vehicle through which they can go in 

order to do that, and that would include mentoring and induction 

programs at the school level. 

And just let me finish up by saying the school level mentoring 

and induction programs are incredibly important, and that’s something that’s clearly missing in the process, because schools at this 

point are not really held accountable for ensuring that new teachers who come in and existing teachers have opportunities for mentoring and induction, and that also ties into the career ladder piece 

that we have recommended. 

So thank you. 

Chairman BOEHNER. My time has expired. Let me recognize Mr. 

Miller. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you. And I’d like to just follow up on that 

question. I’ve sort of had a running battle here with the schools of 

education over the last 10 years. And, Mr. Landgraf, I’d like if you 

could comment on this, because of—on your work that you’re doing 

with the National Council on Accreditation, because I think there 

is real concern. 

We asked the schools of education to give us a report how their 

graduates do on their state test as to whether or not they can get 

their credential in that state, and it’s a very mixed bag. And unfortunately, a number of them tried to game the system. Because we 

wanted to know how many graduates passed the exam, then they 

redefined ‘‘graduate’’ as only those people who passed the exam, so 

they had 100 percent passage rate, although that wasn’t the 

attendees in the schools of education. 

So I just wondered, how does your work dovetail with what Ms. 

McCown has said? 

Mr. LANDGRAF. Thank you, Congressman. As I testified before 

Congressman Castle’s Subcommittee the last time I was here, gaming of the system is a huge problem. It’s because the stakes become 

so high. 

We’re working with NCATE to work with states to set meaningful standards, require rigorous attention to how those standards 

are met, and now allow colleges of education or any other preVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
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paratory mechanism to game the system so that it appears that 

their graduates are higher. 

Now having said that, Congressman, this— 

Mr. MILLER. Let me stop you right there. Having said that, when 

you say you’re working with the states, what level of cooperation 

and interest are you getting from the states to achieve that? 

Mr. LANDGRAF. I would describe that as mixed. Some states do 

not want anyone outside of their local environment. I would say 

that NCATE that represents the colleges of education, is very forcefully pushing for minimal standards, is very forcefully interested in 

having colleges of education support the concept of minimum certification. 

Mr. MILLER. So you think that that’s going to grow? 

Mr. LANDGRAF. Yes. 

Mr. MILLER. I mean, the acceptance is going to grow or the willingness to look at this? 

Mr. LANDGRAF. Yeah. Congressman, I think that the answer to 

this is complex. This is a very— 

Mr. MILLER. No, I appreciate that. 

Mr. LANDGRAF. But if you want colleges of education and the 

teaching profession to take more seriously certification, it needs to 

be specifically indicated in your initiatives that we must in fact require certification. 

If you’re going to require certification, this is a simplistic sort of 

output function. You have to pay teachers more. You have to put 

more rigor into baseline certification. You have to hold teachers accountable for their outputs. You have to provide professional development, and you have to be willing to stand up and sanction teachers and school districts that do not meet achievement standards. 

Once you do that, the entire system will take more seriously input 

and output measures in education. 

Let me just close by—Congressman Boehner got a little emotional, so I will, too. Public education in this country is all but broken. It’s the fundamental foundation of the system of democracy we 

live in. 

Unless we address the achievement gap, unless we address the 

needs of our poorer population in public education, I worry greatly 

about the future of this country and the outstanding democracy 

that we live in. 

Certification of teachers is essential. Training of teachers is essential, and putting technology and money into the educational 

process is my view of the answer. 

Mr. MILLER. Ross, can you comment on this? 

Mr. WIENER. Specifically with respect to teacher preparation programs, I think that it’s important to look at teacher preparation 

programs through at least two metrics, and one is quality and the 

other is quantity. 

The measure of quality that you put into the Higher Education 

Act in 1998 looks primarily at the pass rates of teachers on the certification exams, the licensure exams that they’re going to take before they officially enter the teaching profession. 

I think that while it is important and necessary to look at those 

pass rates, that is not sufficient. We have to start to look at how 

those teachers then perform in the classroom. We’ve got to start to 

43

understand better who our most effective teachers are, what kinds 

of training experience did they get, what kinds of ongoing professional development really helped them. 

We can really understand that issue a lot better, but it is going 

to take better data systems, and then, as the prior answers indicated, really ensuring that systems pay attention to the answers 

we get from that data. 

The other, though, is, is quantity. In certain areas, we have 

shortages, in particular in math and science, and with respect to 

teachers with very specific skills—helping students with disabilities and limited English proficient students. 

We need to ask teacher preparation programs to respond to those 

shortages by making part of their accountability based on whether 

they’re helping public education meet the needs for more teachers 

in those areas. 

There are some very good examples of that. In fact, today the 

Louisiana Board of Regents is going to release some results that 

explain how by asking particular campuses to focus on the production of teachers in math and science, they really have gotten a lot 

more, they have enticed a lot more prospective teachers to go 

through those programs, and they are really helping to meet the 

needs of Louisiana’s public schools. 

Another program in the Texas A&M system that’s supported 

with a Title II Higher Education Act grant has had a similar system of goals for specific campuses. And the campus presidents are 

specifically accountable for what they’ve done to meet those goals 

and for reporting to the chancellors about their success on helping 

public education in Texas get more math, science and bilingual 

teachers. 

So I think on both those areas of quality and quantity, we can 

see a lot of improvement in teacher preparation. 

Mr. MILLER. Thank you very much. My time has expired. Unfortunately, I have to leave. I don’t want this to be interpreted as a 

lack of interest, because this is my only interest. But we have a bill 

on the floor that I need to participate in. 

So thank you so much for your participation. You’ve been very, 

very helpful to us. Thank you. 

Mr. CASTLE. [presiding] Thank you, Mr. Miller. We do appreciate 

your continuing tremendous interest in this subject. And I next 

yield 5 minutes to myself, not because I was handed the chair temporarily, but because I’m next on the list, for my colleagues who 

might worry about that. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CASTLE. And I want to explore an area that’s a little bit different than anything we’ve talked about too much today, and I 

don’t want to suggest by doing that that I don’t think that teacher 

preparation and all that goes into that, and teacher pay and those 

things, are of huge importance. They are. 

I want to talk about what happens after people become teachers 

and get some of your viewpoints on that. Because, frankly, I’ve not 

been overwhelmingly impressed by that. And I still believe that the 

greatest improvement we can put in education is not just the new 

teachers who we’re starting to prepare, but those of you who are 

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age of the teachers are going to be there again, and that’s going 

to go on for a number of years, so I worry about that. 

And let me just say that I’ve never personally—and as a public 

official, I’ve been to, well, every public school in my state and have 

dabbled in education for almost decades now—and I’ve never been 

impressed by whatever you want to call it, in-service days, professional days. There may be different names. Maybe people look at 

it differently, that I’ve seen in Delaware. And some of the ones that 

I think are probably the lowest level are the ones I participated in, 

to give you some example of my thinking about that. 

And I’ve also worried about the classroom help that teachers get 

after they get there, particularly the new teachers in terms of developing the teaching skills that a couple of you mentioned. It’s not 

just knowing your content; it’s being able to teach it as well. 

It’s also obviously the extra programs that they can take educationally or whatever it may be. There’s a lot that goes into this to 

give teachers two opportunities: one, to teach better and to really 

help them, and to judge them and to make sure it’s going correctly; 

and second, to give them greater opportunity to earn more in terms 

of their educational development or whatever it may be. 

So I’m very interested in taking my 5 minutes and trying to develop that subject. And I won’t call on a particular person. If you 

have any ideas about what happens to teachers afterwards in 

terms of the in-service days, the educational functions, the mentoring, that kind of thing, I’d be interested in your points of view, 

particularly as they pertain to what we’re doing in No Child Left 

Behind. 

Ms. MITCHELL. May I speak on that? 

Mr. CASTLE. Certainly, Ms. Mitchell. 

Ms. MITCHELL. As a teacher in New York City on Staten Island, 

we have ongoing professional development and in-service training, 

and I find them valuable, because I find teaching is an ongoing 

learning process—that just getting your degree and going into the 

classroom with the books that they want us to guide students by 

is not the end-all. 

Mr. CASTLE. Tell me about what you have. I mean, you’re an esteemed teacher in a classroom. How many days a year is this, and 

what happens in those days? 

Ms. MITCHELL. I’m sorry. Can you— 

Mr. CASTLE. How many days a year, in the teaching year, do you 

do this, and what happens during those days that’s of so much 

value? 

Ms. MITCHELL. A lot of days. I’ll tell you, it’s—twice a month we 

have ‘‘lunch and learn’’ in our school building, where teachers sit 

together and talk about the strengths and weaknesses that they 

see in the programs that we’re working with. And we have teachers 

that will videotape their classroom and share what they’ve done, 

and we will dissect sometimes what’s going on and where we can 

improve what is going on in the classroom with the students. 

Teacher training is ongoing. I also do math professional development with teachers where we all have our strengths, and each one 

of the teachers that has a strength that could help someone in a 

classroom is ongoing. It’s not just something that stops. 

