Jackson County Special Education instructors stripped of ‘highly qualified’ status
During the Jackson County Board of Education meeting Tuesday (Oct. 27), Human Resource Director Susan Griesinger informed the board that eight Secondary Special Education instructors within the JCPS system have been stripped of their “highly qualified” teaching status.
A version of Praxis, known as Praxis 0511, has recently been deemed by the U.S. Department of Education to be an inadequate means of preparation for Secondary Special Education teachers who teach a mixture of students with and without special needs. Therefore, Second Special Education instructors who were administered this form of the Praxis test were subsequently stripped of their highly-qualified status and must pay to retake another version of the test before they can be considered eligible to be the primary instructor of language arts, science, math or social studies courses.
“These individuals have paid for, studied for and passed the tests that were required to enter the education field,” Griesinger said. “Some of them actually aced it and now they’re not even considered sufficiently trained enough to teach.”
The eight educators that were stripped of their status’ will remain within the JCPS system. However, they will be unable to provide primary instruction of any of the core academic subjects until they complete additional testing.
