It's great to be here today. Some people might not believe me. A New York Times columnist recently wrote, "In all the world, the loneliest people must be that handful of men and women of the Department of Education dispatched by the Bush administration to wander the country, defending the new No Child Left Behind Act. Talk about friendless."

Well, it may be that I'm a glutton for punishment, but I actually enjoy meeting with state and local officials about No Child Left Behind.

Maybe it's a matter of perspective. I understand, as you surely do, that this law is a wonderful opportunity. It won't implement itself. It's no silver bullet. But it provides a very powerful framework for dedicated people at the state and local levels to seize and put into action to improve the education--and the lives--of our children.

In other words, the question is not, "What can No Child Left Behind do for you?" but "What can you do with No Child Left Behind?"

And if there's any message I hope you get out of my talk, it's that states, and to a lesser degree districts, have much more flexibility with the highly qualified teacher requirements of this law than most people acknowledge. States especially have an historic opportunity to revamp their teacher preparation and certification systems, and we hope they seize that opportunity.

The Big Picture

Before going into those details, I want to tell you a story.

This story is about a teacher. Let's call her Susan. I first met Susan last summer. She had just moved to the Washington area with her husband. She graduated from a prestigious university in the Midwest with a degree in elementary education. She already had a few years of teaching under her belt. She was bright and eager. By anyone's standards, she was "highly qualified."

Susan had put in applications at several school districts in the area and, not surprisingly, they all wanted to hire her. She was a great catch. She finally winnowed it down to two districts: Montgomery County Public Schools and Prince George's County Public Schools, both in Maryland.

Montgomery County is known as one of the most affluent, best-educated counties in the entire nation. Many of its parents work at places like the National Institutes of Health. The schools are well funded, well run, and well respected.

Prince George's County, on the other hand, faces many challenges. It is quite diverse, racially and economically. Many of its schools enroll a high proportion of students living in poverty. It has struggled with leadership challenges in recent years, and has experienced turnover of both school boards and superintendents.

Susan decided she wanted to teach in Prince George's. She wasn't naïve--she knew it would be tough. But wanted to use her talents to help children who needed it the most. Susan was a little nervous to be headed into a high-poverty school, but she was ready for the challenge, and looking forward to making a difference.

I hadn't seen Susan again until about four weeks ago. I was very excited to talk to her about how things were going in the classroom. Now, I must admit, I'm always a little nervous when I'm talking to teachers about their jobs. I taught briefly at the beginning of my career, and I know they're looking at me thinking, "You're so lucky, just sitting in a big office all day, getting to go the bathroom whenever you want." I know how hard it is to be a teacher.

So I asked her how things were going. Susan looked right at me and said: "Do you really think no child will be left behind? Because you haven't seen my kids."

I was devastated. In six short months Susan had gone from being an idealistic, eager young teacher, ready to set the world on fire, to buying into a culture of failure, a culture that faults the students for their low achievement.

Now, I don't blame Susan. She was placed in an impossible situation. She was given no support. Her principal has provided zero guidance. The older teachers have done little but teach the cynical culture of despair--even though they, not so long ago, were young, idealistic teachers, too. The school is utter chaos and Susan feels like she is sinking--fast.

Why do I tell that story? We know that improving teacher quality is the surest way to improve our schools and therefore student achievement. Yet we'll continue to struggle to attract talented people to our schools--and will continue to lose them after a few short years--if our schools are not good places for adults and children to be.

It's a bit of a Catch-22. Only good schools can get and keep good teachers. And yet without good teachers, it's impossible to be a good school.

I also tell that story because I think it's important to have humility about what we can achieve through the kinds of teacher quality requirements that are in No Child Left Behind, and that make up states' certification systems.

It's very attractive--and I would say seductive--to come up with a list of requirements and courses and attributes that we want all of our new teachers to have, and to develop training programs to develop all of these things, and certification systems to ensure adherence to them, and to hope that all of this is going to lead to a highly qualified teacher corps and to great schools for our kids.

Even if we could do all of those things at no cost--and I will argue that there are significant costs of piling on the requirements, in terms of talented people that we'll keep out of the classroom--even then, we have to understand that it will all be for naught if the schools our new teachers land in are poorly run and do not provide the support that they need to be successful.

We will continue to lose the Susans of the world, at least in our high poverty schools, if we continue to think of teacher quality as something disconnected from school improvement.

