Not much smarter than the dumbest students they will teach, it seems. But the answer really depends on the "research" we read. If this National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) publication is to be accorded the status of research, we may accept one of its many internal (and misleading) conclusions: "… there is mixed evidence on the number or type of courses a teacher takes and his or her performance in the classroom" (page 75).
Its authors are suggesting that we really don't know if teaching ability depends on the kinds of courses and how many of them a teacher takes, so they have no clear advice to give us on whether we would have better elementary school teachers if they took academic coursework in the subjects they taught.
Immediately after the election, there was a spate of reports about Clinton voters buying newspaper and magazine subscriptions as a way to keep an eye on Trump.
Now, it looks like the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction — with the elite press, amusingly, offering readers advice on how to tune out.
