‘Highly Qualified’ Victory

Title I paraprofessionals’ deadline is pushed back to the end of the school year.

by Alain Jehlen

Paraprofessionals in Title I schools will have several extra months to meet the “highly qualified” rules of the so-called No Child Left Behind  law (NCLB), thanks to an NEA campaign that included grassroots pressure and an intense national lobbying effort.

“I’m ecstatic,” says Paula Monroe, an education support professional member of the NEA Board of Directors  who helped pushed for the change.

Under NCLB, instructional paras in the federally funded Title I program must have an associate’s degree or two years of college, or pass a rigorous test or local assessment.

The new ruling doesn’t change that standard, but it pushes the deadline back from January 8, 2006, to the end of the 2005–06 school year, which is the deadline for teachers to meet their own highly qualified requirements.

“It’s a huge change for the paras who have not yet had a chance to meet the new standard, for our teachers who work with them, and for their students,” says Monroe.

The extra time, she says, will help many paras reach the new federal academic standards. Those standards—two years of college or the equivalent—are much higher than the standards under which many paras were hired. And paras had to qualify very fast.

“If you started [taking courses] when you first found out about the law in 2002, your chance of finishing in time would be slim to none,” Monroe points out. “You would practically have to go to school full-time while you also work full-time.”

Some districts, including Prince George’s County in Maryland, had already told paras they would have to move to jobs in non-Title I schools if they were not “highly qualified” by July 1, to avoid shifting people in the middle of the school year.

“Some people could have had to drive many miles to new jobs,” says Wanda Newman, a chapter rep for 1,100 Prince George’s County paras, including 600 Title I paras. “They were very upset. Some don’t have cars because paras are underpaid.” Newman read about the deadline extension on the NEA ESP listserv. She spread the news, and union staffer Adolfo Botello got the school administration to rescind the transfers.

NEA lobbyist Steve Nousen says the federal Department of Education  has been extremely reluctant to change NCLB rules, but this time it bowed to bipartisan pressure from Congress.

The leaders of that effort included two Republicans from Idaho, Rep. Michael Simpson and Sen. Mike Crapo , both of whom were endorsed by NEA when they ran for office. The change was announced in a letter from a federal education official to Rep. Simpson, saying, “your suggestion is reasonable and practical” and promising that the deadline would be pushed back.

“Rep. Simpson and Sen. Crapo are public school graduates and good advocates for public education,” says former Idaho Education Association  President Kathy Phelan. “We disagree with them on many things, but they are open and accessible, and when we find points of agreement, they are willing to spend their political capital to get things done. ”

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