The reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), Public Law 108-446 aligns the "highly qualified" requirements for special education teachers with the teacher requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Flexibility is provided for some special education teachers.
The State Board of Education adopted a new regulation (DOC; 20KB; 1p.) that became effective on November 15, 2005. This regulation allows "new" to the profession middle and high school special education teachers who are highly qualified in mathematics, language arts, or science to utilize the existing High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation (HOUSSE) procedure to demonstrate subject matter competence for other core subjects they are assigned. The Improving Teacher Quality Web page has additional information.
