It would be difficult to make a direct, bulletproof argument that public schools are the cause of society’s failures, but I think that we could get away with saying public schools aren’t helping.

Thanks for the add; I’ve reciprocated.

I attended a job fair this past spring at which several hundred elementary school teachers were given screening interviews for maybe ten elementary positions. Meanwhile, there were only a handful of science candidates for a comparably large number of open positions.

I really hate making the economic argument. But giving districts the freedom to negotiate salary on a position-by-position basis also would allow them to give incentives to math and science teachers, or just good teachers (in any discipline), by hiring them at a higher salary. The entire business world uses this model, and as we’re told constantly that “Free Market Über Alles”, there’s no reason it can’t extend to teachers.

I don’t mean to imply that some teachers are more valuable than others, but certainly there is a drastic imbalance in the number of teachers qualified to teach math or science versus the number of available positions. It’s simple supply and demand.

Despite the fact that pretty much everyone thinks math and science education is the key to maintaining America’s economic advantages, no politicians and no unions are willing to go to bat to encourage more math and science students to consider teaching by increasing pay. Until that happens and the salaries for math and science teachers are comparable to non-teaching math and science positions, there will be too few math and science teachers and students will suffer.

I don’t think we have to throw in the towel yet, but reforming this scenario will require some massive changes in curriculum/instruction in math education. This is no small project and is unlikely to happen. Even so, we’ve still got to try.

I agree with you about standards – I think they’ll decline to make up for these results. The bar will most certainly be lowered because that’s the quickest fix that can be tastefully obscured by re-branding new standards to be more inclusive while retaining rigor. We’ll know that it’s a sham, but few others will notice and even fewer will care.

The economic argument is sound. There’s definitely a correlation between financial rewards and the talent pool in a given sector. Any meaningful changes along these lines will *have* to be accompanied by a change in how we view teaching – talented people simply do not go into education anymore [in general, and there's plenty of evidence to support that]. Teachers need to be seen as smart and knowledgeable rather than noble and helpful, for example. We need to start taking teaching seriously because, in truth, right now we don’t.

A quick note – I’ve added Physics is Phun to my blogroll. I’ve had the site in my RSS reader for some time now and apparently forgot to add it to the ‘roll. Apologies – that’s been fixed.

I really hate to say it, but this is an economic problem. Make teaching worthwhile (financially and socially) and you’ll be turning away qualified applicants.

As I stated earlier, I don’t know squat about math, and I can teach reading, writing, literature and life with the best of them.

Why, I wonder, is our government so concerned with teachers, who might teach social studies, language arts or Chinese, being competent mathematicians?”

The press release linked implies support for what Matthew said, that it was for math teachers. However, let me answer your question with a concept that we used to hold dear: A well rounded education.

I hang out (unsurprisingly) with egghead math and compsci types, but because most of them had a well rounded education, we share knowledge outside the realm of mathematics. We can intelligently discuss Shakespeare, for example, or history. Mathematics is an essential part of that well rounded education. That, my friend, is why you should be able to pass what is I’m sure an elementary math proficiency test, no matter whether you teach English lit or world history.