Keeping high quality teachers: it's difficult to argue against ensuring a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom. But some legislators are worried that states won't be able to recruit and retain enough teachers to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act.

• Author: Exstrom, Michelle

On her first day of summer break, Melissa Fine, a sixth grade teacher at Thunder Ridge Middle School in Aurora, Colo., found out that, despite 25 years of classroom experience and 11 years of teaching math and science to sixth graders, she is not considered "highly qualified."

Fine will need to complete 48 credits of math and science course work or pass state assessment tests by the 2005-2006 school year in order to meet the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. She plans to retire soon, but not soon enough to avoid this requirement. "This is a real slap in my face," she says. "There's no consideration of my years of experience or how well my students perform. How in the world are we supposed to encourage good teachers to stay in the classroom if we're sending a message like this? We need to recruit and retain teachers, not drive them away."

NCLB requires that all teachers of core academic subjects be "highly qualified" in every subject they teach by 2005. Newly hired teachers already must satisfy this requirement if they work in schools receiving funding under Title I of the act.

Unfortunately, this federal mandate comes at a time when states are struggling to fund their current programs to find and keep teachers. Although it's difficult to argue against a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom, some legislators are frustrated by the timing of the mandate and the added expenses they now face.

News reports in Idaho, Montana, Minnesota and California tell story after story of teachers who will be displaced as a result of federal policy changes and budget crunches. Rural states and urban centers are hit particularly hard by the new federal requirements. Idaho alone stands to lose about 600 teachers if they can't meet the federal requirements.

"There must he something that they can do to help us out of this situation," says Fine. "We need to consider years of experience and student achievement. We have to respect our teachers as professionals. There has to be a way around these obstacles or we're going to lose our best teachers out of sheer frustration."

THE RETENTION PROBLEM

Recent research confirms what common sense has told us for years: Students taught by exceptional teachers achieve at a higher level. Good teachers also are essential to closing the gap between low-income and minority students and others.

Experts, however, have warned lawmakers over the past decade that there is a shortage of good teachers, especially in poor, low-achieving and rural schools.

These schools have been forced to fill classrooms with emergency-credentialed teachers. The Vance County school system in North Carolina faces this situation, with an estimated 250 out of the system's 640 teaching positions to be filled before the school year begins. "It is absolutely impossible to meet those requirements in this county," says Norman Shearin, superintendent of schools for Vance County. "If you can't get a highly qualified teacher, what do you do? Send the kids home?"

Not only can't we find teachers for certain positions, we also don't keep the good teachers we already have. A report, "No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America's Children," from the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) warns that the nation faces a severe teacher retention problem.

"The conventional wisdom is that we can't find enough good teachers," says NCTAF Executive Director Tom Carroll. "The truth is that we can't keep enough good teachers." NCTAF found that almost a third of new teachers leave the classroom after only three years, and nearly 50 percent leave after five years.

"It is as if we were pouring teachers into a bucket with a fist-sized hole in the bottom," Carroll says.

It's not a new problem. State legislators and education experts have struggled over the past decade to...