For all the conflict generated by various K-12 education reform efforts, there is one principle everyone agrees on: teachers need to know the subject matter they teach. This principle makes sense to parents, educators, and policy makers alike. On the importance of a teacher's knowledge the views range from those who believe subject knowledge to be of paramount importance to those who believe it to be a "necessary but not sufficient" condition for effective teaching. More than two years after the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) became law, the nation has just passed the halfway mark toward the January 2006 deadline when most teachers will need a "highly qualified" designation to stay in the classroom. This report from the National Council on Teacher Quality is the first of several reports on this topic that will be issued in the months leading up to the deadline. For this first report, the authors have reviewed the standards of 20 randomly selected states, most of them in final form, though a few are considered to be drafts and are still fairly malleable. Each state was given a grade for the quality of its standards. The results are decidedly mixed. The average grade is a dreadful D+, though the grades varied from A to F (with one "incomplete"). The standards range from reasonable and responsible attempts to meet the spirit of the law to approaches that can best be described as indifferent and at times even disdainful. This report evaluates the findings and provides recommendations for the future. The following is appended: Principles and Indicators for Grading the States. (Contains 1 footnote and lists 2 sources.)