45

Mr. CASTLE. Is this your school or your school district, or do you 

feel it’s the entire state of New York? 

Ms. MITCHELL. I think it’s New York. I believe it’s New York, because what I do, during the summer, I do a lot of math professional 

development, and there are a lot of teachers that attend. If there 

were no teachers that attended, I would believe that, no, it’s not 

happening in New York. 

And I’ve had the privilege of working in Brooklyn, the Bronx, 

Queens, and Staten Island, so I do know that it’s going on throughout New York. 

Mr. CASTLE. That’s interesting. Other comments? We’ll go to Ms. 

McCown, then we’ll go over to Mr. Bailey. 

Ms. MCCOWN. Congressman Castle, I think that the whole notion 

of professional development is an extremely important one, and I’m 

speaking now both on behalf of the Commission but also as a 

former teacher. I taught in the South Bronx for 6 years. 

The need for— 

Mr. CASTLE. I think it’s important, too. I’m interested in how 

good it is and how we can improve it. 

Ms. MCCOWN. OK. OK. I went through a lot of professional development programs when I was a teacher, and I know it’s changed 

over the years. But my experience is that professional development 

can’t give somebody the skills and capacity that they don’t have 

going into a professional development program. 

And the reasons for that are twofold in my view. One is that 

often professional development is not research-based, and it’s also 

not often outcomes-based. So the idea is that it’s an opportunity for 

an individual to learn about something that he or she may not 

know about it, but it’s not necessarily—and again, I’m generalizing 

here, but I think it’s important to make the point. It’s not necessarily based on what’s going on in the classroom or what’s actually going to ensure or help students learn. 

So I think the most important aspect of professional development 

is it has to be research-based and it has to be outcomes-based. And 

I would venture to say, and again, I don’t want to generalize, but 

I would venture to say that a lot of the professional development 

that’s going on right now in schools, and it certainly was the case 

when I was a teacher, is not necessarily of the caliber that’s going 

to get us where we need to be. 

And I think it’s important for us to assume that, again, professional development, very important, but it can’t give somebody the 

capacity that they don’t have initially. 

Mr. CASTLE. Right. Mr. Bailey, obviously my time is up, so if you 

can give a very brief response, that would be helpful. 

Mr. BAILEY. Certainly. I think just to reinforce, that some of your 

suppositions about in-service are probably true. I think many 

teachers would concur that there’s a high variability between a 

quality content-oriented in-service in chemistry, physics or bio in 

my case, and a teaching philosophy quick little update, you know. 

Some teachers have said the passing from life to death in in-service 

would be imperceptible. 

So I think that if a person is a science teacher, in-services, at 

least part of the year, should be delivered from scientists and engineers. Mathematicians should be in working with our math teachVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00049 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
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ers. We shouldn’t, you know, graduate from college and go into 

education and not see someone in our real content area for 30 

years. 

So obviously, there’s a balance. I’m not pooh-poohing every teaching philosophy course, but content-oriented in-service delivered by 

people that are living and working that in the professional world 

is very helpful. 

Mr. CASTLE. Thank you. Mrs. McCarthy is next. I yield to her for 

5 minutes. 

Mrs. MCCARTHY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for the 

insight that we’re receiving, and I have to say, I feel like Mr. 

Boehner, I’m sitting here and feeling like I’m going through deja 

vu all over again. 

I offered a mentoring amendment years ago, and it was accepted 

fully by this Committee. Mr. Goodling was the Chairman at that 

particular point. And I kept bringing back teaching and nursing as 

the same, and they are. No. 1, we didn’t get paid too much. But 

No. 2, the difference was, to get into a nursing school, you had to 

under a psychological test. Certainly you had to pass your boards. 

But also, if that school of nursing did not produce quality nurses 

through the state boards, that school of nursing lost their license. 

I don’t know why we’re not thinking about that. You know, when 

my son was going to college or applying for college many years ago, 

he wanted to go to Syracuse, and what he wanted to get into, his 

marks weren’t high enough. Now obviously this was a real shaker 

for me, but it was advised by the guidance counsel, oh, just go into 

the school of teaching. And I said, well, what does that mean? Well, 

if you can get into the school of teaching and you stay a few years 

and you’re doing all right, you can either be a teacher or maybe 

we’ll get you into the other program. 

Why weren’t the standards as high? I don’t understand that. And 

here’s what we’re fighting for. But the other thing, too, because I 

spend almost every Monday in my schools, and I think a lot of our 

teachers are doing a tremendous job under very, very difficult circumstances, especially in my minority schools. 

You have young people coming out of teaching. Now we’re seeing 

even older people coming into teaching, and when you look at the 

dropout rates of teachers, they’re almost exactly as nursing’s, mainly because what they’re taught at the collegiate level, then you get 

into the field and it’s like, whoa, what am I doing here? Same as 

nursing, same with teaching. 

So we have to start looking at those things. But we brought these 

all up the last time we reauthorized Higher Education. That’s what 

I don’t understand. How come nothing—some things have changed. 

But I think one of the other things, too, especially for many of us, 

we have large minority areas that have schools that are falling 

apart, but we also have teachers that are dedicated, but they’re not 

taught also to be social workers and to deal with the family crises 

that are going on to the schools, and I think that has to come into 

the curriculum a great deal. 

It’s very, very hard for someone that’s dedicated, for someone 

that wants to be a teacher and then thrown into a classroom not 

understanding the social issues that these kids are coming from 

47

and how to deal with them. Those are the battlefields that we’re 

looking at. 

And I also think it’s time for our business community in my opinion, because the Federal Government will never have enough 

money, to really start investing in our schools. A number of my 

CEOs on Long Island have done that, guaranteeing scholarships, 

especially in the minority schools, so these kids have some hope. 

Once we gave them hope, their marks skyrocketed. They’re capable 

of learning, and they are. And the teachers had new joy and new 

love in it. 

But I would just love to hear your opinion on the mentoring. 

We’ve heard about it. I don’t know why we’re not doing more of it. 

That’s what makes nursing work a little bit better than teaching, 

because we have a strong mentoring program in nursing. 

But we have to have the qualities of our colleges, really, they 

should be standardized. They really should be, and they should be 

accountable for that, because we do give them Federal money on 

that. And I would like your opinion on that. 

Mr. LANDGRAF. I agree completely with you. I think the reason 

that you’re frustrated and public educators are frustrated and this 

Committee might be frustrated that we keep saying the same 

things in terms of improving the educational process, is that we 

need to remember that most of public education is funded by local 

real estate taxes, and so that real estate tax base determines how 

much mentoring there will be, how much technology there will be, 

how much time is spent on professional development. 

The problem with that of course is that the more money, as Congressman Boehner said, the more money that’s in the district, 

sometimes there’s an inverse relationship with the need to do the 

mentoring ed technology. So the lower socioeconomic cohorts where 

the achievement gap is most visible don’t get the funding at the 

local level to implement what appear to be common sense changes 

in the educational process. 

Mrs. MCCARTHY. I agree with that. My minority schools have absolutely no tax base. So the only monies they technically get are 

taxing the families that can’t afford it, so they vote down every 

school bond that is around there. And then when you look at the 

formulas, especially in New York State, I don’t know how they do 

those formulas, because some of my wealthiest schools will get an 

awful lot of money, and the poorest of the schools, not enough to 

survive on. I don’t understand how they do the New York State formula. But it’s complicated, and I know that. I also know it’s political. 

Ms. MCCOWN. I’d just like to add that I think one important aspect of schools of education and holding them accountable, and my 

colleague, Ross Wiener, referred to this, but there’s got to be an approach that’s outcomes-based, so it’s not just the input in terms of 

how individuals do on exams, although I don’t think that’s unimportant, frankly. I think that’s fairly important. 

But I do think that schools of education have to be in a better 

position. And in many cases they can do this already. There’s not—

the data is lacking in some cases, but there is data out there, and 

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lates to individual student performance and student performance 

on a class basis. 

And schools of education have to be held accountable for outcomes. In other words, how are their students doing who are going 

into the schools? And that is where you really get at the issue of 

quality; whether or not they’re actually succeeding when they go 

into schools. Then they can change their curriculum around the 

needs based on— 

Mrs. MCCARTHY. And I agree with you. Because you can have 

the brightest person in the world go through a school of nursing, 

but if they can’t apply it to the clinical, they fail out. 

Ms. MCCOWN. Right. 

Mrs. MCCARTHY. Hopefully they fail out before they ever get onto 

the floor of a hospital. The same thing for teaching. 

Ms. MCCOWN. And again, the student performance piece is critical here. There are lots of other ways of measuring performance, 

but the student performance piece has got to be a key indicator. 

Mr. WIENER. Could I just very briefly follow up on those comments? I think you’ve recognized that far too many teachers are 

put into the classroom after their programs to sink or swim far too 

much on their own. 

And I just wanted to provide you with at least one initiative 

that’s trying to deal with that and try to get higher education to 

step up to its responsibility to be a partner in that, and it’s a 

project at the Carnegie Corporation of New York that has—it’s involving right now 11 schools of education, and these schools vary 

tremendously in terms of the students they serve, their size, their 

prominence as programs, but they’ve all committed to two things; 

first of all, measuring their success, as we’ve heard about, in terms 

of how effective their teachers are once they’re in the classroom. 

