Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Twenty-eight percent of Utah educators didn't make the grade in meeting federal standards for teaching core academic subjects during the 2004-05 school year.
The federal No Child Left Behind Act sets standards for teacher quality to ensure students can meet the law's reading and math benchmarks by 2014.
Only 72 percent of Utah teachers met the "highly qualified" requirement, according to a recent review by the U.S. Department of Education. To be "highly qualified," a teacher must have majored in each core subject they are teaching.
That's proven tough for many educators, including special education teachers and those teaching in rural schools.
The core academic subjects include language arts, math, science, social studies, the arts and foreign language.
School districts nationwide were supposed to meet all the NCLB teaching standards by this spring.
USDE officials said, however, that Utah is making a good-faith effort to meet standards and that percentages are increasing. During the 2003-04 school year only 69 percent of teachers were "highly qualified."
Utah's State Office of Education, which has posted the results of the evaluation online, said parents shouldn't worry and all teachers meet state licensing standards.
"These are federal standards," said Larry Shumway, state director of educator quality and licensing. "As a parent, I think it's useful information, but always in the context of what I know about my local school and my child's teacher."
The data shows teacher marks vary in Utah schools -- whether district or charter, low-income or affluent, rural or urban, elementary or secondary.
Four charter schools, for example have no "highly qualified" teachers among their faculty. And in rural Emery County, 91.4 percent of elementary school teachers met the federal standard, while only 43.6 percent of teachers did at secondary schools.
State schools that receive Title I funding -- earmarked for low-income schools -- must notify parents when a teacher fails to meet the federal standard.
In a letter to Utah's State Superintendent of Public Instruction Patti Harrington, the education department said it appeared no state would meet the current goals. The letter directed states to revamp their efforts and set spring of 2007 as a new compliance deadline.
(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
