Why train more students to work in STEM fields when the corporations are doing their best to send every one of those jobs overseas or fill the jobs domestically with H1B replacement workers?

Math and science--what about reading--actually teaching reading and not just testing for it to see what guidelines are met and then penalizing those who are behind, and not simply inferring that because you are going over the material in the science book, the student is able to read it proficienty. Reading is the first step: one must be able to understand and define and breakdown the problems in science and math and engineering. It all boils down good reading skills.

While I understand the push to stay competitive globally, I worry about the future of our Arts programs. They are just as vital a part of school curriculum!

http://bit.ly/Learn2

Look at the "past coverage" in the right hand column along side the article!!!!! Since 1998 ( in fact since Sputnick) we have been saying we will train more math science teachers. Why don't we figure out why all of these earlier efforts failed before we promise more? Could it be that those who are successful in math and science can make far more in non-teaching math science careers than they could as teachers? Could it be well known to potential math science teachers that the public school teacher is 1) assigned many tasks not related to teaching, 2) asked to be a disciplinarian without being given the right to discipline, and 3) have their curricula and teaching methods prescribed to the day and page restricting their creative teaching - learning skills.

No effort to produce more STEM teachers will succeed unless the schools start paying higher salaries to those teachers compared to the ones in easy subjects. When we try to compete with foreign countries, we overlook this fact --highest paid teachers as per field in decreasing order are:
Physics, Chemistry, Math, Biology.

If history and sociology teachers get the same salaries, why would some one work so hard to major in physics? The industries pay higher salaries for say electrical/chemical engineers than the civil engineers.

Those "pledges" are reminiscent of similar pledges popular in the Soviet Union whenever the government tried to solve one of the many numerous problems that eventually killed SU. This is pure feel-good crap, and totally unproductive. Want more teachers? Pay more, make their work attractive. Have no money? Just shut up and say the obvious.

Of the 50 states in the US, there are only a handful that recognize computer science as a discipline. Therefore, there is practically no secondary teacher certification in that area in this country. After teaching mathematics and computer science for the last 41 years, I can only state that these disciplines are not learned overnight. Like playing a muscial instrument, it takes years and years and years to truly become competent. There is a huge hole in the secondary curriculum that will inevitably become an enormous problem. Oh, I forgot, we can outsource it.

We can pledge to do this all we want, but we generally do not have students pounding on the door to be admitted to such programs. I mean, it's not like there has been this huge student demand for STEM teaching programs that we have not been meeting. Sure, there is a socio-economic demand for more math and science teachers, but there are no incentives. In good economic times, not many students willing to major in STEM areas see any incentive to do so to become a teacher. In down times, enrollment in teach ed programs tends to pick up a bit. But in really down times, such as now, teachers are being fired all over the place because of broken budgets all over the place. It may be a noble profession, but nobles are now shabby genteel at best.

Responding to a positive focus on education, as most of the previous posts have done, is the wrong way to go and suggests that the point was missed. Let's embrace this. Let's push Obama, Duncan, etc. to make good on their pronouncements rather than try to punch holes in it or parse their words or only look at history. Please, sometimes academic people are not very focused!

Impressive. 121 universities will increase enrollments of teachers to 10,000 from 7,500--an increase of a whopping 20.66 students per institution on average. Spreading their enrollments over a typical time to degree, that will require each of those universities to find a way to be able to accomodate an increase of 4-5 new students per year.

Universities will not do this out of the goodness of their hearts. There will need to be Federal Aid to students to make this happen, because, unless the market for math and science jobs changes, students will not invest their own money in these disciplines. Pres. Obama would be better served if he good (1) reduce corporate taxes, (2) reduce product liability settlements, and reduce other government expenses to corporations that drive them to produce products that use people with math and science skills in other countries. Pres. Obama's heart is in the right place, but his understanding of economic incentive seems naive.

Now all we need are thousands of more teaching jobs...hey we could hire all of the out of work teachers first! Geez.

