By Jodi Wolfe
Staff Writer

Now that the federal government’s No Child Left Behind Act has been put into practice, teachers are working to meet the new standards of being “highly qualified” set by the federal government.

School districts throughout the greater Manchester area are handling the federal regulations differently. All teachers are supposed to be highly qualified by the end of the 2005-06 school year.

“Highly qualified” means dif- ferent things for different grade levels, and school officials agree that middle school teachers are the most affected by the new regulations.

In New Hampshire, middle school teachers can have a degree in elementary education and not be certified in their content field or subject, said Roxanne Wilson, assistant superintendent of schools for SAU 24, which includes the Weare School District.

“All of our teachers, they’ve been teaching for years with kindergarten to eighth-grade degree and never had to have content endorsement,” she said.

According to No Child Left Behind regulations, if a teacher teaches three subjects or more, the teacher does not need a deep understanding in each subject; if a teacher teaches only two subjects, the teacher does need a deep understanding of the subject.

To be considered highly qualified in a subject means one of the following: being certified in the subject, passing the Praxis II assessment test in the subject, having 30 college credits in the subject, or completing a high, objective, uniform, state standard of evaluation (HOUSSE) plan portfolio in the subject.

Area teachers are either working on creating plans to be considered highly qualified or finishing their plans. Having a plan to be be highly qualified in a subject means that teachers need to have a date to take the Praxis II test, have a HOUSSE plan written, or be enrolled in college courses in that subject.

For teachers who have been out of college for 15 years, taking the Praxis II test could be difficult, said Betsey Cox Stebbins, principal of the Armand R. Dupont School in Allenstown.

“That’s just arbitary at that point,” said Chip McGee, an assistant superintendent for the Bedford School District. “The true master teacher simply needs to prove that they have the experience with the context that is required.”

The HOUSSE plan involves working with what the government considers a highly qualified teacher and putting together a portfolio, which is time-consuming, said Stebbins.

“There’s nothing easy about it,” she said. “It requires work, time, and money.”

However, teachers need to be highly qualified in core academic areas, which doesn’t include classes such as technical education, said Wilson.

In the Bedford School District, 89 percent of the teachers – including special education teachers, currently meet the highly qualified teacher requirements while the rest are working on plans to be highly qualified, according to McGee. Amajority of

Bedford teachers prepared HOUSSE plans in order to be qualified under No Child Left Behind standards, he said. The state gave the school district a Sept. 15, 2003, deadline to have teachers on a plan to be highly qualified.

“I’ve been very impresesed with the work our teachers and instructors have done to be highly qualified, said McGee. Of course, there is a difference between high-qualified and high-quality teachers, McGee said.

“We’ve got 30-year veterans who have been teaching math wonderfully for a number of years, but don’t have bachelor’s degrees,” he said.

Special education teachers’ qualifications are based on developmental levels of their students, not their age, McGee said.

“Special education teachers are really at a tough spot in this law,” he said. “They have so much training in special education that they may not have 30 credits in math as well.”

Due to changing class sizes, small school districts often have teachers teaching subjects they are not qualified for under the federal guidelines.

“We don’t face that same problem to the degree that some districts do,” said McGee.

The Bedford School District has seen some benefits because of the No Child Left Behind Act. For example, the district ran a program called “Calculus for Cats,” a workshop for math teachers teaching grades 5 through 8.

“By running this workshop, not only did they meet the requirements, but we had this nice workshop,” McGee said.

In the Weare School District, the administration began working on new regulations right after it was aware of the federal act, said Dr. Christine Tyrie, superintendent of schools.

In 2003, the administration set up a system based on the No Child Left Behind teacher’s tool kit and then trained the administration to work with the staff to meet the requirements.

The administration met with all the teachers and examined their transcripts to set them on the right track. Administrators found that some teachers had 30 credit hours in their subject, making them highly qualified, said Wilson.

“There were actually quite a few teachers that met the requirements by transcripts,” she said.

By the end of the 2003-04 school year, all 36 teachers at Center Woods, Weare’s elementary school, were highly qualified, said Wilson. At Weare Middle School, six out of 30 teachers are on plans and the others have met the requirements through transcript reviews, by passing the Praxis II test or via certification, she said.

At John Stark Regional High School, more than 90 percent of teachers met the regulations.

In SAU 19, which encompasses the Goffstown School District, the New Boston School District and the Dunbarton School District, all the principals sat with their teachers to go over their plans on an individual basis, said Dr. Darrell Lockwood, superintendent of schools.

Administrators also did background checks on the teachers to see if they had credits to meet the regulations, he said.

Several teachers have taken the Praxis II and passed and others have developed plans and near completion of those plans, The majority of the teachers chose to use HOUSSE plans, he said.

The administration at SAU 19 also created study groups for teachers.

In the Allenstown School District, all teachers need to have plans to be highly qualified by Jan. 31. “Many of our teachers don’t have a plan,” said Stebbins.

Currently there are two out of 13 teachers at the Dupont School who met the No Child Left Behind’s standards of being highly qualified in one subject and there are no teachers highly qualified in more than one subject, said Stebbins.

However, being highly qualified in one subject under the federal regulations doesn’t necessary solve the problem, so the administration is recommending teachers become highly qualified in one than one subject, said Stebbins. With a small district and ever-changing grade sizes, Allenstown middle school teachers often have to take on subjects they are not highly qualified in, said Stebbins.

“Or they are highly qualified to teach something we don’t need,” she said. “It’s very difficult at the middle school level.”

Kim Carbonneau, a sixth- grade teacher at the Dupont School, usually teaches language arts and social studies.

This year, she’s only teaching language arts because of class arrangements. She has yet to determine her plans to meet the new standards.

“‘No Child Left Behind’ is a wonderful catch phrase, but does the policy address what children need? They need healthy, sound buildings with a room for every class,” Charbonneau said. “They need programs like art, music, physical education, and language. They need smaller classes and dedicated teachers. I’m not sure that NCLB is impacting children in a way that I hope, at least, it was intended.”

Peter Letvinchuk, a seventh-grade teacher in Allenstown, is planning to take the Praxis II in order to meet the No Child Left Behind Act’s standards. Letvinchuk has a bachelor’s degree in business and has been teaching for five years.

While he is halfway through working on a master’s degree in education at Rivier College, none of those courses will help with the No Child Left Behind regulations, he said.

This year, he is teaching language arts and math, but next year he will only teach language arts, so that is the subject he will take a test on. Unfortunately for Letvinchuck, there isn’t a Praxis II test for middle school language arts, only for the high school level.

While he is certified to teach kindergarten through grade 8, he will be qualified to teach high school, he said.

Letvinchuk said he doesn’t disagree with the law because teachers should be accountable for the subjects they are teaching, but he would like to see some changes.

“My hope would be that they change the law to at least be more specific,” he said. “It’s a good law, but it almost penalizes the middle school teachers.”