Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of USDOE, or of NCLB - which may end up doing more harm than good.
But, in my school district, more than 25% of the teachers are not highly qualified. (i.e. they are not certfified to teach what they are teaching!) This is nearly downright criminal, IMO, and no one knew about it prior to NCLB.
So no, evidently the local school officials DON'T know better than the feds who is highly qualified. Not in my district, anyway.
No. What happened is that the feds changed their definition of what it means to be certified.
So it isn't the case that "not highly qualified" teachers have been teaching all along. They just changed to definition to make it seem like they're trying to up standards.
They're not.