Editor's note: This is the first in a three-part series on Professional Development. Part Two, which will appear in our September issue, will focus on the use of technology to deliver professional development to educators. Part Three, which will run in October, will focus on how schools are training teachers in the use of classroom technologies.

As states and school systems struggle to meet the "highly qualified teacher" (HQT) mandate of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), technology is playing a key role in their efforts to track and manage compliance. But technology alone can't solve the issue, as evidenced by the extremely low success rate of states: As of early July, not a single state had complied with the critical goal of having 100 percent of their core academic courses taught by HQTs.

At press time, states were continuing to submit revised plans to the U.S. Department of Education (ED) by the July 7 deadline for achieving that elusive objective. Most states have submitted their compliance plans, ED officials say, but the 100 percent HQT goal will not be realized.

In May, Assistant Secretary of Education Henry Johnson, in a letter to state education officials, admitted that while states have made progress over the past three years, none was likely to meet the goal of 100 percent HQT compliance by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. As a result, Johnson reported, the department asked states to submit revised plans detailing specific new actions to reach the HQT goal in the upcoming school year to facilitate all students performing on grade level in reading and math by 2014.

Rene Islas, chief of staff in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, says that states have made considerable progress in the last few months, and the department now is trying to determine how close states are to complying with the requirements.

The HQT requirements--teachers must have a bachelor's degree and full state certification, in addition to demonstrated competency in their subject matter area--are just commonsense measures, he argues. "It's a change in how the states have done business. They have focused in the past on pedagogical measures," Islas comments. "Now, the emphasis is on demonstrating that teachers have, and can demonstrate, competency in the subjects they are teaching."

That's vitally important, Bush administration officials argue, in light of a recent study by the Education Trust, which found large discrepancies in teacher qualifications in Illinois, Ohio, and Wisconsin between poor and wealthy schools, and between mostly white and mostly minority schools.

So, what's the role of technology in the HQT mandate? First, states must come up with a systematic way to keep track of their staff members' professional development credits and certification levels and to monitor their compliance toward the HQT mandate under NCLB. Second, states and districts must provide parents and the public with complete reports on the number and percentage of classes in core academic subjects taught by HQTs. Finally, states must provide the Department of Education with complete and accurate reporting of HQT data.