Highly qualified teachers should know not only the subject matter they are teaching, but how to present the material in an engaging manner. Many teachers have thorough knowledge of their subject, but cannot get that information across to others, making them useless as teachers.
- The metrics of defining what "highly qualified" are sticky and have consequences. For instance, my mother has a MS in Special Education, and she may not get a contract with a school district this upcoming school year because she is too expensive for principals with limited budgets to hire. In fact, they hire newly graduated special education teachers who have little teaching experience. While teaching experience does play into a teacher's pay, a graduate degree really makes a teacher more expensive to hire. Is it my mother's fault that back in the 1970s special education teachers had to have graduate degrees to even qualify for a special ed position? Is it my mother's fault that she has teaching experience? Is it principals' fault that they have to put financial concerns in front of hiring "highly qualified" teachers to run their classrooms?--Anhhung18901 20:33, 7 July 2006 (UTC)