I have been in 4 different states meeting with 4 different state education chiefs and all of them expressed the same concern - there is a serious lack of subject matter knowledge in their math teachers. Therefore it was with great pleasure that I read the Title II draft and saw the emphasis on STEM professional development for teachers. It is with great sadness that I read that all the money had to go to institutions of higher ed (hopefully this will change).
In my state meetings, there is deep concern about this issue. All teachers must know the craft of teaching, but if the students know more than the algebra teacher, problems will continue in our high schools. We have all got to work together to fix this - and it will not happen overnight based upon the SATs of our current group of teachers.
The ABCTE founders created this program to address this dearth of subject matter expertise in our schools and we continue that charge today. America's schools are in a downward spiral where they produce students with weak math and science skills who are now becoming our next math and science teachers contributing to the death spiral.
We have go to stop the madness and get teachers into our schools who have the math and science knowledge, have the passion for the subjects AND know how to teach.
I can tell you that we are working harder than ever to meet with those states that working hard to reverse this trend.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment