Review of LEAs’ Consolidated Applications

Georgia DOE Responsibilities for Title II, Part A Technical Assistance

The Title II, Part A consultants work with the DOE School Improvement teams to prioritize the delivery of technical assistance to schools not meeting AYP with the highest percentage of non-HQT. LEAs will provide evidence as to why the school system hired a teacher not highly qualified for a school not meeting AYP, and determine what the school system plans to do to assure that the teacher becomes highly qualified in a timely manner. The system will be required to use available Title II-A funds to ensure staffing and professional development needs are met first for these teachers and schools. The responsibility for having highly qualified teachers will be placed with the school district and the principal who does the hiring; progress will be monitored using the HiQ data base as it is updated regularly.

The Georgia Board of Education has adopted an Accountability System with Awards and Consequences (GBOE Rule 160-1-1-.04 –Appendix 6) for public schools based on annual yearly progress determinations. The Accountability Profile and GDOE guidance informs the nature and degree of the required improvement plans (i.e. school improvement, corrective action, or restructuring). The GDOE provides, in accordance with the NCLB Act of 2001, section 1117(a), a system of intensive and sustained support and improvement for LEAs and schools identified as needs improvement. Included in this support is the monitoring of the highly qualified status of teachers in needs improvement schools, with plans for remediation to meet the 100% HiQT requirement. http://www.gaosa.org/

Does the plan describe how the SEA will monitor whether LEAs attain 100 percent HQT in each LEA and school:

In the percentage of highly qualified teachers at each LEA and school; and in the percentage of teachers who are receiving high-quality professional development to enable such teachers to become highly qualified and successful classroom teachers?
Title IIA consultants will monitor HQT percentage of teachers in all schools as they monitor the LEA plans and their progress toward meeting the 100% HQT requirement and the individual plans developed for each teachers in any district who have not met HiQ requirements. Title IIA consultants will monitor the use of funds within the local district to ensure that the resources for high quality professional development are targeted to teachers in order to specifically address their needs to become highly qualified and then to improve their knowledge and skills to become more effective classroom teachers, and that these funds are focused on non-HiQ teachers in needs improvement schools, especially those with a high proportion of poor and/or minority students. The monitoring form will be used to gather this data.

The Georgia School Standards (GSS) are the foundation for Georgia’s comprehensive, data-driven system of school improvement and support. Correlated to several well-known and respected research frameworks, including the National Staff Development Councils Professional Learning standards, the Standards describe the effective, high impact practices for schools. The GSS will serve as the summary document to identify a school’s level of implementation in each of the eight strands, including high quality Professional Learning, to inform the development of improvement plans to address specific areas of need.

The GSS is combined with data collected using the Georgia Assessment of Performance on School Standards instruments. The GAPSS Analysis provides instruments and tools that can be applied to the GSS strands, including professional learning, to determine the level of implementation of the standards at each school. Schools not making AYP have used this instrument since the 2004-05 school year to inform their school improvement plans with assistance from leadership facilitators from the DOE.

The school system must attempt to meet annual measurable objectives, or targets, as identified by HiQ (a web-based teacher quality inventory program developed by the GAPSC) and established for the LEA Title II-A Plan. The identified targets allow for assessment of the school system’s Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward meeting the goal of having all teachers “highly qualified” by the end of the 2005-2006 school year.

If, after the 2005–2006 school year a school system failed to make adequate progress, the SEA will enter into an agreement with the school system on its use of Title II-A Improving Teacher Quality State Grants program funds, which will be evidenced through their consolidated application for NCLB. The consultants will review LEA plans (AYP schools and those who did not meet the100% goal) and provide targeted technical assistance.

Requirement 5: The revised plan must explain how and when the SEA will complete the HOUSSE process for teachers not new to the profession who were hired prior to the end of the 2005-06 school year, and how the SEA will limit the use of HOUSSE procedures for teachers hired after the end of the 2005-06 school year to multi-subject secondary teachers in rural schools eligible for additional flexibility, and multi-subject special education teachers who are highly qualified in language arts, mathematics, or science at the time of hire.

Does the plan describe how and when the SEA will complete the HOUSSE process for all teachers not new to the profession who were hired before the end of the 2005-06 school year?
The use of HOUSSE has been limited since its inception. The HOUSSE has been used to date to establish the highly qualified status of approximately 669 teachers, or less than 1% of Georgia’s teachers. The HOUSSE instrument has been used for Georgia’s life certificate holders, international teachers who are in Georgia for a three year period only and veteran teachers moving from out of state without a state teacher assessment requirement, e.g., teachers from Alabama. The HOUSSE instrument has not been used to assess the highly qualified status for regular teachers teaching multiple subjects because state assignment rules require that teachers be assigned according to the content in which they are certified. See Certification Rule 505-2-.26. Georgia certifies early childhood, Preschool – Grade 5; Middle Grades 4-8; and Secondary Grades 6-12. To accommodate these groups, Georgia developed a HOUSSE instrument to determine the highly qualified status of teachers in regular education with three or more years of teaching experience who did not meet the basic certification credentialing.

Georgia has required a passing score on a state content assessment for certification since the 1980’s. A major for secondary content areas and subject matter concentrations for middle grades has been required since 1995. Georgia’s highly qualified teacher definition is aligned closely with its state certification requirements. During 2003-04, 2004-5 school years, the Title II, Part A consultants conducted regional training on the use and potential of the HOUSSE instrument. A copy of The HOUSSE instrument can be found at http://www.gapsc.com/.

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  Multi-subject special education teachers
  

This group is the only group of veteran teachers still eligible for HOUSSE in the state of Georgia, and it will be available to them only through the 2006 – 07 academic year.

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  Georgia’s Life Certificate holders
  
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  International teachers who in Georgia for a three year period only
  
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  Veteran teachers moving from out of state without a teacher assessment requirement, e.g., teachers from Alabama.