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home > areas > edspe

Academic Areas & Divisions
Special Education

Highly Qualified Teachers

The issues around highly-qualified teachers are a bit confusing to some students. The important thing to remember is that there are two different agencies at work:

  • The state of Washington provides your teaching certificate and endorsements in the areas you are allowed to teach in.

  • The federal government has added an additional layer on top of that by saying each teacher needs to demonstrate that they know the content they are teaching, that they are highly qualified.

This is very easy for general education teachers because they usually are endorsed in the areas they teach, such as elementary math or science, or high school math.

It is not as easy for special educators, because we often teach content that is different from special education. For example, we teach reading, writing, math, English, and sometimes history or science. What the federal government requires is that teachers demonstrate they know the content they are teaching in order to be highly-qualified.

There are several ways to make sure you are highly qualified in the content you teach:

  • have an endorsement in that area;
  • take and pass a WEST-E content test;
  • have an undergraduate academic major, graduate degree, or 45 quarter credits in the content area.

Because our local school districts will generally not hire teachers who are not highly qualified in some area, we require each teacher candidate to leave our program highly-qualified in at least one content area. For most students, the easiest way to meet this is to take the elementary WEST-E exam. This will ensure you are highly qualified in elementary content. It will not help those who will teach middle school or high school, and we recommend you contact your advisor for information on how to meet the requirements for secondary teaching.

For more information, contact your adviser and consult this handbook prepared by the OSPI. The information most related to special educators is located on page 13 and in the FAQ answers on pages 23-39.


College of Education, University of Washington
Box 353600 Seattle, WA 98195-3600
coe@u.washington.edu

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