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[CHILDREN CHATTER] DAN OLSON: The eighth-graders in Tom Rauschenfels' Hermantown Middle School art class cut the chatter once they see the tall bespectacled educator waiting for their attention. By new federal standards, Rauschenfels is a highly qualified teacher. His college major and certification are in the subject area he's teaching.

TOM RAUSCHENFELS: Remember what you do? You decide which size you want it. And you do the actual drawing to that size, right?

DAN OLSON: The No Child Left Behind Act specifies that a high-quality teacher has a college degree in the topic area being taught. New teachers coming out of college must meet that requirement and pass a test to show they know the material they seek a license to teach. The act does not address other characteristics Tom Rauschenfels says are an everyday part of being an educator.

TOM RAUSCHENFELS: We are asked to be a social worker. We're asked to get involved in the student's life outside of our subject area, just to get that kid in our classroom. We have to play policeman once in a while. We have to fill that youngsters' void that maybe isn't coming from parents, that maybe isn't coming from anywhere else in their life.

DAN OLSON: The high-quality teacher standard outlined in the No Child Left Behind law sounds like common sense. Meeting it, however, will be a tall order. Millions of American schoolchildren are being taught legally, for now, by people whose college degrees or teacher certification aren't in the subject they're teaching. In some of this country's most distressed schools, students are being taught by teachers who failed minimum competency tests.

Minnesota's Commissioner of Children, Families, and Learning Cheri Pierson Yecke helped write the No Child Left Behind law while at the Federal Department of Education. She says the shortage of people who meet the high-quality standard is most evident in middle schools and in math and science classrooms.

CHERI PIERSON YECKE: The eighth-grade math teachers, only 41% have even majored in math. In terms of who's going to be most impacted by the teacher quality component of the law, it would be existing middle-school teachers because in many cases, middle-school teachers have been allowed to get a middle-school credential, which is sort of a generalist degree.

DAN OLSON: Minnesota middle-school teachers are college grads who've taken college classes in the areas they teach. However, state officials don't know how many do not have a college major in the area they're teaching. The Minnesota Board of Teaching is writing rules for meeting the high-quality teacher requirement. Board of Teaching Executive Director George Maurer says Minnesota's rural school districts will have a tough time meeting the standard. Some educators there are granted waivers to teach out of their area of study because of the shortage, for example, of math and science teachers.

Even so, Maurer says, 93% of Minnesota's educators are teaching subjects they know. He says Minnesota will have a much easier time complying with the federal law than other states.

GEORGE MAURER: We are number one in the nation for teachers and teaching that content. So we're talking about 7% of the teachers that currently are not able to be listed as highly qualified.

DAN OLSON: Many other states have relaxed licensing requirements to cope with a shortage of qualified teachers. The shortage is exacerbated by a wave of retirements, difficult working conditions, and low entry-level pay. Experts predict we'll need 2 million more teachers nationwide this decade to meet the demand.

Making sure they meet the high-quality teacher requirement will likely cause a major shift in how educators are trained and certified. David Imig says a popular middle-school philosophy these days is to train educators to teach across subject areas. Imig is President of the Washington DC-based AACTE, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. The organization represents 750 universities and colleges. A middle-school social studies teacher, for example, might blend teaching history with writing skills or with English literature.

DAVID IMIG: What we have done is we have tended to think of almost subject generalists, people who have a range of experiences in those subjects, and then certified them to teach a number of different courses.

DAN OLSON: People who don't like the generalist approach say students, especially those in middle schools, need to learn more in core areas. They favor the high-school model, where teachers with specific training teach single-subject courses. David Imig says meeting the high-quality teacher requirement will encourage schools to hire specialists.

DAVID IMIG: So if you will bring the secondary school down to as early as the fifth grade and then having subject-matter specialists is a fundamental change in the way that we have thought about schooling for that middle range of students.

DAN OLSON: Meeting the high-quality teacher standard lays the groundwork for another controversial change in the way teachers are trained and licensed. There's growing support to allow professionals who haven't been trained as educators into the classroom. An engineer, for example, who can pass a test measuring math knowledge would be certified to teach math with little, if any, teacher training. The No Child Left Behind hind act endorses the concept. However, skeptics abound.

They ask, for example, how class size affects high-quality teaching. Supporters point to dramatic test score gains in schools where the law's requirements are in place. The examples include classrooms where the class size is 18, much smaller than many American schools and much more expensive than many American taxpayers are willing to support.

Hermantown Middle School English teacher Dina Post says class size is an important factor, affecting how well teachers and students perform.

DINA POST: The biggest class I ever had was 38, in another school district. And then I've had a smaller class of 20. And there's so much more you can do with that class of 20 because in a class of 20, no child is left behind because you recognize every child. And they don't fall through the cracks.

DAN OLSON: No Child Left Behind skeptics have other questions. How do forces outside the classroom, such as poverty and parent involvement, affect high-quality teaching? Hermantown Middle School Principal Ellen Wiss says the No Child Left Behind law holds schools accountable for factors they can't control.

ELLEN WISS: Until we can find a way to make schools responsible for those things that they should be responsible for and every other part of society be responsible for those things that they are best equipped to take care of, then it's always going to be a struggle. It's always going to be that they're doing something to us, or they're putting something on us, instead of that partnership.

DAN OLSON: School districts are more than a little anxious about where money will be found to meet the No Child Left Behind requirements. Supporters say President Bush's proposal for $53 billion in federal education spending will help the districts pay for the additional testing, tutoring, staff development, and other expenses created by the act. Others say the money is a fraction of what's needed to meet the law's requirements. Dan Olson, Minnesota Public Radio.