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?a <br />has a number of schools not meeting the Adequate Yearly Progress <br />accountability requirements. <br />ISSUE: NCLB requires all teachers to be highly qualified in the content area in <br />which they are assigned to teach. While simplistic in theory, this requirement is <br />problematic in practice, since teachers must either attain certification in multiple <br />subject areas or receive alternative credit for additional subject areas through a <br />process that is tedious and difficult for school administrators to utilize efficiently. <br />Special education teachers are most affected by this requirement, since they <br />must teach multiple subjects to students with learning disabilities. The <br />requirement may ultimately cause North Carolina's short supply of teachers, <br />particularly those with expertise in special education, to dwindle further, causing <br />additional hardships for our school systems and our students. <br />RECOMMENDATION: Teachers should be given the opportunity to show their <br />expertise in the areas in which they will be teaching or already have been <br />teaching beyond their major, and the process for awarding credit for <br />demonstrated skills should be simplified. <br />In a related matter, personnel administrators have concerns over the 24 <br />college credit hours in a content area required for classification as a highly <br />qualified teacher. Many wonder why 18 hours is not sufficient for highly qualified <br />status, since that amount satisfies the add-on licensure process in North <br />Carolina. Personnel administrators also request clarifications to determine what <br />24 hours of credit are appropriate to count, when evaluating a teacher's <br />qualifications. Above all, personnel administrators ask for more time from the <br />federal government to collect, analyze and report on data to determine if a <br />teacher is highly qualified, This is especially true, since the supporting <br />documents that are required for meeting the highly qualified status are difficult, or <br />almost impossible, to locate in some circumstances. Many personnel directors <br />have expressed frustration that the National Teacher Examination (NTE) scores <br />from 10 to 15 years ago are not available for the teachers currently involved in <br />the hiring process, thus making the highly qualified status unattainable for some <br />of our state's most experienced teachers. <br />ISSUE: Requiring North Carolina teachers to increase their credit hours from 18 <br />to 24 in one content area in order to gain "highly qualified" status under NCLB <br />may be a costly mandate that will exacerbate North Carolina's teacher shortage, <br />which already has reached a crisis stage. <br />RECOMMENDATION: The U.S. Department of Education should <br />guidelines offering direction on what credit hours may count toward the <br />quailed" requirements for teachers and allow some flexibility in credit <br />requirements to honor existing state licensure and reciprocity policies.