Hundreds of D.C. public school teachers who have yet to prove their competence under No Child Left Behind guidelines could find themselves out of a position next year, Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee told The Examiner this week.

The chancellor said teachers need to act fast to attain a “highly qualified” rating required by No Child Left Behind, or they will be left behind without a job.

“We’re putting a lot of effort into making sure those who are not highly qualified understand what they need to do,” Rhee told The Examiner. “At the end of the year, those who have not gotten their paperwork in won’t continue.”

Being highly qualified is an extra step beyond certification that ensures instructors are suited to teach their particular disciplines.

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Teachers either pass a test, take appropriate course work or prove they’ve gotten a degree in the subject matter.

For D.C., reaching compliance is part of bigger plans to hold teachers more accountable, Rhee said. As part of ongoing contract negotiations with the city’s teachers’ union, she hopes to apply much more rigorous standards in deciding whether teachers should be tenured.

Last year, almost half of core classes were taught by District public school teachers who were not highly qualified. That put D.C. at the bottom of the nation, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Rhee estimated that 300 or so teachers are not highly qualified at the moment. Precise numbers are not known, her spokeswoman Mafara Hobson said, because administrators are still making tallies.

Joel Packer, director of educaton policy and practice for the National Education Association, said his group’s position is that highly qualified status is a worthwhile goal, but failure to attain that status should not always be cause for firing.

“It’s a shared responsibility,” he said. “If there’s a teacher that refuses to take the steps, that’s one thing, but if someone’s made a good faith effort and not gotten support that’s different.”

Worst offenders

Subject areas in which D.C. schools had the lowest percentages of highly qualified teachers last year.

- Geography — 32.9 percent

- History — 33.8 percent

- Chemistry — 47.3 percent

Source: U.S. Department of Education

dlevitz@dcexaminer.com