Title II of NCLB designates federal funds to educational agencies for the purpose of improving the student achievement through the professional development of highly qualified teachers and principals.
[3] The sections of NCLB designated to HQTs allocates the majority of the funds to the states and does not clearly define at the federal level what is and what is not a highly qualified teacher, allowing for more local definitions of this term.
[5] Title II of No Child Left Behind aimed to have a highly qualified teacher in every classroom in the United States by 2005.
[2] When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was first created, Title II was known as the Eisenhower Mathematics and Science Regional Consortiums Program.
In particular, the Eisenhower Program focused on the professional development of math and science teachers, as the findings of A Nation at Risk indicated that the United States was falling drastically behind the rest of the world in these fields.
[7] This report, issued by former President Ronald Reagan, made a series of recommendations to improve the quality of education across the United States based on its findings.
[8] Reauthorization through the Eisenhower Program built off of the recommendations of the Nation At Risk Report and expanded the focus of professional development to include all core subject areas.
The original goals of the program were to support the professional development of teachers of core subject, target those teachers who teach "at-risk" students, integrate other reform efforts to ensure all aspect of the education system were geared toward the same goals, and track the progress of states and local education agencies against a series of performance indicators.
[15] When the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was reauthorized as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001, it called for major improvements in teacher quality across the board.
Indeed, the 2001 act included statues that required for 100% of core subject classes be taught by highly qualified teachers by the close of the 2005–2006 academic year.
[16] According to NCLB, a highly qualified teacher must have "1) a bachelor's degree, 2) full state certification or licensure, and 3) prove that they know each subject they teach."
Some scholars point out that "from a practical standpoint, interstate differences in what it meant to be certified provided the federal government with few assurances that, across the board, the nations' teachers were qualified to teach".
According to the National Commission on Teaching and America's future, HQTs should "graduate from accredited institutions, pass licensing examinations that include both content and performance components, and be certified when they obtain advanced levels of competence".
Ultimately, while the Department of Education may state 97% coverage of HQTs in core content classrooms, the true meaning of "qualified" remains vague and transient.