Re: I'm no longer qualified

[George Sheridan <learn@jps.net>]

Nancy:

The rules for certifying teachers as NCLB compliant ("highly qualified") 
are developed by each state. Under California's HOUSSE rules (High 
Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation) you would easily be able to 
document the 100 points necessary to be certified NCLB compliant.

It's a sort of looking-glass world. All the nonsensical rules exist only 
because of the federal law, but the feds will tell you, "We didn't make 
those rules. You have to talk to your state (fill in the blank - department 
of education, board of education, legislature, superintendent of public 
instruction).

At 12:55 PM 3/6/2004 -0500, you wrote:
> I contacted the Michigan Department of Education yesterday to ask a
> question about teacher certification.  And I learned that under the new
> NCLB teacher cert laws, I am no longer qualified to teach middle school
> language arts. I have a bachelors in English, a masters in education,
> and a PhD in English that focused on literacy.  I was a department
> chair, a member of the school improvement team, on the language arts
> curriculum team and the technology committee.  I have presented at a
> zillion conferences across the country. I have 14 and a half years of
> experience teaching high school english (which I AM qualified to teach)
> and 14 years of experience teaching middle school language arts.
>
> If the name of the language arts courses was changed to "english" then I
> would be qualified to teach those courses. But if they are called
> "language arts", I'm not qualified.  There is no secondary language arts
> certification anymore. And, there is no elementary English
> certification. So, if the courses were renamed "english," no one with
> elementary language arts certification could teach those courses.
>
> Nancy, the unqualified
>
> Nancy Patterson, PhD
> Literacy Studies Program Coordinator
> Grand Valley State University
> Editor "Tech Connect," Voices from the Middle
> Chair, Assembly on Computers in English
> patterna@gvsu.edu
> http://faculty.gvsu.edu/patterna

George Sheridan

"Theories and goals of education don't matter a whit if you don't consider 
your students to be human beings."  - Lou Ann Walker