Highly Qualified Teacher Status under No Child Left Behind

["Ann S. Mabbott" <Amabbott@nospam.gw.hamline.edu>]

You may be hearing references to Highly Qualified Status and ESL teachers. This 
email will attempt to clarify the issues as well as we can at the present time.

The No Child Left Behind Act (2001) requires that all teachers be highly 
qualified in the content area that they teach. In Minnesota, we have a strong 
ESL license, and all people holding that license are automatically highly 
qualified as ESL teachers.

However, in the past, some ESL teachers have been given assignments in the 
schools for which they are not highly qualified.  There are some cases where 
ESL licensed teachers are teaching social studies, math or science courses for 
graduation requirements, and they are not licensed in those areas. That has 
never been allowed, and schools that made those assignments were out of 
compliance with state licensure rules.
 ESL teachers can provide support for any content area, but they cannot be the 
sole teacher of that content without credentials.  

An alternative credentialing process, known as HOUSSE, has been set up by the 
Minnesota Department of Education that will allow teachers with coursework 
and/or teaching experience in a content area to become highly qualified in a 
non-ESL content area.  Many ESL teachers are currently going through that 
assessment process, and many of them will be deemed highly qualified in a 
variety of content areas through that process. 

The issue gets more complicated when we start speaking of reading and language 
arts, since those are areas that ESL teachers typically teach, but in which 
they are not licensed.  We are currently working with the Minnesota Department 
of Education and MinneTESOL to get clarification.  I will keep you up to date 
on new developments as they occur.

Schools are still required to hire licensed ESL teachers.  They may have to 
modify their teaching assignments to be in compliance with both Minnesota 
Department of Education and federal requirements.

If you have questions, contact me at amabbott@nospam.hamline.edu or 
651-523-2446.

Ann Mabbott, Ph.D.
Director, Center for Second Language Teaching and Learning
Hamline University
651-523-2446
Graduate School of Education