State: 99% of Teachers ‘Highly Qualified’

State: 99% of Teachers ‘Highly Qualified’

Nearly 99 percent of New Jersey’s public school teachers meet the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) designation of “highly qualified,” the State Board of Education reported last week in its Highly Qualified Teacher Survey.

Approximately 1,300 teachers (1.2 percent) did not meet definition of “highly qualified” in core subject areas in 2006-07 and still need to satisfy the requirements.

The NCLB definition of “highly qualified teacher” is based on whether a teacher has attained the credentials needed to demonstrate expertise in the subject they teach.

Teachers must have a bachelor’s degree; hold valid state certification for which no requirements have been waived; and demonstrate content expertise in the core academic subject(s) they teach through federal criteria specified in NCLB.

Problematic Fields Classes with the lowest percentage of highly qualified teachers are special education and world languages. New Jersey Commissioner of Education Lucille Davy said in a prepared statement that the state has also made gains in closing the gap between the number of classes taught by highly qualified teachers in high-poverty and low-poverty schools. The size of the gap has narrowed from 10 percent in 2004-05, to just 1.6 percent in 2006-07.

Last year’s survey found 95.9 percent of New Jersey teachers were highly qualified. This is the fourth year that states must report the “highly qualified” status of their teachers. So far, no state has met the federal government’s goal of 100 percent