The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA '04) raise the achievement expectations of all students, including students with disabilities. These requirements place new responsibilities on institutions of higher education and state educational agencies to ensure that teachers are knowledgeable about state academic content and achievement standards and expectations. This paper puts forth competencies for teachers in this new era of standards-based education that were developed by the Educational Policy Reform Research Institute (EPRRI), in collaboration with the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO), and validated by participants at a national symposium on teacher quality. The paper also compares these competencies with Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) model standards and the state standards for beginning teachers of one state to see whether current standards contain the proposed competencies. In conclusion, these competencies are proposed as a supplement to existing standards and are envisioned as an aid in matching existing standards to federal and state requirements.
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