As if California didn't have enough to worry about, last winter, Ken Futernick, an education professor at California State University-Sacramento, unveiled the California Teacher Qualification Index, which tracks the Terminator State's progress towards the federal "highly qualified" teacher requirement deadline in 2005-06. Apparently, Mr. Futernick is less than encouraged by what he has found. "It's a very bleak picture&" he reported, adding "Frankly, I think it [meeting the highly qualified teacher provision] is not possible." Futernick's index shows that although improvements have been made, 20 percent of California teachers would not have been considered highly qualified in 2002-2003, and students in high poverty schools are still 2.2 times more likely to have an underqualified teachers than students in more affluent schools. William V. Vasey, the director of the California education department's division of professional development and curriculum support responded, "I don't think anybody is pretending this is easy."