The disintegration of teacher certification programs in the united States holds an eerie similarity to the recent meltdown of American financial institutions. Similarly, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, whose purported purpose was to ensure that all students get highly qualified teachers (HQT), has had an unintentionally devastating effect on the quality of teacher preparation. No Child Left behind defined a highly qualified teacher as possessing three credentials: (1) Bachelor's degree; (2) Certification to teach; and (3) Proven knowledge of the subject taught. In this article, the author discusses how the emphasis in teacher preparation has moved from the humanistic to the technical, from the intangible to the measureable. The author emphasizes that today, the gauge of student success, the chances for a school's survival, and the indicator of quality for a teacher preparation program have become dependent upon how good a number looks on chart.