And because of that loophole, Randolph Clay High School is able to remain fully accredited, stamped with a seal of approval. Some accreditation agencies say if you teach three out of the five classes a day in a subject where you're trained, then you're not counted as teaching out of field. The trouble with that, of course, is two out of the five is 40 percent of your children. The state is playing a shell game, says Richard Ingersoll of the University of Georgia. Well, what I mean is that you can count it in ways which tend to minimize it.
Most teachers have a primary field.
In my case, I was a social studies teacher, but there wasn't a semester that went by that I wasn't, in addition to social studies, also assigned to teach a class or two or three in English, in mathematics, in special education. Depends on the state. I don't think they do. I don't know if it's kept secret, or just really not brought to the surface, maybe. And this is not simply a rural problem.