But second, they’ve also committed to really being an ongoing resource for the teachers that they graduate from their programs. 

And so it provides another support for those teachers. Because 

sometimes, the supports that are provided by the district can seem 

sort of high stakes supports. That is, you have to acknowledge to 

your own supervisors that you’re really struggling and that you 

need help, and that might be uncomfortable. So the university that 

graduated you should also feel some responsibility for helping out. 

So I just want to, you know, a couple of members have acknowledged the frustration of keeping on coming back on these issues. 

I think it’s important to recognize this is, it needs to be a long-term 

commitment. 

The 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act is starting 

to push some advances, and you’ve taken some steps in your reauthorization draft to advance that again. The No Child Left Behind 

teacher quality provisions are just about 2 years old. They will 

start to make a difference, but it will require sustained leadership 

from this Committee and from Congress. 

Chairman BOEHNER. The chair recognizes the gentleman from 

Nebraska, Mr. Osborne. 

Mr. OSBORNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for 

being here today. I know Mr. Bailey mentioned some of the concerns that you were running into, and I do work with a lot of rural 

schools and I do see some regulations that have softened the blow 

49

a little bit regarding multiple subject teaching and paraprofessionals. 

But one thing that I have observed out in a very rural area and 

other areas is really concern about the special ed standards. It 

seems to be rather universal, and hopefully those things can be addressed. 

Mr. Landgraf, I would like to—I’m assuming you’re involved with 

SAT. Is that right? And I know that the scoring was changed, I 

don’t know how long ago, 15 years ago or something like that, 

maybe longer. But what do you see happening in terms of basic understanding on the part of students? Is it going up, going down? I 

know for a while it went down. Where do you see things headed? 

Mr. LANDGRAF. The SAT was re-normed, but it’s still currently 

the same basic test of verbal reasoning and mathematical reasoning. But what you’re seeing is an increase on SAT scores, a 

slight increase in mathematical and verbal reasoning. 

Please remember, of course, that the SAT is perhaps a poor surrogate for outcomes measures, because the people who take the 

SAT are self-selecting students who are planning on going on to 

college. 

So that the SAT is an important measure, but I don’t think 

measures appropriately the outcomes of public education in this 

country because of the number of people who do not take the SAT. 

Mr. OSBORNE. I understand, and yet we do see I think a larger 

proportion who are going to college, so if they’re headed in the 

right direction, that’s encouraging. I used to battle SAT all the time 

when I was a coach and trying to figure out how we could get a 

guy to a certain level. 

Mr. Wiener, or any others, you mentioned no sanctions and No 

Child Left Behind for states not implementing how they qualify 

teacher standards. In other words, apparently there’s no specific 

sanctions. We’re saying, well, we think you ought to do this. 

Are you recommending or do any of you recommend any particular sanctions or any particular methodology of getting greater 

compliance on the part of the states? 

Mr. WIENER. Well, let me distinguish first, because there are potential sanctions for failing or refusing to implement the teacher 

quality provisions. That is, as a condition of their Federal funding, 

states have agreed that they will both set definitions, set goals for 

increasing, improving teacher quality and then publicly report on 

their progress. 

States retain discretion to set the standards that they use to 

measure whether they’re making that progress, to measure whether in fact any particular teacher is highly qualified. They don’t 

have the discretion to simply say, well, we don’t want to undertake 

that process. 

Now it’s very important the definitions that states use, and Congress has not decided to get into qualitatively setting those standards or demanding particular standards from the states. But I do 

think it’s important that Congress and the Department of Education really watch that process carefully. Because, again, it does 

matter tremendously how we define who’s qualified to teach. 

And so I think that it’s important both to show leadership and 

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ards at a place where they really are sure that the teachers they 

have in their classrooms can help students really meet the state 

standards. 

In far too many cases right now, those standards are simply too 

low, and they will need to be raised. And I think that the Federal 

process right now, the Federal law, really incentivizes states to recognize those problems and work on them. 

Mr. OSBORNE. Well, I share some of the concerns you originally 

expressed, because in some cases you can set the bar so low that 

you’re going to look pretty good. And we see a lot of variance in 

where that bar is set state by state. It’s just like safe and drugfree schools, you know. Some schools are safe and they lose three 

or four kids a year to murder. 

And so, anyway, last, we talked a lot about mentoring today, and 

I guess I would just like to just ask you who does it and how does 

it work? I know you’re talking about other teachers, but teachers 

are crammed for time. And we hear all the complaints about, well, 

we’ve got all these additional burdens put on us now. So how do 

you see that working effectively? Any of you. 

Ms. MCCOWN. I’ll just touch on it very quickly. I think the point 

here is that teachers can be the best mentors, and what this allows 

for is for individuals who are interested in continuing to teach but 

also have some ambition to take on broader responsibility, this offers them an opportunity to work with their colleagues on refining 

their craft. 

So I think it should be teachers, and those teachers should be 

given the time necessary to do that. They should also be given 

some increase in salary as a result of taking on mentoring responsibilities. 

The induction process is similar, and that is that schools have to 

set up an opportunity so that new teachers who come into the 

building do have a chance to be monitored, to be mentored, to be 

coached by an experienced, good teacher. And I think that’s really 

important. 

This is not just about somebody who’s been in the classroom or 

been in the school for 10 years. It’s about somebody who has proved 

that he or she is a good teacher, and that’s based on student outcome. 

So there is a financial issue here, there’s no doubt about it. But 

I think it’s important both in terms of encouraging bright and ambitious people to stay in teaching, but I also think it’s critically important for new people who go into teaching. And this really provides a different environment in a school. 

And right now, a lot of the assumption is that people are going 

into schools having had a student teaching experience or some kind 

of experience that they were offered the opportunity to get some 

coaching on. In many cases, that’s not the case. And in fact, schools 

really—all professions, most other professions, provide some kind of 

mentoring and induction for new employees, and teaching should 

be similar. 

Mr. OSBORNE. Thank you. 

Chairman BOEHNER. The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from 

California, Ms. Woolsey. 

51

Ms. WOOLSEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I ask unanimous consent for members to be able to submit questions in writing. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Without objection, so ordered. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. All right. Thank you very much. I’d like to ask 

Mr. Landgraf about—I want to follow up on this mentoring and induction for new teachers. It’s my understanding that in Japan, the 

first year a new teacher educated to be a teacher spends 1 hour 

teaching without support. The next year, possibly a half day, and 

the third year in the classroom alone. What a difference. We take 

our new teachers and we throw them into the toughest, most challenging classes in the country and then wonder why, one, they fail, 

and/or two, they say enough of this. I’m not staying around. 

So I want to know, how does No Child Left Behind help bridge 

that gap? 

Mr. LANDGRAF. Well, No Child Left Behind helps in that it sets 

a standard for teachers and the requirement to produce outcomes, 

as Ms. Gaynor talked about. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, OK. I’m going to interrupt you because 

we’ve heard this. I don’t need you to repeat this. So the standard—

our teacher doesn’t meet the standard because we’re asking too 

much of that teacher. How is No Child Left Behind filling that gap? 

Mr. LANDGRAF. And No Child Left Behind will not. At the local 

state level—because I happen to agree with you. I lived in Germany and Switzerland for a number of years, and in both of those 

countries you had two distinct levels of teaching professionals. You 

had a master teacher and then you had basically an apprentice 

teacher. 

So I believe that the way we do it is inappropriate. But the only 

way to move toward what you’re describing is to provide the 

schools with more resources and time to allow for teachers to have 

the flexibility to have progressive professional development before 

they become fully certified teachers. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, it was my understanding—this is just a 

comment—that No Child Left Behind, when we found something 

that was not working, would fund the change so that we could, you 

know, make it better. 

Now I need to ask Mr. Bailey, then, Mr. Wiener, I’ll let you respond, too. I think that, Mr. Bailey, you could talk to me about how 

No Child Left Behind is helping schools where there’s a great difference in the number of non-English speaking children, the number of families in transition that come in and out of the school, depending on where that school is located, where there’s more special 

ed kids, where there’s—just needs that many schools don’t have. 

So now how in evaluating the teacher, how are we taking into 

account through No Child Left Behind those challenges? 

Mr. BAILEY. Well, I think the main thing that you’re referring to 

is that under No Child Left Behind, really for the first time in 

many states—now, granted, some states have been doing this all 

along—but nationwide, it has not been the case that we have been 

tracking the progress of individual subgroups of children. We’ve 

looked at a gray average. We’ve always done that. We’ve looked at 

the gray average of how’s that school doing on average. 

And, obviously—and, again, I don’t want to place blame—but in 

some school systems, they’ve been able to neglect or to hide small 

52

student subgroups in that gray average, and some of the ones you 

just mentioned—minority or LEP or even special ed. In fact, in 

many states, they’ve said we don’t test. We don’t look. We don’t 

hold accountable. We’re going to try to meet their needs. 