The same things that make schools effective--strong leadership, solid curriculum, sound instruction, ongoing professional development, mentoring and support, a culture of achievement--are the same things that will attract and retain good teachers.

Yet many state certification systems seem to be built with the assumption that these positive attributes at schools will not and cannot exist. Certification attempts to school-proof and principal-proof the process of recruiting, selecting, and training new teachers. The assumption seems to be: you can't trust schools to select and train their own teachers. You can't trust principals to hire good people. Therefore, we need to centralize the process, regulate the process, bureaucratize the process to keep schools from doing harm.

So we've built a preparation and certification system that is founded on the assumption of dysfunctional schools and irresponsible school leaders, and then we're surprised when teachers leave the profession because they're frustrated with these schools and unsupportive school leaders.

Can't we craft a new system, built on different assumptions, assumptions that acknowledge the inseparable tie between teacher quality and school quality? What if we built a system that acknowledges the dominant school reform strategy of the day: holding schools accountable for results, but giving them the freedom to pursue the best strategies to get those results?

What if we built a new preparation and certification system that assumed that principals could be trusted to select talented people, that acknowledged that they do have strong incentives to pick the most qualified staff, that puts some important safeguards in place, but does not assume that the entire weight of screening candidates needs to be carried by the certification system alone?

And that we could build a system that doesn't put up unnecessary barriers to talented people who want to teach, but seeks out talented people and brings them into our schools?

And that admits that some of the ingredients that make teachers great will never be able to be measured by certification board--attributes like the conviction that all children can learn, or leadership ability, or perseverance--ingredients that could be measured by a school principal's talking to candidates, talking to references, getting to know the person as a whole.

I would argue that this new kind of system is exactly the kind that No Child Left Behind can give life to. But only if you seize the opportunity.

The Highly Qualified Teachers Requirements of No Child Left Behind

So what exactly does NCLB require around the issue of highly qualified teachers? This might sound like a remedial question, but there are some important nuances you should be aware of.

As you know, the federal definition of a highly qualified teacher has three parts:

• The teacher must have at least a bachelor's degree;
• The teacher must demonstrate subject matter knowledge in the subjects taught; and
• The teacher must have full state certification.

Of the three, the first two requirements are the strictest, and most sharply defined by the law. And I suspect many of you are struggling with figuring out how to meet them--especially the subject matter requirements.

New elementary school teachers need to pass a test showing they are competent in all the core subjects they will be teaching. New middle and high school teachers can also demonstrate content knowledge through a test, though a major or graduate degree in the subject will also suffice. Experienced teachers can tap into these options too, but the states are also charged with creating a high, uniform, objective standard that experienced teachers can meet to demonstrate their competence.

This last provision is one that we know is especially challenging, and we're as anxious as everyone else to learn about innovative ways states are tackling it. One of the most interesting I've heard about is what Tennessee is considering, which is to use its value-added data system to identify as competent those teaches whose students are making significant progress every year in terms of student achievement. This might be the most robust way possible of demonstrating subject matter competence--by showing a teacher's effect on his or her students' achievement.

Now, Congress could have simply required that all teachers be fully certified. But clearly it felt that this standard was not high enough. During the deliberations there were serious concerns about teachers having the content knowledge to teach to high standards, and worries about out-of-field teaching, especially in high poverty schools. And there has been some solid research showing a link between teachers' content knowledge--especially in math and science--and student achievement. So Congress got prescriptive.

And we know that these requirements are making your lives difficult, especially in rural areas or in small schools like charter schools, where teachers are often pulling double or triple duty teaching different academic subjects. But we're all in this together, and we are looking forward to learning about innovative ways states are addressing the challenge.

Certification: Alternate Routes vs. Alternative Programs

So when it comes to demonstrating subject matter competence, Congress got quite specific. What about the requirement that all teachers have full state certification? Congress made it clear that teachers should no longer be on "waivers" or have temporary or provisional certificates. But defining full certification is left completely up to the states.

States have all kinds of flexibility, then, to use this opportunity to think anew about their certification systems, and to consider a major revamp.

And if they want to, they can dramatically streamline their processes, and create alternate routes to full state certification that target talented people who would be turned off by traditional preparation and certification programs.

For example, states could adopt the new system created by the American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence, an organization supported by a Department of Education grant that has created an extremely rigorous assessment system for new teachers, in both content areas and professional teaching knowledge.

