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No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB)

NCLB NYS
Field Memo
#08-2003 

Print Field Memo #08-2003 as  or PDF or WORD

This field memo explains the New York State Education Department's policy on using the “high objective uniform State standard of evaluation” to determine whether a teacher is “highly qualified” for Basic Educational Data System (BEDS) reports due in fall 2003.

Fall 2003 BEDS

The New York State Education Department (SED) is required to submit a State Consolidated Application to the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) each September in order to receive funds under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. In this year's application, which was due on September 1, SED was required to report on the following performance indicators for teacher quality:

• the percentage of classes in core academic subjects taught by highly qualified teachers, as defined by the NCLB (in the aggregate and for high-poverty schools);

• the percentage of teachers of core academic subjects receiving high-quality professional development, as defined by the NCLB; and

• the percentage of Title I paraprofessionals who are “qualified” as defined by the NCLB.

SED has been issuing guidance about the NCLB's requirements for teachers and paraprofessionals for over a year and asking local educational agencies (LEAs) to ensure that they were complying with the NCLB's requirements in their local consolidated applications for NCLB funds. However, SED did not have the required data on teacher quality to submit to the USDOE this fall. SED did not begin collecting the required NCLB data in fall 2002 because it did not have final guidance and definitions from the USDOE until December 2002 and was consulting until this summer with the Committee of Practitioners, as required by the NCLB, to finalize its State definitions.

To indicate that New York State is moving toward full compliance with the NCLB's reporting requirements on teacher quality, New York's 2003-2004 State consolidated application to the USDOE indicated that SED will be collecting the data required by the NCLB starting in fall 2003. SED alerted school districts about BEDS changes in the School Executives Bulletin issued in summer 2003 that is available at http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/SB/sum03site/whatsnewa03.html .

Several changes to the Basic Educational Data System (BEDS) in fall 2003 were needed to comply with the NCLB.

• Two data elements were added to the BEDS Personnel Master File (PMF) forms completed by teachers.

-- One new item asks each teacher to report whether he or she received high-quality professional development, as defined by the NCLB, in school year 2002-2003, the prior school year. We recommend that the LEA school should identify for teachers the professional development activities that would qualify as high quality.

-- Each teacher is asked to indicate whether he or she is highly qualified for each teaching assignment in a core academic subject that the teacher reports. As needed for specific teaching assignments that SED cannot identify as “core” or “not core,” such as teaching assignments in Career and Technical Education, teachers are asked to indicate whether their teaching assignments are “not core.”

• There is a new Report on Title I Paraprofessionals for each district as a supplement to the Institutional Master File (IMF) reports.

• Each LEA was asked to submit a form to assure SED that the BEDS data submitted by its teachers for NCLB purposes is accurate.


Scheduling Problem and Policy Response

SED understands that LEAs did not have enough time to use the “high objective uniform State standard of evaluation” (HOUSSE) for veteran teachers, as described in NCLB NYS Field Memo #05-2003, between August 1, when the HOUSSE could first be used, and the fall 2003 BEDS reporting date. To address this scheduling problem, we have made the following policy decisions as we move to full compliance to implement the NCLB.

• LEAs that used a HOUSSE conducted on the basis of NCLB NYS Field Memo #05-2003 have completed the process for those teachers and that should be reflected on the fall 2003 BEDS forms.

• LEAs that used the interim guidance to conduct HOUSSE for their teachers based upon NCLB NYS Field Memo #01-2002 may also report those teachers as highly qualified in the fall 2003 BEDS reports. However, teachers evaluated under the interim guidance must be re-evaluated during the 2003-2004 academic year using the final SED guidance in NCLB NYS Field Memo #05-2003 for determining whether their teachers are highly qualified. This information would then be reported in the fall 2004 BEDS forms.

• When the Department publishes information for the school report cards, it will provide a complete explanation of the change in the standards for determining whether teachers are highly qualified under HOUSSE and that such changes created fluctuation in the data submitted by the districts. The Department will make it clear that these changes were not based upon a diminution of the quality of teachers in a district, but a change in how teachers were to be evaluated as highly qualified under federal guidance.

• In the next several years, SED's public reports on teacher quality based on BEDS data will explain that indicators of certified teachers are more reliable than indicators of highly qualified teachers because the definition of highly qualified teachers for the NCLB was not consistent in the first two years of data collection.

Further Information

You can find further information about fall 2003 BEDS changes at http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/beds2003-04/home.html. You can find further information about the NCLB's requirements for teachers and paraprofessionals in NCLB NYS Field Memos available at http://www.highered.nysed.gov/nclbhome.htm. You can also write to nclbnys@mail.nysed.gov to get answers to your specific questions.

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