Defining “highly qualified”

When you ask Americans to describe the qualities of a good teacher, what you'll hear tends to be pretty consistent:  good teachers engage their students; they respect and relate to their students personally; they find creative ways to make course material relevant; and they hold their students to high standards - while conveying a faith in their students' ability that justifies those high standards. The idea that a good teacher should "know the material" is just assumed.

But under NCLB, a "highly qualified teacher" is primarily one who has demonstrated that he or she "knows stuff" - enough stuff to pass their own standardized test in the relevant subject area. 

While "knowing stuff" will always be important - you can't teach Chemistry unless you understand it - this "highly qualified” designation unfortunately says nothing about the aforementioned characteristics of good teaching; nothing about the ability to teach. This is particularly true at the secondary level, where for many years the emphasis has been on content knowledge.

This is what concerns me about a current proposal to increase support for alternative-certification for teachers, particularly since it’s based on the premise that a “Nobel laureate might not be qualified to teach in a public school today.”  Well, let’s consider the possibility that our hypothetical Nobel laureate isn’t qualified to teach.  Has not nearly every college student had the experience of sitting in a lecture hall listening to an obviously brilliant professor – who nevertheless bored them to tears?

It’s one thing to be in favor of having “highly qualified” teachers for every student.  It’s another thing to define that in a meaningful way.