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No Educator Left Behind:
Funding Professional Development

No Educator Left Behind is a series providing answers from the U.S. Department of Education to questions about the federal No Child Left Behind Act and how it will affect educators. If you have a question about No Child Left Behind, send an e-mail to Ellen Delisio, and we will submit your question to the Department of Education.

Question:

How does the Department of Education plan to keep teachers in the classroom, when NCLB standards require some teachers to return to school and pay for post-graduate work?

U.S. Department of Education:

The president has proposed $5.1 billion in next year's budget to assist states in getting teachers highly qualified. That money could be used to send teachers back to school; it certainly could be used for professional development. Teachers want to do the right thing; they just need to know what to do. In some districts, professional development funds are being cut, and that's the opposite of what we need to do.

Read previous questions and answers in our No Educator Left Behind archive.