Now No Child Left Behind does really for the first time nationwide say we want to see academic progress with all subgroups of 

students. So in that regard, you ask what does No Child Left Behind do to help them? It shines the light of accountability on every 

child in every subgroup. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, OK. But you have a school that has kids 

transitioning in and out. That school is—because then they test 

lower possibly, and they do. They can’t help it. That school is labeled loser. I want to know how No Child Left Behind is making, 

I mean, not putting a label on that school and those kids? 

Chairman BOEHNER. If the gentlelady would yield. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. What? I don’t want your answer. 

[Laughter.] 

Chairman BOEHNER. The law, for schools that aren’t making adequate yearly progress— 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Yeah? 

Chairman BOEHNER. It describes those schools as in need of improvement. And we could help all schools. We could help people understand that these are not failed schools. They are schools in need 

of improvement. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, Mr. Chairman, my schools are telling me—

and they’re good schools—that they aren’t feeling—they feel that 

they’re being labeled and not helped as they should be. And these 

are not bad schools. I have suburban Marin and Sonoma County. 

Good grief. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. BAILEY. Ms. Woolsey, just one comment. There is one area 

where I think the Department of Ed just in the last month has 

identified, they’ve heard from schools and from states, this is a 

problem for some students that are coming in and going out. 

The 95 percent participation rate requirement for testing has 

been amended to allow an averaging over 3 years. In other words, 

the complaint from many schools was two kids in that subgroup 

were gone that day, and now I’m at 94 percent or 93 percent, not 

at 95. And so there was just a common sense allowance of averaging that over 3 years in order to get that participation rate. 

There were some students that were exempted if they couldn’t be 

there for testing for medical issues, et cetera. So it’s one small area 

where I think the Department is trying to respond. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, all right. OK. Mr. Wiener, you wanted to respond to me. 

Mr. WIENER. Yeah. I just wanted to at least provide you with two 

specific provisions in the law that are intended to address exactly 

the problem that you’ve raised. 

When schools are not meeting their goals for having enough 

qualified teachers, the law creates a presumption that that is a 

problem of district, school district policy and state policy that is not 

responding adequately to the needs of that school. 

Every year, principals are supposed to certify in writing and for 

the public record whether or not they have the qualified teachers 

53

they need. This is just with respect to Title I schools. School districts and states are then called on under the law very specifically 

to work with those schools and create plans to help get them more 

teachers. 

And then finally, I just want to mention one very specific provision, and it’s at Section 1111.B.8(c) of the No Child Left Behind 

Act. And it calls on states to end the disproportionate assignment 

of inexperienced, unqualified and out-of-field teachers to poor and 

minority students. 

Now we have not seen a lot of progress implementing that provision, but within it, there is a tremendous amount of authority and 

responsibility and just simply moral responsibility to do better by 

these kids. 

Now we need to see better implementation of that, but the law 

itself very specifically responds to it. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. OK. So— 

Chairman BOEHNER. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, Mr. Chairman, can I just say what I’m hearing them say is No Child Left Behind will work if we implement 

it. And part of implementing it, as Ms. McCown said, is funding it. 

Chairman BOEHNER. The chair recognizes the gentleman from 

Maryland, Mr. Van Hollen. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I thank 

you all for your testimony. In listening to all of you talk about the 

teacher quality provisions, I think we all agree that they’re essential provisions. 

In recent weeks, in the past couple of months, there have been 

some provisions of No Child Left Behind that I think reasonable 

people have said where the regulations had unintended consequences, and the Department of Education has fixed some of 

those. 

But I also hear some of you saying that in some areas—you 

talked about gaming the system—my question is, if you could rewrite No Child Left Behind based on what you know now, are there 

areas where you would be more prescriptive to prevent the kind of 

game playing you’re talking about, understanding that we all want 

to make sure that states have flexibility and are allowed to be creative, but are there areas that you would recommend that be revisited where you think in order to get the intended effects of the 

teacher quality provisions, we need to be more prescriptive? 

Mr. BAILEY. I will give a quick and brief answer rather than explore everywhere that very good question might go. Right now if 

you were to ask teachers and superintendents and state commissioners of education if they would like NCLB to be more prescriptive, I could hear it through the walls right now, the resounding 

answer. 

I think that NCLB has tried to do a balancing act of saying we 

expect high standards, we expect some accountability. We’re leaving a lot of the details and criteria up to the states to develop a 

lot, really more so than what I imagined when I first saw the law. 

And I think to be more prescriptive than that at this point would 

be counterproductive. 

There clearly are areas that are going to continue, special education is going to continue to be an issue. We’re looking forward to 

54

the reauthorization of IDEA and hopefully some of the issues addressed in that legislation. But more prescriptive? I think not. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Anybody else? I mean, I know that that’s—you 

know, I know that’s the response that we would get. But one of the 

issues with No Child Left Behind which many of you raised is the 

inconsistency in terms of the application and seriousness with 

which you think some states and local school districts are taking 

it. And I guess the question is, No Child Left Behind was rightly 

written in a way that provides a great deal of flexibility, but if 

you’ve got certain, you know, parts of the system that are not taking it seriously, how do you deal with that? And I think we all 

agree, and the Chairman made a very eloquent opening statement 

and his first question obviously, you know, underlined a degree of 

frustration that even with this law in place, things are not necessarily moving that quickly, and we need to give it time. 

So, you know, you’ve all been out in the field. As I understand 

your answer, I don’t know if any of you others would—is there anything you would change to reinforce the teacher quality provisions 

in No Child Left Behind? In the law itself or the regulations. 

Mr. LANDGRAF. I think part of the problem in answering the 

question is that NCLB is an appropriate national Federal attempt 

to improve standards, but it’s being implemented at a local level, 

which is, as you know, what we do in this country. The problem 

is that some states have a different view of how to implement, and 

some localities have a different view of implementing. I don’t think 

I would measurably change No Child Left Behind. 

I do think it’s appropriate as we gain experience with No Child 

Left Behind to do the sensible thing, which is alter some of the 

sanctions as we move forward so that we’re not inadvertently creating unintended consequences to the Act. 

Mr. BAILEY. If I could follow up for one quick second. Without 

recommending changes in No Child Left Behind, I wanted to give 

some hope that there are several states—I had talked about the 

variability in the HOUSSE provisions, and some were very high 

and others were taking a lower approach. 

At least three states—Tennessee, Kentucky, and Oklahoma—

have included in their HOUSSE provision the option of letting a 

teacher say my student achievement data, the increase in test 

scores that I’m able to provide these students—I’m not talking 

about being held accountable for something that happened at home 

or an earlier teacher did. Where is the child when they come into 

my classroom? What am I able to do with them over the course of 

that year that I have them under my care? 

And allowing teachers to use that success of student achievement 

data which is clearly objective, that’s what we’re headed for—not 

an indirect measure of mentoring time or this, but a direct measure of student achievement—I think we’re going to see that more 

and more around the country without necessarily having to change 

No Child Left Behind. That’s just going to happen because the data 

is there. 

Ms. MITCHELL. I’m not sure if this qualifies, but listening to the 

scoring, constantly stating that is the way that we can look at 

teachers and their performance and their qualifications, there’s 

also another way to look at how the performance in a classroom 

55

and a teacher works, and that is through portfolios. It’s not just 

through test scores. 

All students are not test takers, you know, and then you’re not 

sure what happens the day the child takes a test. They may have 

been performing from the day they walked into that class ongoing, 

and then when the test comes, they’re low. 

I have to share with you that I came from a SIR school that is 

off the SIR list and we’re now on corrective action. It is an ongoing 

process working together with teachers to get the better from our 

students. 

I really—I have a difficult time sitting here as a teacher listening 

to test scores, and it’s not the end all. And we do have a very transient population. And as Ms. Woolsey stated earlier, that you’re 

looking at that school as that’s a bad school, and many teachers did 

look at our school as we weren’t doing our job, and we worked very 

hard. And to get off the SIR list, I really felt that was an achievement that our school worked on together—mentoring and professional development. I just don’t think scores are the end all, and 

we have to look at ways to share how the teacher is working and 

their quality of work that they’re putting forth in that classroom. 

Chairman BOEHNER. The chair recognizes the gentlelady from 

Georgia, Ms. Majette. 

Ms. MAJETTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I’d like to thank 

all of the witnesses for being here today and for your dedicated 

service and the work that you’re doing to ensure that every child 

is able to have a good education. And I certainly appreciate particularly, Ms. Mitchell, your work in the public schools in Staten 

Island. 

I’m a graduate of the public schools of Brooklyn, New York and 

probably quite a long time before you began teaching. But I certainly appreciate the challenges that you have in terms of the diversity in the area and being able to persevere despite the low pay 

and the different circumstances that you’re confronted with. 

So I’d like for you just to speak for a moment about, in light of 

all of that and in light of your experience, what is it that we can 

do as a Committee, as a body, as a society, to encourage more people to go into teaching and to support those teachers once they get 

there? 

