Why Can’t We Raise Academic Requirements for K-12 Teachers?

There is one good reason that the most recent review of research on teacher professional development in mathematics in the USA almost uniformly finds it ineffective:  It doesn't lead to student gains. The majority of our K-12 teachers were in the bottom third of their academic cohort in college, particularly those who became pre-school and elementary teachers, and they were typically not high achievers in high school, either. This does not describe teachers in high-achieving countries. Does it matter?

For example, Finland draws all its pre-college teachers from academic high schools (grades 10 to 12) — schools that voluntarily enroll less than 50 percent of their school-age population after grade 9 — and from the top 20 percent of those who graduate from them. In an intensely competitive environment, Finland also admits only a small number of the top graduates who apply to its teacher preparation programs, all of which have been located at their universities since 1970. To judge from the 2011 book Finnish Lessons by Pasi Sahlberg, a noted Finnish educator, professional development for Finnish teachers was apparently not a major focus of Finland's early education reforms. Rigorous teacher selection was. And, in 2000, Finland startled itself and the rest of the world with the highest score on an international test. (It's called Program in Student Assessment, or PISA.)