[sethjohn]

Teach for America and Teach First (the British equivalent) are actually doing a great job at addressing this problem. They are able to recruit teachers from top universities to work in some of the worst schools, precisely by focussing on the difficulties and challenges of the job.

From a different economist article: http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?stor... "Nearly a tenth of Oxford’s class of 2009 will be Teaching First this autumn."

I've heard the statistics are similar with a huge percentage of Harvard's graduating class going into Teach for America.

[cwan]

Unfortunately, unions strongly oppose Teach for America: "Teach for America -- the privately funded program that sends college grads into America's poorest school districts for two years -- received 35,000 applications this year, up 42% from 2008. ... Union and bureaucratic opposition is so strong that Teach for America is allotted a mere 3,800 teaching slots nationwide" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124061253951954349.html

[tokenadult]

How many studies have there been of the actual teaching competence (as contrasted with the higher education credentials) of Teach for America teachers? Harvard's admission selection is stringent enough that I could well believe that ANY Harvard graduate in any major can determine the area of a rectangle. But, in general, how many of the graduates of Ivy League universities who go into Teach for America are the graduates who had a strong math background at university? There are some very non-quantitative majors at some of those universities, after all.

Note that I think anyone in Teach for America is probably generally smarter than a random graduate of a teacher training college, but I'm still not sure if every Teach for America teacher without exception has a profound understanding of fundamental mathematics.

http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/fall99/ame...