ABSTRACT
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandates that all schools have "highly qualified" teachers for the core academic subjects—including English, reading or language arts, math, science, foreign languages, civics and government, arts, history, and geography—by 2005-6. 2 Further it makes available special funds for teacher professional development in schools that fail to meet their improvement goals for two years in a row. Yet, a strategy of staffing all schools with fully credentialed teachers, even when coupled with extra professional development funds, will not be sufficient to turn the tide of poor student performance in our nations poorest schools and districts. Research on teaching points to the need for social-normative change in schools serving poor students of color, in particular creating collaborative teacher teams focused on improving student learning—what we call "teacher learning communities."
