Published: August 24, 2008 10:40 pm         

Allegany County again leads state in percentage of highly qualified teachers

CUMBERLAND — Once again, Allegany County has the highest percentage of classes with highly qualified teachers in the state.

In 2007-2008, 97.8 percent of classes were taught by highly qualified teachers. Allegany County was also No. 1 in the state in 2006-2007 at 97.5 percent.

“Allegany County public school system continues to show increases in the percentage of core academic classes being taught by highly qualified teachers,” said Jeff Blank, personnel director. “The new percentage is 97.8 percent, up from 97.5 percent in 2006-2007. ACPS has set 99 percent as the projected goal from 2008-2009.”

“ACPS encourages teachers to consider achieving highly qualified status in more than one content area,” said Janet Wilson, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction. “To achieve highly qualified status in a specific content area, teachers must pass a Praxis exam in the content area. Teachers who possess satisfactory credentialing across several disciplines and within several areas of the same discipline, such as physics and biology in the field of science, allow schools flexibility in scheduling to meet students’ needs and interest.

“Like other systems across the state and nation, we do have concerns about finding highly qualified teachers in shortage area such as English, foreign language, special education, science and mathematics as anticipated retirements of our veteran teachers occur,” said Wilson.

Highly qualified is a specific term defined by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The law outlines a list of minimum requirements both in content knowledge and teaching skills to meet the highly qualified status.

“Allegany County is very fortunate to have such a high number of teachers who are considered highly qualified in their subject area,” said board member Jeff Metz. “This is certainly a tribute to our teachers and the good cooperation that the Allegany County public school system has with the Allegany County Teachers Association.”

In addition, Allegany County has a high teacher retention rate, according to Wilson.

“According to the 2007-2008 Master Plan citing 2006-2007 data, only 2.8 percent of teachers left the district for reasons other than retirement, which was 3.1 percent,” said Wilson. “ACPS has an advantage over many other school systems in that we mange to retain our highly qualified staff.”

Garrett County had the fifth-highest percentage of highly qualified teachers in the state with 94.9 percent; Worchester was No. 2 at 96.6 percent; and Talbot was third-highest at 96.4 percent.

Contact Jennifer Raley at jraley@times-news.com.