And what I hear in my district—I represent Georgia’s Fourth 

District, which is suburban Atlanta, and it’s the most culturally, 

probably, and also is economically diverse district in the state of 

Georgia. But what I hear from the teachers is that they want to 

be involved and they want to have greater education. They want 

to be able to have better training and to expand their horizons, but 

they don’t have two things. One is time, and the other is money. 

In some of the areas they’re saying that they’re required to pay 

for classes as opposed to getting support for those—financial support for those classes, and they spend so much time in the classroom that they almost feel as though they don’t have time to take 

off or they’re not given time to take off to do the additional training 

that would be helpful to them and necessary in some ways under 

the Act. 

56

So how do you think we ought to be able to address that issue 

and to inspire people to go into teaching as well as giving them the 

support that they need once they are in that environment? 

Ms. MITCHELL. Honestly, that’s a difficult question. I can share 

with you that my husband is kind of tired of me going to professional development on end, and when I come home, my books are 

all over the bed. And he’s wondering, does he have a wife. 

I really love educating. I really don’t know the answer to how we 

can get other educators to come into the field. I know that we have 

really looked bad upon this election year. Teachers are not doing 

their job. We have low performing schools. Students are coming out 

not reading, not writing. So it’s really difficult to share that I know 

that coming from my household raising three daughters, that each 

one of them have attended college, that that is only one way that 

I could talk to other people around me to try to get them to want 

to come into education. 

We have Take Our Daughters To Work Week, but, you know, 

they’re coming out of the school thinking that other jobs are more 

important. So I’m not sure how we can look at teachers as being 

important and bringing daughters or sons to work. That’s a very 

difficult question for me to try to summarize and figure out a way 

to bring more people into the field. 

Ms. MAJETTE. Thank you. Ms. McCown? 

Ms. MCCOWN. A couple of things. One, it obviously is a challenge 

to recruit people to go into teaching now because, one, it’s not a 

field that is necessarily viewed as prestigious. And so people who 

are young and ambitious and want to be recognized for their good 

work don’t view teaching as a place that they can do that. And I 

think that’s critically important. 

I also think that the whole notion of not really being able to distinguish yourself in teaching is difficult. We all, as teachers, I 

think we all benefited greatly from the gratification you get of 

when young people say to you, I’ve learned or a lot, or when you 

have a great class. There is nothing quite like the feeling. 

But as a whole, teachers, the teaching profession is not a profession that recognizes excellence. It’s not a profession that really says 

to somebody who is young and ambitious, if you want to go into a 

field where you’re going to be recognized and you’re going to be 

honored for the work that you’ve done both figuratively and literally via money, it tends to turn people off. 

And I think on the flip side when good teachers are right next 

to individuals who may have been teaching for 20 years or so but 

are not doing a very good job and that’s obvious, that’s also a turn 

off. So I think those are a couple of things that can be dealt with. 

Chairman BOEHNER. The chair recognizes the gentleman from 

Massachusetts, Mr. Tierney. 

Mr. TIERNEY. I thank the chair. Thank you for having this hearing, and thank all of you for testifying here. 

I wonder sometimes if all we’re trying to do at the Federal level, 

if we’re ever going to be successful so long as everything that we 

put in our statutes requires implementation at the local level. 

Many of the things that were said here today I think generally 

we get the feeling that people want to move in that direction, but 

we wind up with a funding problem on the local level is one thing, 

57

and with a variation of feeling about how much they want to implement, depending from district to district. 

Somebody talked earlier about have better distribution of qualified teachers to more challenging schools or districts. We don’t put 

any teeth in this law to do that. We just hope that local communities are going to want to do that or states are going to want to 

do that, and we don’t see an awful lot of that happening. 

But we want to pay teachers more. But we then rely on a system 

where property tax picks up a lot of the funding of local schools, 

and people don’t want to override limitations on their property tax 

laws. 

How are we going to overcome any of these things unless we put 

some stronger incentives or more funding at the Federal level or 

some requirements and money at the Federal level on some of 

these? How are we going to overcome the fact that we don’t seem 

to have anything except a very local implementation of these and 

sometimes hits and sometimes misses? 

Mr. LANDGRAF. If I could answer. I think you might be harsher 

on yourself than is necessary. I think No Child Left Behind is an 

extraordinary initiative. It took great courage on the part of the 

Congress. 

I think it’s important to recognize that this is a very new initiative in public education. We’re beginning to see some meaningful 

changes occur at the local level. And as long as we are not going 

to Federalize our national public education system, you have to 

rely on localities to implement. 

But No Child Left Behind is an extraordinary initiative, because 

it provides very clear outcome requirements. So my answer to you, 

Congressman, would be I think in the near term—not forever, not, 

you know, we don’t have to wait too long—you’re going to see 

meaningful changes in public education. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Do you think we’re going to see teachers getting 

paid at the levels we expect them to be paid in order to make this 

profession a desirable one for people entering the job market? 

Mr. LANDGRAF. Yeah. I think as teacher shortages become more 

and more a reality in this country, as the outcomes measures that 

are being required are going to be more and more dictating of real 

estate taxes, you’re going to see teachers get paid for outcomesmeasured incentives and higher salaries for entry-level teachers. 

Mr. Chairman, I apologize, but I need to leave for another appointment. So thank you very much for the opportunity to testify. 

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Let me also—talking about some of the 

requirements on teaching, there’s a bill that we had put together 

called the Alternative Paths to Teaching that tried to meet the 

level of proficiency in a teacher by having them make—make sure 

that they have a proficiency level in their subject matter, get some 

mentoring when they start teaching, get some professional development, but also requires them to take some instruction in pedagogy 

and, you know, methodology before they get into the classroom. 

In Mr. Gerstner’s report, ‘‘Call To Action: Teaching At Risk,’’ 

they talk about programs where liberal arts graduates without formal education coursework are put into the schools and they say 

that they are in turn doing as well or better than other teachers, 

58

never having had the pedagogy, the methodology course or whatever. 

What are your feelings on that? Do we need to take alternative 

path teachers and give them some background in methodology and 

pedagogy in the classroom, or do we not? 

Mr. WIENER. If I could try and answer that, and in part it goes 

back to your last question, I think moving forward we need to—

public education needs to become much more sophisticated about 

distinguishing between effective teachers and ineffective teachers. 

Until you can do that, you cannot answer the question that 

you’ve posed. And it’s an important question. It’s one we need to 

begin to answer. What training and experiences, what background 

in pedagogy really is necessary to help a teacher really teach students to high standards? 

Mr. TIERNEY. So we don’t know that with all the work that we’ve 

done and all the research that’s been out there, we can’t answer 

that basic question yet? 

Mr. WIENER. The answer, I’m afraid, is no. We’ve gotten much 

better at recognizing that there is in fact tremendous variability in 

how effective teachers are. That recognition itself is an advancement in the profession. Now we really do need to extend that work 

and to unpack what’s inside those results and to really understand 

better who our best teachers are and what went into helping them 

be as good as they can be. 

There are some places that are doing that. Tennessee has perhaps the most advanced system, the value-added assessment system in Tennessee. There are other districts and states that are 

working toward that. The Ohio initiative that I mentioned will be 

coming to understanding that a lot better. 

And I think one place that Congress could really advance this 

agenda is in both demanding value-added data systems and then 

in supporting their development and implementation. 

Chairman BOEHNER. The chair recognizes the gentleman from 

New Jersey, briefly. 

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. And briefly, since the bells 

are ringing, I would just certainly like to commend the panel. What 

I heard I was very impressed with. I would certainly like to commend the last lady standing who is the only teacher here and to 

be there in a classroom. That’s tremendous. I’m a former elementary and secondary school teacher, and I do know, and I would 

probably still be there if I didn’t get elected to Congress. 

But the system, when you’re good, you know, and you’re still in 

a classroom—I have a daughter who has been teaching in the same 

school for 18 years. And when you’re good, people wonder, well, 

what’s wrong with you? You’re still teaching the same class. My 

daughter has to defend herself for still being the kindergarten 

teacher at Camden Street School, where she’s been all these years. 

And the system—and it’s just natural. I mean, here we have Mr. 

Bailey, and the little bit I’ve heard, I can certainly understand why 

he was the National Teacher of the Year. And he would be fantastic in some little Virginia classroom. But, you know, he heads, 

you know, national projects. 

So the system itself, a good teacher becomes a department head, 

assistant department head, moves up through the system, assistant 

59

secretary, assistant superintendent. So somehow we’ve got to do 

this value-added to the good classroom teacher because, to be honest, I bet you enjoyed that little classroom—I’m not going to put 

words in your mouth. But I know I enjoyed the classroom more 

than I did when I started getting bumped upstairs. 

And so we’ve got to somehow figure out how we can put the status, continued achievement of classroom teacher. Shouldn’t feel 

that something’s wrong with you because you’re not the principal. 

I mean, we’re going to have to have principals and we’re going to 

have to have people leading national programs like you are. But 

somehow we’ve got to enhance the local classroom teacher. 

