The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) stipulates that intervention specialists must meet HQT status by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) aligns with NCLB to have highly qualified teachers. Intervention specialists assigned as the teacher of record must demonstrate competence in the core academic subjects being taught.

Teachers holding special education certificates or licenses may receive 45 clock hours toward the content course requirement for HQT for each OMAP or OSCI program completed. Special educators should enroll for the OMAP or OSCI most closely aligned with the content they teach. For more information concerning HQT requirements, please click here.

The Ohio Mathematics Academy Program and the Ohio Science Institute are professional development opportunities for mathematic and science educators of students in grades 7-10 as well as for special education and inclusion teachers, and those needing content certification in order to meet the NCLB highly qualified teacher requirement. These academies provide teachers with the opportunity to network with others across their region to build professional learning communities. The goals of these professional development opportunities are to:

• Improve the capacity of Ohio's teachers to implement the mathematic and science academic content standards
• Develop deeper mathematics and science content knowledge
• Model best practices and research-based, content-specific pedagogy
• Develop understanding of Ohio's assessments

If a special education teacher needs to meet the highly qualified definition in more than one academic content area, then 45 clock hours devoted to pedagogy is only required one time and may be combined with the 45 hours in each content area to equal the 90 clock hour requirement.

ADDITIONAL FACTS ABOUT HQT

To Meet The "Highly Qualified" Definition:

All teachers must: Be fully licensed or certified by the state, and not have had any certification or licensure requirements waived on an emergency, temporary, or provisional basis.

New elementary teachers must: Have at least a bachelor's degree, and pass a state test demonstrating subject knowledge and teaching skills in reading, writing, mathematics, and other areas of any basic elementary school curriculum

New middle or secondary teachers must: Have at least a bachelor's degree, and demonstrate competency in each of the academic subjects taught, or complete an academic major or coursework equivalent to a major, or a graduate degree in each of the academic areas in which the teacher teaches, or

Advanced certification Existing elementary, middle, and secondary teachers must: Have at least a bachelor's degree, and meet the requirements for new teachers described above, or demonstrate competency in all subjects taught. (A uniform state evaluation standard is to be used to judge competency.)

The evaluation standard must provide objective information about the teacher's knowledge in the subject taught and can consider, but not use as a primary criterion, time spent teaching the subject.

The evaluation standard must be applied uniformly to all teachers in the same subject and grade level throughout the state.