What Does It Mean to be Highly Qualified?

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) seems to be one of the most talked about and controversial educational reforms in decades. NCLB is an elementary and secondary education act signed into law January 8, 2002 designed to help close the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their peers. It requires that teachers be considered “highly qualified” in the core academic subjects they teach. A highly qualified teacher according to NCLB is one who has a bachelor’s degree, full state certification and licensure, and has demonstrated competency in the subject area he or she teaches (U. S. Department of Education, 2004). However, it is unclear how these accomplishments make a teacher anything more than minimally qualified (Berry, 2002)