May 13, 2006 – Unless the four crucial entities – the V.I. Education Department, the Board of Education, the University of the Virgin Islands and the local American Federation of Teachers – find a way to cooperate, it could be a long time before the Virgin Islands meets the criteria set by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB).
That is the message Education Commissioner Noreen Michael hoped to get across when she invited officials from the U. S. Department of Education and the Regional Comprehensive Center for Florida and the Islands to be part of a summit to address mandatory components of the act. (The center, one of 16 regional centers funded by USDOE, is charged with helping low-performing districts and schools close achievement gaps and meet the goals of NCLB.)
Michael said at the summit held Friday at Marriott Frenchman's Reef, "I want everyone [i.e., the local officials of the four entities] to know how serious these requirements are."
Jeanette Lim, deputy assistant secretary for Operations and Planning at USDOE, opened the summit by presenting a review of the requirements of the Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) components.
She then stressed the requirements' importance: "HQT data must be consistent and reliable," adding, "Millions of dollars rely upon it."
Furthermore, Lim pointed out that only teachers who are HQT certified can have their salaries paid with federal dollars.
Salaries are not much of an issue for the territory, whose grants mostly cover programs as opposed to salaries. However, granting, in general, is in jeopardy if the NCLB requirements aren't met.
According to Education Human Resources Director Alscess Lewis Brown, part of the logjam in certifying teachers as required by No Child Left Behind exists at the Board of Education.
Brown noted that for three years the board has been sitting on recommendations for certification requirements under the act. Brown said, "Education sent its recommendations for the High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation (HOUSSE) to the board in 2003. They made a few changes and sent it back Wednesday."
The HOUSSE is a mechanism to certify veteran teachers that can be established by each state or territory but then must be approved by the federal Education Department. It is a way to assure that teachers who have been in the system for awhile meet subject-matter competency – one of the HQT components under the act.
Years of service and experience are not enough to satisfy the HQT requirement. Six different areas are part of the HOUSSE evaluation process, which include college-level course work, years of teaching experience with satisfactory or better performance, professional development in content area, service to the profession, scholarship and recognition in the content area, and student achievement and performance evaluation.
Keith Richards, vice chairman of the Education board's certification committee, admitted the board had been slow to process the HOUSSE recommendations sent to the board three years ago. Richards noted that, in wake of NCLB, the board had hoped to work with the university to develop an alternative assessment strategy. "But that never really happened," he said.
Another component for evaluation used in other jurisdictions is the Praxis II examination. But the Praxis II has not been validated in the Virgin Islands, Richards said in a phone interview after the summit.
Though it is required for new teachers under NCLB, the Virgin Islands still needs to bring in the Praxis administrators who establish the passing score appropriate to the particular jurisdiction. Richards said there was no doubt that the territory was going to have to "get validated."
He was also confident that the HOUSSE developed by the Virgin Islands will be approved. Richards, who said he had reviewed HOUSSEs used by other states, feels the V.I. criteria is even more demanding than many other jurisdictions.
Education Department administrators feel in general the certification process would be better handled at their end. The Board of Education has only two people in the territory going through teacher files. According to Richards, the two manage to review about 40 files a month.
Some of the long-term teacher files are "huge," he said. Both sides agreed that Education was in a better position to handle the reviews.
Board of Education member Terrence D. Joseph said during a break at the summit, "They have more resources to do it."
It was suggested that Education could review the files initially and then send its recommendations to the board for certification.
Local 1825 of the American Federation of Teachers (St. Thomas-St. John District) is the third entity that must come to table in order to meet NCLB mandates. The union's president, Vernelle de Lagarde, said the union isn't taking sides on the certification issue.
"It doesn't matter to us who does it as long as they are able to do a thorough assessment," de Lagarde said. But she did express concern that the certification process was too slow. "At 40 a month, we'll be here until 2010," she said.
Although de Lagarde had not been invited to sit on the panel, she later offered some insight into how the union helps and wants to continue to help teachers in the certification process.
She said teachers are told up front by union representatives what the evaluation process is going to be – how they will be graded. She said 70 percent of the evaluation has to do with classroom performance.
Speaking on behalf of UVI, Provost Al Hassan Mussah said it was part of UVI's Vision 2012 to turn out teachers who "can walk into the classroom and do what's required of them."
Richards said Friday night that the disconnect that once existed between the university and the board – namely that the board had credit requirements for certifications that couldn't be acquired at UVI – had been removed.
He said the board and UVI had reached an agreement that any teacher graduating from the UVI education program would automatically be certified. In return, Richards said, UVI had agreed to upgrade some of its systems.
However, there is still a legislative fly in the ointment. In 1995 the V.I. Senate passed a bill that required all new teachers to pass the Praxis I tests, which measure basic academic skills. (The Praxis II tests measure general and subject-specific knowledge and teaching skills, according to the Praxis Web site.)
In her detailed but abbreviated Power Point presentation, Brown outlined the current status of HQTs in the territory.
On St. Croix, only 33 percent of teachers meet the HQT requirements. But of the 67 percent that do not, 24 percent hold expired certifications, 56 percent are teaching their area of expertise, and 19 percent are teaching out of their fields.
In the St. Thomas-St. John District, 40 percent meet the HQT mandates. According to Brown, of the 60 percent that do not meet mandates, 20 percent have expired certifications, 57 percent are teaching in their area of expertise, and 15 percent are teaching out of their fields. The remaining 8 percent fall into some other category, which can include insufficient credential information having been provided.
Lim said more than once that U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is in favor of using student assessments to grade teachers. But that, too, presents problems in the territory, which consistently does poorly on standardized tests.
Whatever evaluations are used, the territory is under the gun, along with the states, to meet the requirements of the NCLB act.
The 50 U.S. states are mandated to have 100 percent of teachers meet the HQT requirement by Dec. 31. Lim was vague about when the territories would be required to meet the 100-percent mark.
Richards said few of the states are "there." He said he expected that the requirements were going to have to be renegotiated on a state-by-state basis.
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iday morning's summit – which included breakout sessions – ended with suggestions on how to meet the mandates and the needs of the students. Many, if not most, of the suggestions involved the four entities working together to provide and support professional development opportunities for teachers.
However, it was noted that teachers need to take responsibility for themselves, too. "If you take a workshop, you need to get it into your professional development file," Brown said.
Others said many administrators and teachers avoid taking courses and attending seminars, saying they don't have time. But Gloria Gawrych, state professional development coordinator, brought the whole matter into perspective during one of the breakout sessions. "You can have all the certificates … but what about the kids?"
The other component of Friday's summit was the data requirement of the NCLB act.
By the end of the morning session there was at least some indication – as Michael's had hoped – that the key players could come to the table together to work out a plan to get teachers qualified under the act and to improve education in the territory.
The afternoon session addressed how to gather data and report it along with discussion of the Territorial Report Card.
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