An old college friend who went on from SUNY Geneseo to earn a Masters in Economics at Harvard and for a while was a high ranking economist in New York State government (though that may not be much of a recommendation) and a Professor of Economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) pointed out to me many years ago that the goal of educating everyone meant there were bound to be some teachers who just aren't very good. I believe that's part of our problem. 

An article in the October 24, 2013 Wall Street Journal (Why Teacher Colleges Get a Flunking Grade)  by Barbara Nemko and Harold Kwalwasser stated that “entrance requirements to most colleges of education are too lax, and the requirements for graduation are too low.” A subsequent piece in Forbes magazine (http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeleef/2013/10/24/a-key-reason-why-american-students-do-poorly/) went on to explain that "the trouble with colleges of education, where most American teachers receive their training (although that’s hardly an apt description) has been known for a long time. Back in 1991, Rita Kramer’s book Ed School Follies: The Miseducation of America’s Teachers showed that our ed schools were giving the country a steady stream of intellectually mediocre teachers who had been steeped in dubious educational theories, but often knew little about the subject matter they were to teach."

The focus for the past twenty years has been on testing student and inferring the quality of education on the basis of the results of that testing. And when teachers are tested, the focus is on the pedagogy of education (which changes every thirty days or so) and not on the teacher's competence.

A few years ago my wife and I went to my father-in-laws hunting camp in upstate New York and we were joined by her family's friends. One of them was an elementary school teacher and during that afternoon we played a game (can't recall what it was) where one person gave clues and another had to come up with the answer. One of the items concerned the three branches of government. (She didn't know the answer. It's an answer that any immigrant taking the test to be a U.S. citizen can tell you in a heartbeat: Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary).

Can anything be done to improve the quality of teachers? Do we need to introduce more stringent requirements for teacher certification? And if we did, would we simply lose more teachers and have to replace them with even less qualified people? It's just one piece of the education puzzle and there doesn't seem to be any solution for it.