Three years after they were supposed to have done so, Ohio State education officials are getting around to telling state special education teachers that they have to be highly qualified in every subject they teach.

"We believed that [the special ed requirements] seemed so unreasonable that ?well, we thought it would change," one official from the Ohio Department of Education was quoted as saying.

In spite of a lot of talk to the contrary, neither Congress nor the US Department of Education has budged from the law's declaration that special ed teachers who are in charge of their own classrooms must have academic credentials in every subject that they teach. The Department did make some rule changes nearly a year ago that affected science teachers and teachers in rural schools but the new guidance was tellingly silent on special ed. Still some states chose to wait out both the election and the December 2004 reauthorization of IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) before giving up hope.

States can grumble all they want but teachers are the ones who are left holding the bag. With time wasted on wishing, it's getting too late for states to come up with uniquely designed tests for special ed teachers?tests that would undoubtedly have been easily passed (in theory anyway; the reality is far more depressing) and on which US officials would have gladly conferred their blessing. States could also make legitimate cases for some secondary teachers needing reduced content level knowledge, given actual needs of students, but this option too gets harder to implement correctly the closer the deadline looms.

An article out of Tennessee describes what one school district there is doing to ensure compliance with the law, a practice that will undoubtedly be common to school districts across the nation. There special ed students are being kept in class with regular students, with the special ed teacher's role changing to more of an in-classroom aide. They're making this change not because it is necessarily the right instructional choice for these students, but to avoid classifying special ed teachers as the primary teacher. In this case, it may be special ed students bearing the brunt of district and state foot dragging.