The Highly Qualified Teacher Provision in No Child Left Behind: A Historical Analysis

• In Event: 60.034 - Historical Antecedents of Current Trends

Abstract

In this paper, I trace the history of the “highly qualified” teacher (HQT) provision in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) by describing the social, political, and institutional contexts that shaped the teacher quality reform movement and led to the the articulation of the HQT provision. Then, I identify changes in the policy made by the federal government in response to implementation challenges. Finally, I analyze the net effect of NCLB on the current status of public education, by examining the extent to which the HQT provision has achieved its dual goals of improving overall teacher quality and ensuring that “inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers do not teach poor and minority students at disproportionately higher rates than their peers."

Author

• Allison Rose Socol, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill