At a March 17th press conference in Washington, D.C., Secretary of Education Rod Paige strongly endorsed the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE). The ABCTE examinations provide states with another means by which to confer full certification on teaching candidates.

Calling ABCTE "radically better than the system we have now" and "an innovative option for individuals who would be turned off by the hoops and hurdles of traditional teacher preparation and certification programs," Paige went on to say that the new certification process will play an important role in helping states comply with the highly qualified teacher requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which mandates a highly qualified teacher in every classroom by the 2005 06 school year.

Paige stressed that the introduction of ABCTE would increase teacher quality while alleviating shortages: "[The] assessments maintain extremely rigorous academic standards for teachers&It focuses on what teachers need to know and be able to do in order to be effective, instead of the number of courses they've taken. It demands excellence rather than exercise in filling bureaucratic requirements."