The Article
In this report by the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University, doctoral students Debbi Harris and Lisa Ray analyze the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act’s requirement that every teacher of core subjects be “highly qualified” by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. They look specifically at Michigan’s progress in meeting the “highly qualified” challenge.

Findings
Harris and Ray point out that until recently there had been few data available about Michigan’s teachers. New data from the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) allowed them to look at Michigan’s progress in meeting the “highly qualified” challenge. The data allowed them to examine whether all students have access to the highly qualified teachers promised by NCLB. The authors used certification status as a proxy for “highly qualified” because the NCLB definition of highly qualified is “reasonably consistent with certification requirements for Michigan teachers….” Harris and Ray found that Michigan has a high quality teaching force. The vast majority of Michigan’s traditional public school teachers are certified, with 96.8 percent possessing a provisional, regular, or advanced teaching certificate. Only 3.2 percent of Michigan’s teachers are uncertified or teaching on emergency waivers. The data also show, however, that high quality teachers are not equally available in all schools. In order to test whether all students have equal access to highly qualified teachers, Harris and Ray examined the distribution of highly qualified teachers across three school characteristics: school urbanicity, the percentage of students that qualify for free and reduced lunch, and the percentage of African-American students in a school. They found that teachers in urban schools are much less likely to be highly qualified in their main teaching assignment than their counterparts in suburban and rural areas. About three times as many urban school teachers do not meet the NCLB certification requirements for their main assignment when compared to suburban or rural teachers. The authors conclude that these findings indicates that Michigan will not meet the NCLB teacher requirements unless steps are taken to increase the number of highly qualified teachers in Michigan’s least advantaged schools. Possible interventions include financial incentives, such as higher salaries and loan forgiveness, and non-financial incentives, such as improved working conditions, for teachers in hard-to-staff schools.

What It Means To You
Will your district meet the “highly qualified” challenge? Do you have any programs or incentives in place to help your teachers who are not fully certified to attain certification? How could the state play an effective role in making sure that Michigan meets the NCLB requirements?

For More Information
Harris, D. & Ray, L. (2003). No school left behind? The distribution of Michigan’s public school teachers. Policy Report No. 16 East Lansing: Education Policy Center at Michigan State University. The report can be accessed online at www.epc.msu.edu
 

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