States could decide that individuals who pass the relevant sections of the American Board assessment would be considered fully certified to teach, regardless of where they learned the important knowledge and skills that were tested. While good schools would certainly give those teachers strong mentoring, induction, and professional development opportunities, from the state regulators' perspective, the teacher would have met all necessary requirements to teach.

Why would states want to do this? As I argued earlier, we should not demand that our certification system carry the entire weight of screening candidates by itself. A strong assessment like the American Board, in conjunction with sound judgment at the school or district level, would be one excellent way to bring talented people into the classroom, without blocking the schoolhouse door to people who don't have the time or money for long, expensive preparation programs.

Because without these alternate routes, we're going to lose a lot of talented people to other professions.

That's not to say that teachers don't need to learn how to teach. They do. But states should be open to different ways of learning, apart from one-size-fits-all preparation programs.

Now, there's been some real confusion about alternate routes to full certification, as opposed to alternative certification programs. The former, as I just described, would be alternate ways for individuals to receive full certification before they set foot in the classroom.

But what about programs that allow teachers to gain their certification while on the job? Are those allowed by No Child Left Behind? They are, but under our regulations, they must ensure that their candidates receive professional development before and during their service; they must provide an induction or mentoring experience; they must last less than three years; and candidates must be making steady progress toward certification, in order for these teachers to be considered highly qualified.

These regulations are meant to ensure that teachers are in true alternative certification programs, and to guard against the chance that some states might have redefined their "emergency certification" teachers as "alternative certification" teachers without actually changing a thing. The regulations are necessary because these teachers are not yet certified when they start teaching.

These small nuances between alternate routes to certification and alternative certification programs are extremely important. Think of the consequences for a program like Teach for America (TFA) that brings talented people into the profession straight from liberal arts programs.

If your state adopts a system like the American Board's, then TFA teachers could take and pass its assessment and be considered fully certified and highly qualified before setting foot in the classroom. Case closed. End of story.

If your state does not adopt those kinds of alternate routes to full certification, but does allow alternative certification programs for teachers not yet certified, then TFA teachers will need to enroll in one of those programs in order to be considered highly qualified.

That might work OK, but we hear that many of these programs are expensive, and sometimes not as useful as they could be. If talented people making a starting teacher's salary are paying big bucks out of their pocket to stay enrolled in an alternative certification program, and then not getting much out of it, this is likely to deter many of them from staying, or coming to your state in the first place.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't mean to discourage you from putting alternative certification programs in place. My Office is in charge of the Transition to Teaching program, which supports many of these programs around the nation. But I would encourage you not to stop there. Be bold. Consider whether you can create routes to full certification for highly talented people, people with strong academic skills, perhaps with specific experiences working with children, but routes that will make it more likely for these people to say "yes" to teaching.

And to be clear: nothing in No Child Left Behind precludes you from being bold on certification. In fact, it gives you a wonderful opportunity to think big, and we hope you take it.

Keeping Good Teachers

I'm almost out of time, and I've focused most of my comments on the front end of teaching: preparing and certifying new teachers. Before I step down, I do want to say a few words about keeping good teachers in our schools.

As I said at the beginning, the key to keeping good teachers is running good schools. But how can we do that?

One way is to adopt specific models that have been thoughtfully designed to support teachers' growth and development. One of my favorites--and I'm not just saying this because it is a sponsor--is the Milken Foundation's Teacher Advancement Project. It demands that teachers be treated as professionals, and allows them to keep growing without forcing them to leave the classroom.

Another way is to adopt governance arrangements that make it more likely that the school climate for teachers and children will be a positive one. That's one of the important reasons we're so bullish about charter schools, properly implemented, because the freedom they enjoy can allow positive school cultures to flourish.

Maybe the most important thing we can do is to develop strong school leaders. We know from years of experience and research that so much of a school's success is riding on its principal. As I stated before, we can't principal-proof our school reform efforts. We need to develop strong leaders who know how to support their teachers, and then we need to let them do their jobs.

The No Child Left Behind Act provides important resources to support these kinds of efforts, especially through Title II, which funds important efforts in teacher quality and leadership development. But perhaps the most important thing the Act does is to create a sense of urgency.

If we're going to leave no child behind, we're going to need to do things differently. We're going to need to bring new kinds of people into the classroom and give them better support and development opportunities once they are there. We're going to need to empower our school leaders, and hold them accountable for results. And we're going to need to let old habits die when they've outlived their purpose, and we're going to need the courage to forge new ones in their place.

Thank you.

Top