Finally, listening to—I’m in New Jersey so I get the New York 

radio and TV, and the dilemma with Mayor Bloomberg saying 

there’s going to be a test for third graders. If you don’t pass it, you 

stay back. Parents are talking about boycotting. Kids are saying 

they couldn’t sleep for a week. This whole traumatizing of these 

third graders, you know. We’ve got to figure out a better way of it 

than just that 1 day means all. 

I think there’s a lot of things that have to happen with this No 

Child Left Behind. I think it’s a good concept. But when it was reported that there’s a $25,000 per student in some part of Westchester County as opposed to $12,000 in another part of the same 

county, and in New Jersey, Cherry Hill had about $12,000 compared to Camden, which was $6,000, how in the world are you 

going to be able to have this equal outcomes? 

The charter schools in New Jersey, by law you can’t have more 

than 18 students in a classroom. And I said, fantastic. Why don’t 

we do it for the public school system? Oh, well, we can’t afford that. 

So we’ve got to be able—and I know time is running out. We’ll 

hear another bell. Don’t worry. We can make it. Let me just say 

I appreciate the opportunity to get that on the record and certainly 

command all of you for being in education. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

Chairman BOEHNER. Thank you, Mr. Payne. As you heard, we 

have got five votes on the House floor. I thank all the witnesses 

for your excellent testimony and thank all of those of you in the 

audience who have come to participate today. 

This hearing is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 12:36 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

[Additional material submitted for the record follows:]

Statement of the American Occupational Therapy Association, Submitted 

for the Record 

The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) submits this statement 

for the record of the April 21, 2004 hearing. We appreciate the opportunity to provide this information regarding the relationship of qualified occupational therapy/

related services personnel to improved academic achievement for all students, including students with disabilities. It is important for Congress to monitor how well 

federal education law meets its objective of holding states and schools accountable 

for improving educational outcomes. The topic of this hearing is critical to a clearer 

understanding of the factors which lead to better academic achievement. 

The recent enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the pending 

reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) highlight 

Congressional concerns about children’s education. NCLB and IDEA are expected to 

work in concert to help schools meet the learning and behavioral needs of children 

with disabilities. A major concern under both NCLB and IDEA is how to best educate students with and without disabilities to high standards and how to approVerDate 0ct 09 2002 11:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00063 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6621 H:\DOCS\93198 EDUWK PsN: NNIXON
60

priately measure their progress. A key issue is the need for well trained and qualified school personnel who are able to appropriately use effective instructional practices and other supports to help children learn. 

AOTA agrees with the goal that students should be taught by well trained teachers. It is well recognized that high quality personnel are directly related to improved 

student outcomes. AOTA also believes that other school personnel, such as occupational therapists, have an important role in helping schools improve student 

achievement. 

Occupational Therapy Services under IDEA and NCLB 

Occupational therapists provide critical supports and services to teachers and for 

students and their families. Referred to as related services personnel under IDEA 

and pupil services personnel under NCLB, occupational therapists help schools address barriers to learning and improve student behavior. Services and supports are 

provided for children, parents and school staff in a variety of ways, and include 

identification, evaluation and assessment; design and provision of classroom and 

testing accommodations; consultation with educators on modifying instructional 

strategies, classroom routines and environments; and, collaboration with general 

and special education teachers, the community, and parents. 

School–Related Occupational Therapy Personnel Issues 

Discussions about school-based occupational therapy personnel issues usually center around three general areas: preparation and ongoing professional development, 

credentialing, and recruitment and retention. AOTA frequently hears from its members and state and local education agency officials, school administrators, and parents on such issues as difficulty recruiting (and retaining) therapists, preparation 

for practice in schools and early intervention programs, inadequate salaries, high 

caseloads and other working conditions (including inadequate time for planning and 

collaboration), and need to use effective interventions and practices. AOTA believes 

it is important to note that these issues mirror those raised about teachers. 

Data specific to occupational therapy services in schools are limited, especially 

with regard to personnel issues. In a May 2003 paper, the federally-funded Center 

on Personnel Studies in Special Education (COPPSE) found that occupational therapy personnel issues are complex and often convoluted.2 Occupational therapists follow a rigorous, well-established process for entry into the profession. They must 

complete specialized entry-level training1 in occupational therapy, pass a national 

certification examination, and meet applicable licensure, certification or other comparable requirements in each State before they can practice. Occupational therapy 

practice is regulated by all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 

Guam. Each of these jurisdictions determines the requirements for not only what 

constitutes occupational therapy, but also who can provide therapy services in that 

jurisdiction. These state requirements apply to all settings in which occupational 

therapy services are provided in a given state, thereby establishing a consistent set 

of standards across settings. These entry-level requirements are intended to ensure 

that occupational therapy providers are fully qualified, thus ensuring the highest 

quality of services for students. 

AOTA is now hearing that some local education agencies (LEAs) are beginning 

to apply NCLB’s ‘‘highly qualified’’ requirements to related services personnel. This 

would require school-based occupational therapists and other related services personnel to meet additional requirements. Given the nature of occupational therapy 

preparation, AOTA does not believe these additional requirements are necessary in 

order to deem occupational therapists ‘‘highly qualified.’’

Other data indicate continued shortages of occupational therapists. An October 

2002 report by Project FORUM at the National Association of State Directors of 

Special Education (NASDSE) analyzed related services data collected by states2. 

The analysis found that of the 30 states that collected data on occupational therapy, 

23 states collected information on the number of OT vacancies. The analysis did not 

identify how these data are used by state education agencies (SEAs). Another study 

funded by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), the Study of Personnel 

Needs in Special Education (SPeNSE), found that, nationally, nearly 800 occupational therapy positions went unfilled in the 1999–2000 school year3. SPeNSE reports state that it is difficult to separate discussions about personnel quality from 

discussions of quantity/adequate supply because, ‘‘as shortages worsen, administrators are forced to hire less qualified individuals.’’3 State reported data to the U.S. 

Department of Education, which is used in the Department’s Annual Reports to 

Congress on the Implementation of IDEA, illustrate this point: for the 2000–2001 

and 2001–2002 school years, 188 and 143 individuals (respectively) who were employed as occupational therapists in schools were not fully certified. 4 It should be 

61

noted that prior to its 23rd Annual Report to Congress (2001), the Department included data on vacant/unfilled OT positions—they no longer do so. Absent better 

data, it is difficult to ascertain to what extent shortages continue to exist and in 

which states and geographic locations. 

AOTA believes there is a significant need for more targeted and focused research 

on occupational therapy issues in educational settings. While SEAs are required to 

ensure that related services are available little is known about the number of children with disabilities that receive related services and the type and amount of services received.2 COPSSE identified a number of critical unanswered questions in its 

report1. These include, ‘‘what are the ‘real’ vacancies for occupational therapy practitioners in the schools? Are all students who need occupational therapy services receiving them? What factors support or hinder recruitment and retention of occupational therapists in schools? What are effective recruitment and retention strategies 

for occupational therapists entering the profession and schools as a work environment? What can local education agencies do to support the recruitment and retention of occupational therapists in education settings?’’ Additional studies on these 

and other questions can help ensure an adequate supply of well-trained personnel 

that will benefit schools and all students. 

What is Occupational Therapy? 

Occupational therapy is a vital health and rehabilitation service, designed to help 

individuals participate in important every day activities, or occupations. Occupational therapy services address underlying performance skills, including motor, process, communication and interaction skills to assist in the correction and prevention 

of conditions that limit an individual from fully participating in life. For children 

with disabling conditions and other educational needs, occupational therapy can 

help them to develop needed skills within the context of important learning experiences and to perform necessary daily activities such as getting dressed for physical 

education (PE) or eating lunch with other students, and help them get along with 

their peers at school. Occupational therapy services can help identify strategies for 

teachers and families to use to facilitate appropriate reading and writing development. 

Occupational therapy practitioners have the unique training to assist individuals 

to engage in daily life activities throughout the lifespan and across home, school, 

work, play, and leisure environments. Services may be provided during only one period of the child’s life or at several different points when the child is having difficulties engaging in his or her daily school occupations, such as when they are faced 

with more complex demands in the classroom resulting from increased emphasis 

and reliance on written output. Occupational therapy services may be provided in 

the family’s home; at school; and in the community, such as day care and preschool 

programs, private clinics, and vocational programs. 

Occupational therapy evaluation determines whether an individual would benefit 

from intervention. The evaluation looks at the individual’s strengths and needs with 

respect to daily life function in school, home and community life, focusing on the 

relationship between the client and their performance abilities, the demands of the 

activity, and the physical and social contexts in which the activity is performed. The 

findings of the occupational therapy evaluation inform the team of the need for 

intervention. Occupational therapy practitioners use purposeful activities to help individuals bridge the gap between capacity to learn and full and successful engagement in education, work, play, and leisure activities. 

For example, occupational therapy for infants and young children may include remediation of problem areas, development of compensatory strategies, enhancement 

of strengths, and creation of environments that provide opportunities for developmentally appropriate play and learning experiences. Services for the school-aged 

child are intended to help them be successful in school. Intervention strategies may 

focus on improving the child’s information-processing ability, academic skill development such as handwriting, and ability to function in the school environment. For 

adolescents, the occupational therapy intervention focus is on preparation for occupational choice, improving social and work skills, and learning how to create or alter 

the environment to maximize their productivity. 

