Reply #3: I am a highly qualified teacher

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based on my Masters degree from Ole Miss. Even if I had taken education classes as an undergraduate I would still not be highly qualified without that Masters. Bluntly speaking, that Masters didn't do much in regards to my teaching ability. I got the math ability as an undergrad and the other parts of teaching came with experience.

This is not to say that there are no unqualified teachers or that it is impossible to measure quality. But, it is to say that we aren't using great measures. I have taught in many a high school. I can count on one hand the number of high school math teachers I found whose problem was a lack of math knowledge.

The only place where I really believe there are masses of unqualifed teachers due to lack of subject matter knowledge is middle school and late elementary school. I do think that there should be a requirement that those children are taught mathematics by people who have a proven knowledge of mathematics.

It is a problem for urban schools to keep faculty. Losing experienced teachers is a bad thing and in large districts with senority based transfers the worst schools will get the newest teachers. A school needs a mix of teachers. Some new to bring in the latest pedadogy and some experienced to bring in real life adaptations of pedadogy.

Bottomline though, is that teachers can only do so much. Much of the difference between rich and poor districts can be explained by the loss of skills over the summers being more pronounced in poor districts than in rich ones.