Education
PND Connections - Leaving Teachers Behind: How a Key Requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act (Putting a Highly Qualified Teacher in Every Class) Has Been Abandoned
Although the No Child Left Behind Act was designed to help all children succeed academically, a report from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) shows that the act may not be delivering on its most important promise — to make sure every student has a qualified teacher. Based on data from twenty-four states and seventy-three school districts, the report, Leaving Teachers Behind: How a Key Requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act (Putting a Highly Qualified Teacher in Every Class) Has Been Abandoned (12 pages, HTML), finds that the Bush administration is implementing the act's provisions on school choice, supplemental services, and academic testing, while ignoring key requirements related to teachers. Although the act promised parents proof that their child's teachers are "highly qualified," the report shows that, so far, only 38 percent of states have teacher data in their state report cards and 42 percent have not even defined what "highly qualified" means.
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