A deal reached on Utah teacher qualifications

The state Wednesday brokered a deal with the U.S. Department of Education, making it so hardly any veteran elementary school teachers will have to go back to college to be considered "highly qualified" to do their jobs under No Child Left Behind.

But it looks as if only parts of Utah's testing and school accountability system, U-PASS, could be used to meet NCLB requirements, state officials said. That issue, however, is still up in the air.

The highly qualified teacher concession comes as two Utah bills challenging NCLB await final Senate debate and as the National Conference of State Legislatures released recommendations on how the controversial federal law might better achieve its mission.

NCLB aims to have all children, regardless of race, disability or family income, reading and doing math well by 2014.

Educators call the goal laudable but unrealistically inflexible.

And lawmakers call the mandates federal intrusion.

HB135, sponsored by Rep. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, basically would give Utah's educational goals priority over NCLB. The similar HJR3, sponsored by Rep. Kory Holdaway, R-Taylorsville, states Utah's U-PASS accountability system meets the spirit of NCLB.

The bills are tamer than Dayton's NCLB opt-out bill carried last year, drawing federal officials to Utah's Capitol Hill to lay out consequences of losing $106 million in federal funding.

But they've apparently rattled chains in Washington, D.C. State school bosses say federal officials seemed more willing to negotiate once the bills received overwhelming House support.

Now there's agreement, announced in a joint news release Wednesday evening, that Utah's teacher licensing rules meet NCLB's highly qualified teacher standards.

That means 95 percent of Utah's elementary school teachers are considered highly qualified, as opposed to just 50 percent under the previous interpretation of the law.

But it's looking like federal officials won't OK Utah to entirely use U-PASS, which gives credit for student growth instead of a specific test score, for NCLB. Instead, Tim Bridgewater, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s education deputy, is trying to strike middle ground in a sort of hybrid model. An agreement could be reached in the next couple of days.