CDE: Wait to see impact of ruling on teacher interns
Published: November 8, 2010
Local educational agencies can wait to see the implications of a recent court ruling that apprentice teachers in credential programs are not “highly qualified” under terms of the No Child Left Behind Act.
An appeals court struck down federal regulations Sept. 27 that permitted LEAs to count interns who are earning credentials while teaching in the classroom as highly qualified. The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco came in response to a 2007 lawsuit filed against the U.S. Department of Education by community activists. Department officials have not yet said whether they intend to appeal the decision.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys told reporters they believe the most recent decision, which reversed an earlier ruling by the same judges, means that LEAs must notify parents if their children’s teachers are no longer highly qualified. But representatives from the California Department of Education’s Title II office, which monitors compliance with NCLB rules regarding qualified teachers, said federal education officials have advised them to tell inquiring districts they do not need to do anything at the moment in response to the ruling.
CSBA Senior Policy Consultant Stephanie Medrano Farland said the CDE is “aggressively” monitoring the employment and distribution of teachers who do not yet have full credentials.
“Districts need to be aware of this and review hiring and recruitment policies carefully to ensure that they employ the most qualified teachers available,” Farland said. “But I agree that districts do not have to take any immediate action at this time.”
Estimates of the number of interns teaching in California K-12 classrooms vary. CDE data put the number at just under 5,000 for the 2008-09 school year, or 1.6 percent of the approximately 306,000 teachers employed by public schools in the state then. The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning estimated that there were about 6,000 interns working in California schools at the time. CFTL representatives said they are not sure what impact the recent budget crisis and resulting teacher layoffs have had on the number of interns.
NCLB, the current iteration of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act, requires that LEAs show that 100 percent of the public school teachers teaching core academic subjects are highly qualified. Currently, the rules extend the highly qualified status to teachers in conventional credential programs as well as those in apprenticeships like Teach for America, an alternative training program that aims to put good teachers in low-achieving schools.
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