Oregon’s teacher licensing requirements are so strict, district officials say that the only kind of teachers they can hire are quality teachers.

But new federal regulations that define ”highly qualified” teachers are now challenging personnel directors to be even more careful in hiring only the best and brightest.

”It’s a major factor in the consideration,” said Ron Wilkinson, deputy superintendent for the Bend-La Pine School District, referring to the No Child Left Behind Act rules regarding ”highly qualified” teachers.

”Oregon has the strictest teacher licensing requirements in the nation, yet a teacher qualified to teach something may not meet the standards under the highly qualified teacher law,” he said. ”Therefore, it’s a real challenge.”

Under the No Child Left Behind Act, all teachers hired to teach core academic subjects – English, reading, language arts, math, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, arts, history and geography – in Title I programs must be ”highly qualified.”

Title I schools receive additional federal support due to their high poverty rates.

The law defines ”highly qualified” as a teacher with full state certification, a bachelor’s degree and demonstrated competence in subject knowledge and teaching. Under the law, every core subject class in every school must have a highly qualified teacher by the 2005 school year.

The law aims to raise the academic standards of teachers – newcomers and veterans alike – and to make it easier for people with expertise in given fields to become teachers.

In Oregon, teachers meet the requirements almost automatically. They can’t obtain a teaching certificate without a bachelor’s degree, said Vickie Chamberlain, executive director of the state’s Teacher Standards and Practices Commission.

Prospective teachers in Oregon also need to pass a subject matter test, pass a basic skills test, go through teacher training, pass and clear a fingerprint criminal background check, demonstrate knowledge of civil rights and acquire a first-aid card, Chamberlain said.

Six years after getting their initial teaching license, Oregon teachers are required to earn their master’s degree or national board certification, which is considered the toughest certification nationwide.

Chamberlain said 90 percent of Oregon teachers are ”highly qualified” as defined by the law. The other 10 percent still have a bachelor’s degree or maybe an advanced degree and state certification, but they’re teaching outside their area of expertise or have a transitional license after coming from another state.

”It just depends on where they are assigned,” she said, referring to where schools put teachers.

A ”highly qualified” teacher will lose that status if he or she teaches more than two class periods a day – 10 hours a week – in a subject outside his or her area of expertise.

A high school math teacher with a master’s degree and a math endorsement from the state, for example, can teach a science class for fewer than two class periods a day without alerting the the teacher standards commission, she said.

Teaching more than that requires the teacher to obtain a conditional assignment permit from the state, which is only valid for three years and is not renewable.

If a teacher wants to continue teaching outside his or her area of expertise, he or she needs to take the necessary steps to get an endorsement in that subject, including taking a subject matter test, Chamberlain said.

Locally, few teach outside their area of expertise for longer than two periods a day, according to the Oregon Department of Education.

According to the department’s annual report card released in January, only 3 percent of the 678 teachers in Bend-La Pine were working with conditional assignment permits in 2001-02, the latest statistics available.

In Crook County, 6 percent of the 179 teachers had the conditional permits, the same as in the Jefferson County School District, which has 197 teachers. And 3 percent of the 295 teachers in the Redmond School District used the permits.

A U.S. Department of Education report to Congress in July revealed that in 1999-2000, only 54 percent of secondary teachers in the country were highly qualified. Other figures ranged from 47 percent for math teachers to 55 percent for science and social studies teachers. But the complexities of the law, and differences in licensure requirements from state to state might be keeping some quality teachers out of the classrooms.

Wilkinson and other area school personnel directors said the law has reduced the ability to hire teachers from outside Oregon because of the state’s strict licensing rules.

Fully certified teachers from other states can get transitional licenses to teach in Oregon once they move here. They have three years to meet all of Oregon’s requirements, Wilkinson said.

But in the meantime, those teachers aren’t considered ”highly qualified” under the state’s plan to meet the No Child Left Behind provisions.

”What that means is that we have to report to the parents that their student is being instructed by someone who doesn’t meet No Child Left Behind standards,” Wilkinson said. ”That’s the penalty.”

The district can qualify that notice by explaining the complexities of the situation to a parent. He said the district will assure parents that their children’s teacher is fully certified, ”so it doesn’t appear that we have some reject teaching your kids.”

Mary Cadez, the personnel director in Redmond, said that aspect of the law was the most frustrating.

”You may be hiring the superstar from California or some other state and suddenly you have to say this person isn’t qualified, when, in reality, they may be more qualified than many other teachers,” she said. ”That’s not a good thing.”

Jan Martin, the human resources manager for the Sisters School District, said her district’s policy has always been to hire quality teachers and no federal law is going to change that.

She said that she preferred not hiring teachers who need a conditional assignment permit, but in some cases it’s necessary to fill an emergency position.

”We’re only hiring highly qualified teachers,” Martin said. ”Teachers are all highly qualified, and (the federal definition) bothers me and bothers many people” to suggest they’re hiring anything less.

Martin and other personnel officials have been busy this summer hiring teachers to fill open positions left by dozens of retirees who took more than 2,000 years of experience from local classrooms.

– In Crook County, 27 teachers resigned or left the district this summer, but budget cuts mean officials are hiring back only 16. A handful of those teachers will experience the classroom for the first time this fall, Personnel Director Rich Schultz said. In Crook County the base salary is about $27,700 and the maximum salary is about $55,752, according to the 2002-03 salary survey conducted by the Oregon School Boards Association.

-In Sisters, Martin said she’s hired five teachers this summer, including two rookies. The district’s salary information wasn’t included in the survey.

-Bend-La Pine has hired about 45 teachers so far this summer and expects to hire about 10 more. About 10 of those hired so far will make their classroom debut this fall. The average starting salary for a Bend-La Pine teacher with a bachelor’s degree and no experience is about $28,500. A teacher with 16 or more years of experience and a master’s degree plus 45 hours of instruction – the top of the salary schedule – earns about $55,234 annually.

-Redmond schools will hire about 11 teachers this year, Cadez said, including four rookies. Redmond pays new teachers with a bachelors degree $29,859 and its most experienced teachers about $57,900

-The Jefferson County School District starts teachers at $28,500 while the seasoned veterans can make $56,000, the report said. District officials could not be reached for information about hiring plans.

Nationally, the average teacher salary in 2001-02 was $42,900 according to the National Education Association (NEA), a national teachers union.

The association has said that 2 million teachers will be needed in the next 10 years – 2.7 million when researchers include class-size reduction efforts in states.

Nationally, 11 percent of the 2.6 million teachers employed each year are new hires, according to a study by the National Center for Education Statistics in 1996, the latest report available. Four percent of those teachers are in the classroom for the first time.

And soon, all of those teachers must be defined as ”highly qualified.”

Wilkinson said the Bend-La Pine School District has always been picky. But hiring a teacher is like a professional sports team drafting a player – you don’t know what you’re going to get until they hit the field.

”Oregon has a high standard for licensure, we have a high standard for hiring,” Wilkinson said. ”The real test happens once they get in front of the classroom. When they get in front of the kids, we get a better answer of how highly qualified they are.”

Ted Taylor can be reached at 541-383-0375 or ttaylor@bendbulletin.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.