Occupational therapy is a health and rehabilitation service covered by private 

health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, workers’ compensation, vocational programs, 

behavioral health programs, early intervention programs, and education programs. 

AOTA represents nearly 40,000 occupational therapists, occupational therapy assistants, and students. We thank you, once again, for the opportunity to submit our 

comments for the record. 

62

REFERENCES 

1. Beginning January 2007 professional entry will be at the postbaccalaurate 

level. 

2. Swinth, Y, Chandler, B, Hanft, B, Jackson, L, Shepherd (2003). Personnel 

issues in school-based occupational therapy: Supply and demand, preparation, 

certification and licensure. University of Florida: Center on Personnel Studies 

in Special Education. (COPSSE Document No. IB–1). Available at 

www.copsse.org. 

3. Mueller, E & Tschantz. J (2002). Related services data collected by states. 

Project FORUM Quick Turn Around. Available at http://www.nasdse.org/

FORUM/PDF%20files/relatedlsvcsldata.pdf 

4. Carlson, E, Brauen, M, Klein, S, Schroll, K, Willig, S (2002). SPeNSE Key 

Findings. Available at http://ferdig.coe.ufl.edu/spense/. 

5. Office of Special Education Programs. Part B annual report tables. Retrieved 

from http://www.ideadata.org/arcltoc3.asppartbPEN on 5/4/04. 

Letter from the Higher Education Consortium for Special Education, 

Submitted for the Record 

April 26, 2004

Chairman John Boehner 

Ranking Member George Miller 

Committee on Education and the Workforce 

U.S. House of Representatives 

Washington, DC

Dear Chairman Boehner and Ranking Member Miller:

Last week you held a hearing titled ‘‘The Importance of Highly Qualified Teachers.’’ We would like to submit the attached information to be included in the hearing 

record. The attachment is our recommendation for the definition of a ‘‘highly qualified special education teacher’’ and our rationale for the definition. 

HECSE is comprised of 54 universities with doctoral programs in special education. Our member institutions are at the forefront of teacher education, research 

and development in special education. We work extensively with local and state education agencies to ensure that teachers and other professionals have the skills they 

need to provide a free appropriate public education to all students with disabilities. 

We cannot overstate the importance of ensuring that every special education student has a teacher who is fully competent in special education and in the content 

matter that they are teaching. We believe our recommendation represents a good 

balance between the special education skills and the content skills required, while 

bearing in mind that teacher training for initial certification is time limited. We 

know that there are some who say that we cannot afford to meet high standards 

for special education teachers—that such standards will exacerbate the shortage. In 

reality, lower standards have increased teacher attrition thereby worsening the 

teacher shortage. We take the position that we cannot afford NOT to meet high 

standards for special education teachers. 

No Child Left Behind wisely and rightly requires accountability for student 

achievement for special education students. With such an expectation comes an obligation to ensure effective instruction. Effective instruction can only be provided by 

a teacher who is skilled in both special education and the content matter that they 

are teaching. 

Thank you for considering our views. If you would like additional information or 

have questions, please contact Jane West at 202–289–3903 or jwest@wpllc.net.

Sincerely,

Herbert J. Rieth, Professor and Chair 

Department of Special Education 

University of Texas 

HECSE President 

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***

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE REAUTHORIZATION OF THE INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES EDUCATION ACT RELATED TO THE APPLICATION OF ‘‘HIGHLY QUALIFIED’’ TO

SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS

Introduction 

HECSE recommends that the reauthorization of IDEA include language stipulating that special educators be subject to the highly qualified standards comparable 

to the NCLB Act, and that all special education teachers hold full state certification 

or licensure in their respective fields. Attached is our recommendation for legislative 

language that parallels that used in the NCLB Act. A brief rationale for this language follows. 

Determining a definition for ‘‘highly qualified’’ in special education is not an easy 

fit in relation to the NCLB provision, largely because special education teachers 

must develop a set of highly specialized skills that can be applied to any core academic content area. Thus, in contrast to academic content competence, special education competence cannot be measured using a paper and pencil test. More specifically, special education teachers are expected to have highly specialized knowledge, 

skills, and expertise, as they continuously assess student performance to adjust the 

learning environment, modify instructional methods, adapt curricula, use positive 

behavior supports and interventions, and select and implement appropriate accommodations to meet the individual needs of students. Special educators develop such 

expertise by completing rigorous preparation programs which include extensive, 

closely supervised field experiences. Before entering the profession, these professionals must demonstrate their competence through rigorous outcome measures 

which include performance in schools working with students with disabilities. With 

this in mind, we do not support the option of certifying or licensing special education teachers by having them pass a test, comparable to the NCLB requirement 

for content area specialists. Rather, all special education teachers should be required to complete a rigorous preparation program, and demonstrate in field settings the highly specialized knowledge and skills that are needed to effectively meet 

the needs of students with disabilities and ensure that these students make adequate yearly progress. 

A second consideration relates to our perspective that teachers of students with 

disabilities at the secondary level should not be held to a lower standard than their 

general education counterparts. If special education teachers have the sole responsibility for providing instruction for students with disabilities in core academic content areas in secondary schools, their qualifications should be no less than those of 

general educators. However, as was noted previously, special education is not content area expertise; rather, it is knowledge and skills that are needed to meet the 

individual needs of students and can be used at any developmental level. With this 

in mind, it is our perspective that it is neither practical nor necessary to require 

that ALL middle and secondary level special education teachers demonstrate mastery of an academic content area, in addition to their mastery of knowledge and 

skills in special education. For example, the role of many secondary special education teachers is to work with content area specialists to ensure that students with 

disabilities successfully master state designated standards. Thus, the special education teacher’s responsibilities for student learning can often be effectively and efficiently delivered through a consultative or co-teaching role with general education 

teachers who are highly qualified in the core subject area, without supplanting a 

general educator’s role in the subject matter area. Requiring that all special education teachers demonstrate mastery of academic content areas when they work in 

a consultative or co-teaching role with highly qualified general education teachers 

is not a reasonable requirement1. Furthermore, such a requirement would unnecessarily result in a significant increase in the shortage of highly qualified special education teachers in secondary schools. 

With these ideas in mind, we offer the following language for addressing the need 

for Highly Qualified special education teachers in the reauthorized IDEA. 

1. This perspective is in keeping with the final regulations for NCLB regarding 

special education teachers, which states: 

Special educators providing instruction in core academic subjects must meet the 

highly qualified standard under NCLB. However, special educators who do not 

directly instruct students on any core academic subject or who provide only consultation to highly qualified teachers of core academic subjects in adapting curricula, using behavioral supports and interventions, and selecting appropriate 

accommodations do not need to meet the same ‘‘highly qualified’’ subject-matter 

64

competency requirements that apply under the NCLB Act to teachers of core 

academic subjects (see 34 CFR Part 200, December 2, 2002)). 

***

HECSE PROPOSED LANGUAGE FOR IDEA WITH REGARD TO HIGHLY QUALIFIED

SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS

SEC. 1119. QUALIFICATIONS FOR TEACHERS AND PARAPROFESSIONALS. 

(10) Highly qualified- Special education teachers must develop a set of highly specialized skills that can be applied to any core academic content area. These skills 

provide special education teachers with the expertise to continuously assess student 

performance to adjust the learning environment, modify instructional methods, 

adapt curricula, use positive behavior supports and interventions, and select and 

implement appropriate accommodations to meet the individual needs of students 

with disabilities. All special education teachers must complete a rigorous preparation program, and demonstrate in field settings the highly specialized knowledge 

and skills that are needed to effectively meet the needs of students with disabilities 

and ensure that these students make adequate yearly progress. The term ‘highly 

qualified’ for special education teachers means the following: 

(A) All special education teachers- When used with respect to any public 

elementary school or secondary school special education teacher teaching in 

a State, means that the teacher holds at least a bachelor’s degree and 

that—

(i) the teacher has obtained full State certification or licensure as a special education teacher through a State-approved special education teacher 

preparation program (including certification or licensure obtained through 

alternative routes), and passed the State teacher special education licensing 

examination, and holds a license to teach in the State as a special education teacher, except that when used with respect to any teacher teaching 

in a public charter school, the term means that the teacher meets the requirements set forth in the State’s public charter school law; 

(ii) the teacher has not had certification or licensure requirements waived 

on an emergency, temporary, conditional, or provisional basis; and 

(iii) the teacher demonstrates knowledge of special education and the 

teaching skills necessary to teach children with disabilities through rigorous written and performance outcome measures.

(B) When used with respect to—

(i) a special education teacher who is new to the profession, means that 

the teacher—

(I) meets the applicable standards in subparagraph (A); and 

(II) has demonstrated, by passing a rigorous State test, subject knowledge and teaching skills in reading, writing, mathematics, and other areas 

of the basic elementary school curriculum (which may consist of passing a 

State-required certification or licensing test or tests in reading, writing, 

mathematics, and other areas of the basic elementary school curriculum. 

