and how especially lacking such teachers are in school districts with mostly poor students from ethnic minorities. One finding from that article illustrates the grave nature of the problem:
"in my first visit in 1986 to a K-6 elementary
school, I discovered that not a single teacher knew
how to find the area of a rectangle."
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633540
As the submitted article here notes,
"Of course, finding qualified teachers to teach advanced maths courses will not be easy."
Not easy by far. Here is a detailed article about just how difficult it is to find elementary school teachers who know even very basic math
http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf
and how especially lacking such teachers are in school districts with mostly poor students from ethnic minorities. One finding from that article illustrates the grave nature of the problem:
"in my first visit in 1986 to a K-6 elementary school, I discovered that not a single teacher knew how to find the area of a rectangle."