What spreads faster then H1N1 in elementary schools now? According to an article in Business Week entitled Female Teachers Pass on Math Anxieties it is a fear of math.

The ABCTE founding board was adamant that our elementary teachers be well versed in math and we have many candidates who do not succeed because they cannot do well on the math portion of our exam. NCTQ has found considerable evidence that the math requirements for elementary teachers in our country are sub-par or non-existent. This means you can teach elementary students without having taken rigorous math classes.

The article covers a University of Chicago study that showed that if there is a female teacher leading the elementary class (and 90% of elementary teachers are female) and the teacher is anxious about teaching math, it will adversely affect female students. The students come to believe the stereotype that boys are better in math than girls.

The results are fairly intuitive but it is nice to have real data to demonstrate a huge problem in advancing STEM in this country. If you don’t start with elementary teachers and have an incredibly strong foundation of math knowledge in the early grades, you cannot recover. The anxiety is there and unless you eliminate the cause of the anxiety, we cannot create a love of math and science in all students.

I decided to spend my Friday afternoon reading through some Race to the Top applications. I focused on states where ABCTE is accepted as a TRUE alternative route to teacher certification and read through Pennsylvania, Florida and Oklahoma.

First - this was a TON OF WORK for these states and the people that put these together must have spent some very long hours getting it done.

Second - these states proudly mention ABCTE is a route to certification and they meet the point requirements of Race to the Top! Yay us!!

Third - not much potential for grant money for teacher recruitment and certification. The bulk of the requested dollars are going into building data tracking systems to tie teachers to student achievement. Also spending on building teacher evaluation systems and professional development.

I may have to reduce some of my cynicism. These states will be pushing a major reform in how teachers and teacher preparation programs are evaluated. This would be a pretty big shift.

Now a beer is required after reading those applications where I will toast those who toiled on the hundreds of pages of education applications.

Joanne Jacobs writes up some of Andy Smarick’s great work in her Show me the reform blog. Andy sees a lot of toothless reforms in Race to the Top and Joe Williams over at DFER thinks that NYC just blew chunks. They are right on the money, so to speak and it is a case of history repeating itself.

Back in the day, in a galaxy far, far away, all children were to be taught by a highly qualified teacher by the year 2006. This was the law of the land with severe consequences if states didn’t achieve it. Lo and behold, 2006 came and went and we didn’t hit the goal. So the Central Authority decreed throughout the land that innovative teacher recruitment plans must be submitted in order to reach this lofty goal. The plans were toiled over by groups of education establishment and sent in by a deadline to be reviewed by the US DOE. It was determined that these new and exciting innovations would help us ensure that every child had a qualified teacher.

I read these plans. There were no innovations – the states basically stated what they were already doing and put a different spin on how those results would ensure equitable distribution of teachers. The pig recieved her lipstick and all was well in the land.

Looking at the blogs above, I fear that history will repeat itself here. There will be spin and lip service but you will be able to go to any state three years from now and not see much of a difference. I hope I am wrong with this kind of money but I doubt it. Most states are just breaking out a new shade of lipstick for the swine.