This week, NCTQ released the first of several state report cards,
entitled Necessary and Insufficient: Resisting a Full Measure of
Teacher Quality. Authored by NCTQ policy analyst Christopher O. Tracy
and president Kate Walsh, the report evaluates and grades the progress
of twenty randomly selected states toward meeting No Child Left
Behind’s teacher quality mandates. We were particularly interested in
finding out if states are serious about implementing the law’s most
demanding new requirement: making sure that teachers know their
subject matter.
Our conclusion was that apart from a handful of states that have done
a decent job of setting standards that comply with the spirit of the
law, the approach of many states can best be described as indifferent
and at times disdainful of the problem at hand. States provide
teachers with a menu of activities, from which teachers can select
certain activities to prove they know their subject matter. Many of
these activities at best tortuously relate to subject matter
competency. The approved options from which teachers may choose
include attending a state convention, heading an academic club,
mentoring a new teacher, taking an educational technology course or
learning how to better manage the classroom.
The final grades were as follows:
- Illinois: A
- Oregon: B+
- Alabama: B+
- Ohio: B
- Kentucky: B-
- New Mexico: C
- Oklahoma: C
- Georgia: C
- New Hampshire: C
- Maryland: C
- North Carolina: C-
- Tennessee: D+
- West Virginia: D+
- New York: D
- Louisiana: D-
- Michigan: F
- California: F
- Virginia: F
- South Carolina: F
- Idaho: Incomplete