I don't think the GRE measures on education majors apply very well beyond elementary school, because in junior high and high school you start running into teachers who majored in the subject they're teaching (or something very much like it), and then tacked on the teaching credentials. You also encounter people teaching vocational classes, home ec, and PE.
The high school teachers still score at the 49th percentile for math (and the elementary crowd averages the 33rd, which implies that a lot of their right answers are guesses). I 'd like to see a lot more for people who are supposed to know algebra 2 well enough to teach it to above-average kids.
You made a good point about home ec. and vocational ed. teachers, so I checked. In my son's large high school, there are 13 math teachers and 5 teachers in practical arts, which includes both home ec. and voc. ed. There are 7 PE teachers, so PE + Voc. Ed. + Home Ec. < Math. And there are 11 science teachers. I remember the same distributions at the high schools I attended, and suspect this distribution is generally true.
If a sizable number of the secondary ed. teachers had majored in a technical subject, their scores would at least be above the mean. What I suspect (no evidence, just anecdotal observations) is that the high school teachers are somewhat more knowledgeable, and the math average is being pulled down by the 6-8 teachers.
Given the basic levels of instruction involved, I don't expect a K-3 teacher to have much more than a high school education. There's no calculus involved in understanding place value.
I disagree. I think they need to understand what's coming in order to lay a proper foundation. Their lack of understanding is one of the major reasons for all of our problems. For example, they get easily taken in by fad curricula like Everyday Math. Etc.
...this is where academia is supposed to be partnering with educators to make sure the curriculum lines up. And to me, that's the real problem... academia is almost completely absent from the scene, having been pushed out by Big Publishing.
While I agree that Big Publishing has done a lot of damage, I can't accept that Pearson is to blame for lack of teacher knowledge.
This gets back to the "we're professionals!" argument that teachers make. A professional doesn't blame someone else for her knowledge deficiencies and let it go. Professionals take initiative to solve a problem --- this is a fundamental characteristic defining them. In this case, this might mean something as simple as sitting down and listening to Khan Academy videos or reading websites like Math is Fun or PurpleMath, etc. Or taking a summer training course/workshop for teachers.
