Defining Highly Qualified.

The article presents an interview of Michael Petrilli, vice president for national programs and policy at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation. In response to a question on the provisions of defining a highly qualified teachers, he said that with the highly qualified teachers provision, the U.S. has gone back to old-fashioned, top-down regulation focused on paper credentials instead of on student learning. When asked about how to fix this system, he replied that the best way to figure out who is effective is to look at the gains students make over time and reward those teachers.