Joe Booker

 

               According to an article by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, a high qualified teacher is defined as having teaching experience, teacher content knowledge, and teacher certification as a proxy for pedagogical knowledge, teacher salary, and the teacher’s attainment of a master degree.  While this is what the article stated, there are many different opinions and stances on this topic. A qualified teacher shouldn’t be based on experience they have, it should be based on productivity and how students react to the teachings. Good teaching makes children not only learn the material, but also makes them better people. A good teacher should be caring, motivating, and engaging. High qualified teachers should have more than a few years of experience and a strong grasp of the content and knowledge needed to teach the core academic subjects traditional teaching certificates such as a masters or higher. The NCLB limits the definition of teacher quality to 3 aspects of teaching; a bachelor’s degree, content knowledge, and based on assessment of content knowledge and a background check, a traditional or alternative teaching certificate, it is important to examine whether in fact the current definition of highly qualified teacher captures all that it means to be a highly qualified teacher.

A teacher is the single most influential determinate of increased student achievement; Because of this qualified teacher should possess experience, the only way you can be good at something is practice, the more you teach the better you will be at teaching. By teaching you figure out what does and doesn’t work, which makes you better qualified because you know what to do and what not to do. To meet the requirements established by the no child left behind act, they should make the opportunity available to get alternative certificates. These certificates provide knowledge to teachers so they are able to produce sufficient results on standardize tests. Students from rural or urban schools are at a disadvantage because of the lack of teaching but the no child left behind act is pushing unqualified teachers to be more qualified. Overall I believe that instead of focusing on what a qualified teacher is, we should help the teachers in the rural and urban schools because they need the most support, because they are not all officially qualified. This will help the no child left behind act be more efficient by helping the students who need education the most.