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Education Department eases stand on teacher quality

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Changing course, the Education Department will allow states to count teachers as highly qualified even under standards that may do little to ensure quality.

Federal law allows veteran teachers to be considered highly qualified under factors that states choose, such as job evaluations, teaching awards or service on school committees. The department in May ordered states to phase out that system for most teachers. Watchdog groups and the department itself say many states were using this system to set weak, improper standards.

Yet Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has pulled back, telling states this week in a letter that they now are "strongly encouraged," though not required, to stop using the method to rate teachers. The change could affect tens of thousands of teachers who have not met the conditions of the No Child Left Behind Act. Otherwise, teachers would have to demonstrate competence by holding academic majors or passing tests in every subject they teach.

The department says timing is the reason for the change. Coming up with a regulation to enforce the change could take a year or more, department spokesman Chad Colby said Thursday. Instead, the agency plans to ask Congress to make the change when it renews the law. That is scheduled to happen next year, but may be delayed.

A lobbyist for the nation's largest teachers union said department leaders are turning to Congress because "they don't have the authority to do what they wanted to do." The National Education Association considers Spellings' letter a victory. The union opposed phasing out an option that could help teachers in many circumstances, such as when teachers change districts or assignments. The NEA also says the law protects the option anyway.

Lobbyist Joel Packer said the department for years has issued inconsistent guidance on what states can do. "I think they've created part of the problem, just a real level of confusion," he said. Most states have used the option in question -- called the "high objective uniform state standard of evaluation," or HOUSSE. It was meant to offer flexibility to veteran teachers. Yet in her letter, Spellings admonishes some states for allowing teachers to be deemed highly qualified without making them prove they know their subjects. "I urge you to re-examine your HOUSSE procedures to ensure that this is not the case in your state," she wrote to state school chiefs. "Our students and parents deserve no less."

President Bush's education law says teachers are highly qualified when they have a bachelor's degree, a state license and proven competency in every subject they teach. States were supposed to have a highly qualified teacher in every core academic class by the end of the last school year. None met that deadline, so each must try again this year. About 90 percent of teachers are highly qualified, states say, although numbers vary widely across the states.

Meanwhile, about half the states are phasing out their use of a uniform state standard to rate teachers, Colby said. But Packer said that trend was driven in part by urging from the department, and that the latest letter may encourage states to keep the option.