But for veteran educators like Nancy Cetorelli — who began her career as a Stratford math teacher in 1970, before such tests were around — it will mean digging out her undergraduate college transcript and proving she majored in math at Southern Connecticut State University.

For many other Connecticut teachers — particularly special education and middle school teachers — this school year will mean getting evaluated right along with their students.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, being certified is no longer enough to take charge of a classroom and hand out grades. Teachers in 10 academic subject areas — English, math, reading, science, world languages, art (including music), history, geography, civics and economics — have to be deemed "highly qualified" in those subjects.

That means they have to have majored in the subject they are teaching, pass a content area test in that subject, obtain National Board Certification in the subject or go through an evaluation process using state standards as a guide.

Most special education teachers will be evaluated because they majored in special education, not reading, math or other subjects they teach to students with special needs. Middle school teachers who received a fourth- through eighth-grade certificate the state used to offer — instead of a specific subject area certificate — also face testing.

Robert Murphy, director of professional practice and government relations for the Connecticut Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, said on a national basis, the effort to make sure teachers are highly qualified is important. Connecticut, he added, is in better shape than most states, having confronted the issue of teacher quality in the mid-1980s through the state's Educational Enhancement Act.

There is also a consensus among school administrators and teachers that the evaluation process — called HOUSSE (High Objective Uniform State Standard of Evaluation) — will help nearly all teachers demonstrate they know their stuff in a relatively painless way.

CEA President Rosemary Coyle said her organization has worked with the state to apply the requirement appropriately and get accurate information out to its membership.

"If you don't fit into one of the normal options, HOUSSE picks you up," she said, adding, "If it was a real problem, we'd get calls, and we haven't."

Still, the exercise has raised anxiety levels among some teachers. It's disconcerting, said Margaret Mary Fitzgerald, assistant superintendent in Fairfield, for successful veteran teachers to have the federal government not automatically view them as highly qualified.

It poses a lot of work. The state Department of Education is just halfway through 10 boxes of data collected from school districts last spring, representing the status of all content area teachers who didn't take a teachers' test like Praxis II at the start of their careers.

Nancy Puglise, chief of the bureau of educator preparation for the state, said some districts have yet to turn in all their data. She can't even guess how many of the state's 42,000 teachers are "highly qualified."

Still, she too doubts most teachers have to worry. "The intent of the law is not to get rid of people," she said.

Some administrators wonder, instead, if they'll be stuck with people who at one time in their career were labeled "highly qualified." "If something changes in terms of performance, is there a way to take away the label?" asked C. Richard Canfield, Monroe's director of curriculum and professional development.

In Monroe, Canfield said beyond going through teacher records, the district has had to make sure its evaluation procedure fits within the dictates of the law. Every district's method of evaluation is slightly different, although they must measure teachers against standards set by the state.

Monroe, like many Fairfield County districts, has turned to the Cooperative Educational Services, in Trumbull, its regional service center, for help.

Cetorelli, now executive director of CES, said the organization created a form districts can use to designate someone highly qualified. That way, the form — and designation — can follow a teacher if they change school districts.

In Fairfield, the school personnel office spent part of the summer going through nearly half of 850 teacher files, looking to see who automatically qualifies for the status by virtue of their transcripts and who needs to be evaluated.

Fitzgerald said teachers in Fairfield have in the past been assessed in terms of content knowledge, so she feels confident they will stack up to federal standards.

The same goes for Trumbull, where Schools Supt. Ralph Iassogna estimates fewer than 50 of the district's 550 teachers have to go through the HOUSSE process this school year. "It will fold into our regular supervision and evaluation plan," he said.

Others worry not about now but what's to come. In Bridgeport, Carole Pannozzo, director of human resources, said most city teachers hired before there was a Praxis II test have gone on to get master's degrees that will satisfy the NCLB requirement.

As of July 1, 2006, however, the federal law will prohibit her from recruiting special education teachers who don't also have a major in the subject they teach. Since special education is a chronic shortage area for teachers, Pannozzo said, the requirement will have huge consequences for all school districts, not just Bridgeport.

"The more qualifications that you place on people, the more you limit your pool," she said.

Some school districts are addressing the issue by teaming up special education and content area teachers in a single classroom. Puglise called the two teachers in one classroom model a good short-term solution, but not one likely to be easily maintained over time as budgets get tighter.

—Linda Conner Lambeck