Equitable Distribution of Highly Qualified and Effective Teaching
Improving Teacher Quality State Grants – ESEA/NCLB Title II A
USDOE emphasis on equitable distribution of highly qualified teaching
In October 2005, Secretary Spellings sent a letter 
to every State’s Chief School Officer, acknowledging that most States seemed unlikely to reach the initial NCLB goal of 100% highly qualified teaching (HQT) by the end of the 2005-06 school year. In this letter, the Secretary indicated that States would not lose federal funds if USDOE was able to determine that a State was making a good-faith effort to reach the HQT goal in NCLB as soon as possible. The Department’s criteria for good-faith efforts were:
- The State’s definition of a highly qualified teacher is consistent with NCLB law and is used to determine the status of all its teachers;
- States and districts provide parents and the public with accurate, complete reports on the number and percentage of classes in core academic subjects taught by highly qualified teachers;
- States submit complete and accurate data to the U.S. Secretary of Education on their implementation of the HQT requirements, including reporting of differences between high poverty/minority schools and low poverty/minority schools; and
- States take action to ensure that inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers do not teach poor or minority children at higher rates than other children.
Required State plans to achieve equitable distribution of highly qualified teachers
All States were subsequently required to submit, by July 2006, a plan detailing the specific steps the State would take to reach the HQT goal in the 2006-07 school year. States were “…expected to pay particular attention to staffing schools identified as ‘in need of improvement’ and those with high concentrations of poor and disadvantaged students with highly qualified and effective teachers”.
New York’s revised State Plan to Enhance Teacher Quality (re-submitted in September 2006) was approved by USDOE. The plan outlines New York’s strategies and activities to ensure that all students have access to highly qualified and effective teaching.
New York State’s equity gap, 2006-07
While New York’s teaching equity gap shows modest improvement from prior years, it continues to be a significant challenge, especially at the secondary level, where students in high poverty/minority schools were 13.2% more likely, in 2006-07, to experience not-highly-qualified teaching of a core academic subject than were students in low poverty/minority schools.
National HQT and equitable distribution charts (2006-07 data) (click on MS Excel Data Tables, May 2008)
Progress Report on Highly Qualified Teachers – Report to the Higher Education Committee of the Board of Regents, April 2008 (‘Word’ version brings up a more readable version of the tables)
Highly Qualified Teachers in NYS districts and schools (based 2006-07 data)