Applies to elementary special education teachers); and 

(III) meets the highly qualified standard of the NCLB Act in any core 

academic subject areas in which s/he is the primary teacher for middle 

school or high school students with disabilities (applies to middle and high 

school special education teachers). 

(IV) the term ‘‘primary teacher’’ means that the special education teacher 

has primary or sole responsibility for teaching middle school or high school 

students with disabilities in a core academic subject area, and does not 

have a regular education teacher who is highly qualified in the particular 

core academic content area working to provide consultative or co-teaching 

services.

(C) VETERAN SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS- When used with respect to a special education teacher who is not new to the profession, means 

that the teacher—

(i) has met the applicable standard in subparagraph (A); and 

(ii) meets the highly qualified standard of the Elementary and Secondary 

Education Act of 1965 (Section 9101 (23)) in any core academic subject area 

in which s/he is the primary teacher for middle school or high school students with disabilities, as defined in subparagraph (B) (III) and (IV).

(D) Consultative services 

65

(i) In general—Notwithstanding subparagraphs (A) through (C), when 

used with respect to a special education teacher who provides only consultative services to a highly qualified regular education teacher (as the term 

highly qualified is defined in section 9101(23) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965), means that the teacher meets the requirements of subparagraph (A). 

(ii) Consultative services—As used in clause (i) with respect to special 

education teachers, the term ‘‘consultative services’’ means services that adjust the learning environment, modify instructional methods, adapt curricula, use positive behavior supports and interventions, and select and implement appropriate accommodations to meet the individual needs of children. The special education teacher may provide such services in a co-teaching or other consultative role. 

(iii) Consultative services—As used in clause (B) (i) (IV) with respect to 

regular education teachers, the term ‘‘consultative services’’ means services 

related to the content area expertise of a highly qualified teacher in a core 

academic area. The regular education teacher may provide such services in 

a co-teaching or other consultative role. 

Statement of Stephanie L. Norby, Executive Director, Smithsonian Center 

for Education and Museum Studies, Smithsonian Institution 

On behalf of the Smithsonian Institution, I would like to thank the Members of 

the Committee for the opportunity to submit testimony on the Highly Qualified 

Teacher Provisions in the No Child Left Behind Act. I am particularly honored to 

offer suggestions that may aid state and local officials as they grapple with how to 

meet the standards set forth in this law. 

As is reflected in the provisions of No Child Left Behind, teachers play an integral 

role in the education of our nation’s children. In particular, Title II of the Act—Preparing, Training and Recruiting High Quality Teachers and Principals—recognizes 

that one of the ways that new teachers can become great teachers, and veteran 

teachers can become even better teachers, is through meaningful and ongoing professional development. However, the challenge of ensuring that all students have 

teachers with superior content knowledge and exemplary classroom skills is one 

that local school districts should not have to meet on their own. Rather a broad 

partnership between schools, universities, businesses, and nonprofit organizations is 

essential to ensure that these needs are met. 

While schools of education at colleges and universities can and should play a central role in the training and professional development of teachers, as an Institution 

devoted to the ‘‘increase and diffusion of knowledge’’ the Smithsonian is uniquely 

positioned to provide the nation’s teachers with additional training opportunities. 

With 17 museums, 9 research centers and 140 affiliate institutions nationwide, the 

breadth and depth of our presence in the American scholarly and cultural community equips us with an unparalleled array of resources, experience, and knowledge 

that we are eager to share with the nation’s educators. This commitment is demonstrated through the recent inauguration of the Smithsonian’s Strategic Plan for 

Education, a five-year blueprint that recognizes our unique mandate to engage and 

inspire all Americans with our research, collections, and expertise. Through our 

websites, publications, and programs, the Smithsonian is already working with beginning teachers and experienced educators alike to offer them more ways to reach 

and engage their students. 

The Committee may be interested to learn that the Smithsonian is already offering professional development opportunities to teachers on a regular basis. From daylong seminars on how to integrate primary sources into the curriculum, to threeyear partnerships to improve the teaching of American History, the Smithsonian is 

actively sharing with teachers its wealth of knowledge and expertise. 

Yet the Smithsonian is not only teaching these teachers, it is learning from them 

as well. From the educators who have participated in our professional development 

programs, we have discovered a great deal about the kinds of things that teachers 

want and need to learn. The Smithsonian is working diligently to respond to these 

needs and is eager to share our experience with teachers from across the country, 

through programs based here in Washington, D.C., as well as through our national 

outreach efforts. As the Committee examines the ways in which states are implementing the new Highly Qualified Teacher requirements, the Smithsonian would 

like to share with you some of the lessons we have learned about what professional 

development programs can and should do for teachers and how museums like the 

Smithsonian can provide additional resources and expertise in this area. 

66

First, we have learned that teachers want to be treated as professionals and be 

considered a part of the scholarly community. Thus the Smithsonian strives to treat 

teachers as ‘‘lifelong learners’’ who need exposure to the latest research and scholarship in their academic disciplines to stay current and to stay inspired. As the home 

of some of the world’s foremost experts in history, science, and art, the Smithsonian 

scholarly community can provide classroom teachers with a first-hand look at the 

newest discoveries and discussions, enhancing their ability to provide students with 

up-to-date information and ideas. For example, in partnership with College Board 

Advanced Placement, the Smithsonian offers seminars during which teachers and 

curators together examine historical evidence—from skeletons uncovered at Jamestown to portraits of our founding fathers. At the National Science Resource Center, 

a partnership between Smithsonian and the National Academy of Sciences, teachers 

learn how to teach science and technology to elementary and middle school students. These courses help science teachers understand the nature of scientific inquiry and its central role in science, as well as use the skills and processes of scientific inquiry in the classroom. 

Teachers who participate in our programs also tell us that they need more training on how to engage students with diverse needs, learning styles, languages, and 

backgrounds. Since museums like the Smithsonian are experienced at making complex concepts accessible to diverse audiences from an array of backgrounds, skill levels, and ages, this is a natural need for us to fill. In particular, museums can provide teachers with the know-how and the materials to incorporate primary sources 

and objects into their existing curricula, making learning more visual, more tangible, and more fun for all students, but especially those with limited English proficiency or developmental disabilities. This expertise in how to use real things to 

bring alive ideas, processes, and information is something that museums like the 

Smithsonian are uniquely qualified to offer. For instance, as part of long-term partnerships with school districts, the Smithsonian has worked with Montgomery County Public Schools (MD) and Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools (NC) to co-develop social 

studies curricula to include hands-on materials. Moreover, several school districts 

each year assign teachers-in-residence to work with Smithsonian educators to design collections-based programming for school groups. 

Museum based professional development programs also can foster learning communities in which teachers can look beyond school walls for ideas and inspiration. 

As a result, the Smithsonian often serves as the meeting place for teachers from 

across the country, providing them a chance to learn from one another, share ideas 

and techniques, and build lasting collaborations. For example, each year the Smithsonian hosts ‘‘Teacher’s Night’’ at one of our museums, an open house that highlights our programs, exhibits, and resources through workshops and demonstrations. This event attracts more than 2,000 teachers each year and coincides with 

similar events in several Smithsonian Affiliate Museums across the country. We 

also endeavor to build lasting relationships with the teachers who participate in our 

programs by asking them to help us review publications, offer critiques of our programs, and provide expertise in developing new curriculum ideas. 

One other observation that the Smithsonian can offer, which was echoed in the 

testimony of witnesses and committee members during the hearing, is that Schools 

of Education should not be the only outlet for the training and development of the 

nation’s teachers. The Smithsonian often partners with Schools of Education to 

share ideas and collaborate on better ways to reach teachers throughout their careers. For example, the Smithsonian is partnering with Project Zero at the Harvard 

School of Education to research how museums enrich student learning and has 

hosted summer seminars for the Association of Teacher Educators, an organization 

of university professors who train pre-service teachers. 

Lastly, it is clear from the discussion at the Committee hearing that America’s 

teachers are pressed for time and resources, and therefore need access to content 

and skills training in ways that are more accessible, more convenient and more tailored to each teacher’s individual needs. Aptly, the Smithsonian is now in the process of developing an array of distance learning programs that eventually will become a system of ‘‘professional development on demand’’ where teachers can access 

training on the subjects they are teaching when they are getting ready to teach 

them. Utilizing the technological advances available to more and more schools, the 

Smithsonian is devising ways to offer teachers remote access to our professional development programs via videoconferencing and the World Wide Web. For teachers 

who might not have access to Smithsonian programs in their communities, or who 

may not have the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C., on a regular basis, distance learning will open our doors to a whole new audience of educators. 

In sum, the Smithsonian Institution is committed to the education of all of our 

nation’s citizens and is actively seeking out new ways to reach them outside of the 

67

typical museum visit. Through our professional development programs for teachers, 

the Smithsonian is sharing its expertise and resources with those who need it most, 

and in the process is creating a learning community from which all of us can benefit. I hope that these comments prove helpful to the Committee in its efforts to improve the education of our nation’s children, and I welcome the chance to work with 

you in the future to make that possible.

Æ