Does a sped teacher have to be Highly qualified to serve a 504 student?

Question

Does a sped teacher have to be Highly qualified to serve a 504 student?

Answer 1

If the teacher is responsible for assigning a grade to the student, the teacher has to be highly qualified.

Answer 2

504 students  may not even be served in special ed classes.  504 does not necessarily mean special ed.  It means that the student has some condition that may affect their access to education.  Diabetes, for instance, would qualify a student for a 504 because they may have to be out of the classroom for extended periods to deal with the diabetes and the 504 is a plan of action (so to speak) that directs how a teacher handles these absences.  

So to answer your question, if a student with a 504 plan is special ed then yes, the teacher has to be highly qualified.  But if the child is not special ed.  the 504 won't affect the special edu teacher.

Answer 3

Just to assist them, I don't think so. . .but to teach them, yes.

Answer 4

special education teachers to not provide any services to a student on a 504.  504 is a Regular Education plan of accomodations and is administered monitore by school staff and 504 coordinator who should not be a special education teacher.

Answer 5

504 students are in the general ed classroom.  They receive accomodations in the regular classroom and do not receive sped instruction.   The only thing a sped teacher would handle with a 504 student is the paperwork, and that does not require Highly Qualified status for the teacher because the Highly Qualified condition applies to instruction, not necesarily service delivery, as in the case of a 504 student.

Answer 6

I think folks are getting confused with the difference between being highly qualified to teach SpEd, and being highly qualified to teach that content area.

504 is a general education program, so 504 students should be in classes with teachers who are certified in that grade level/subject area. This could be a SpEd teacher who is dual certified. In an inclusion setting, if a SpEd Teacher and language arts teacher, for example, are co-teaching a class, the language arts teacher would normally be responsible for grading the 504 student.

If the student required some kind of adaptation to the curriculum--beyond differentiated instruction--I hope they would be in SpEd instead!

Answer 7

I am taking it that sped means Special Ed?  All teachers according to NCLB have to be or be in the process of acheiving "highly qualified" status.  Check this site: http://www.ed.gov/nclb/methods/teachers/...  It contains good info on what highly qualified means, who has to be highly qualified and who can be exempt or have  different way of getting there.