By Jodi Wolfe
Staff Writer

With the implementation of the federal government’s No Child Left Behind Act, teachers are working to meet new standards requiring that they be “highly qualified” to teach.

In the Allenstown School District, sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade teachers are the most affected by the new regulations, said Armand R. Dupont School principal Betsey Cox Stebbins. Since these teachers teach more than three subjects and their students switch classes, these teachers need to be highly qualified in the subjects they teach, according to the No Child Left Behind Act.

Currently, two of 13 teachers at the Dupont School meet the act’s standards of being highly qualified in one subject, and there are no teachers considered highly qualified in more than one subject, said Stebbins.

To be considered highly qualified in a subject, a teacher must:

a) be certified in the subject

b) pass the Praxis II assessment test in the subject

c) have 30 college credits in the subject, or

d) have a high, objective, uniform, state standard of evaluation (HOUSSE) plan portfolio in the subject.

All teachers are supposed to be rated highly qualified by the end of the 2005-06 school year, said Stebbins.

Also, all teachers must have plans to become highly qualified by Jan. 31, Allenstown School Board Chairman Louis Conley told teachers at the Dec. 9 school board meeting.

Having a plan to be highly qualified in a subject means 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.

“Many of our teachers don’t have a plan,” said Stebbins.

For teachers who have been out of college for 15 years or more, taking the Praxis II test will be difficult, she said.

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, being high ly qualified in one subject under the federal regulations doesn’t necessary solve the problem, so the administrators are recommending teachers become highly qualified in one than one subject. 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.

She wants the best for her students, she said.

“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, is planning to take the Praxis II 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 Letvinchuk, there is no Praxis II test for middle school language arts, only high school language arts. While he is certified to teach kindergarten to grade eight, he will have to be highly 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 about No Child Left Behind. “It’s a good law, but it almost penalizes the middle school teachers.”