Thursday, July 19, 2012

What is a Highly Qualified Teacher? « Diane Ravitch's blog

What is a Highly Qualified Teacher? « Diane Ravitch's blog:


What is a Highly Qualified Teacher?

Highly Qualified Teacher?

A reader gives her view of what it means to be a “highly qualified teacher,” if not by the elastic definition in NCLB, then by her own knowledge of teaching:
As many have pointed out, no new teachers are “highly qualified.” While some new teachers may be more prepared than others, many years of teaching experience is necessary to become a truly effective (and therefore highly qualified) teacher. So not only are TFA teachers certainly not highly qualified, they are not even very well prepared. While some of them may have strong academic backgrounds and lots of motivation, why is that enough? Shouldn’t we demand that the people who teach our own children not only have strong academic