A coalition of community groups and individual students and parents in California have filed suit in federal district court against Margaret Spellings and the U.S. Department of Education. Renee v. Spellings claims that Department regulations violate the teacher quality provisions of NCLB by allowing teachers enrolled in alternative certification programs to be considered highly qualified.

The plaintiffs do have a legitimate point: alternate route teachers are still in training, and it doesn't really make sense to include them in the same category as teachers who have already fully met the provisions of the law. But the logical fix--a new, third category that counts these teachers separately--does not seem to be what this suit is after. (For evidence of this, see the near-giddy statement the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education released in support of the suit.) The target in the crosshairs seems to be the very idea of certifying teachers through alternate route programs. If these teachers are considered non-HQT and states face sanctions for non-HQT teachers, alternate route programs become untenable.

While there is much to criticize about the U.S. Department's implementation of HQT (inconsistent guidance, lax enforcement, lack of attention to key provisions, unanswered questions five years into the law, to name just a few) and much that Congress can shore up in reauthorization, making it harder for states and districts to bring talented, nontraditional candidates into teaching through alternate routes only hurts the cause of improving teacher quality.