Horrors! I hope it isn't just numbers Obama and Duncan are addressing, but the quality of education of those who aspire to teach math and science. After many decades of abysmal results, it should be clear that the schools of education are inadequate in training teachers. We need teachers who have majored in math and the sciences and have demonstrated their love for and understanding of the subject matter at a conceptual rather than mechanistic level to inspire their students.

well
the number of teachers does not mean quality of teaching
the number of teacher students does not guarantee a truly commitment to teach
the number of math and science teachers does not conclude necessarily in an open and more constructive society
also, qualified teachers without qualified students does not make sense
are students ruled by a truly necessity to overcome poverty and lack of opportunities studying?
compare with those implied citizens
because students are a driven force toward...( the kind of society and political government that people would like to live in or to be ruled by)

There is an interesting forum discussion on the Chronicle forums about why students can't do math, in which a lot of posts by math ed profs suggest that huge numbers of elementary teachers hate and fear math themselves. If we do indeed have thousands of elem teachers who think they're helping their students by saying "it's ok, math is hard" to the first graders, then it won't matter much how qualified the high school teachers are, because the damage has already been carved into the students' psyches.

Someone commented that incentives are necessary for attracting good teachers. Motivated by California's Apple program which promised to award grants for individuals wishing to teaching math and science, my husband moved from New Mexico, was accepted into the Apple program, earned his teaching credential,landed a job in an Apple school, but did not receive his grant because the state budget crisis put the kiobash on the awards. Great incentive for a $46,000 a year teaching job.

With the current teaching climate (at least in California), I am wondering how students can be enticed to enter the education field at all at the K-12 kevel? It seems like a very rough field to be in right now, finding-jobs-wise, one likely to give high school and college students pause as they ponder the question of security for various professions.

As a chemistry instructor for 19 years and married to a practicing chemist (who makes three times my salary), I agree with many posts above. Just getting students to become science teachers is not enough.
1. Reading is an issue (see "sponsored" above). Students who cannot read will not succeed in science and math. In addition, to standard nonfiction reading, students must be able to grasp the symbolism of math as a shorthand notation for sentences. Science really is mostly "word" problems.
2. Math is an issue as students get further removed from measurement in their own lives. My students don't cook, sew, build cabinets, or work on their own cars. And please, please, the whole country needs to change to the metric system wholeheartedly. Students are amazed when I inform them that we are the only developed country in the world that insists on archaic units. Then we spend a week learning in college what students in other countries learn all through elementary school.
3. The salary issue really is the bugaboo. Any person qualified to teach science at the high school level, is more than qualified for a technician's job and possibly even a managers job in private industry and in the government. Despite the fact that both my husband and I have master of science degrees in chemistry from the same research university, we have very different salaries and benefits. I have known numerous science teachers who left the school system to "do" science because of salary and benefit discrepancies. My own high school science teacher who was a true inspiration, left teaching shortly after I graduated to attend physical therapy school--better pay, benefits, and hours in the end.
4. There are also issues of workload. Science teachers do not usually have lab technicians to help them set up labs; they often have very limited budgets with which to buy supplies; they have safety and liability issues beyond a typical classroom; and still must do all the extra work that schools require.
5. Then there is the interest factor. Getting students interested in math and science as children is fairly easy. Keeping them interested through college is difficult.

To follow up on chemteach's points 3 and 4, my twin brother taught biology and chemistry for a decade in CA, won a Golden Apple - rose at 5AM everyday to set up labs, stayed up late grading, meeting with parents, students. Although he never complained, but once met several colleagues, one of which was a PE teacher who joked about his 8AM-2:30PM job rolling out balls for students to play with, making the exact same salary. Rediculous! We differentiate pay in many fields, including higher education (where I work), why not in schools! BTW, my brother now teaches in an alternative classroom and has a "regular" 8-6 work schedule with less prep and take home work.

I feel a bit out of place commenting here, since I am not a science teacher. I do however work in a small rural secondary school in NYS where, for better or worse, all students take Science Regents exams; as a result, the bar has been lowered for many, IMHO, in order to get all kids over it. We do offer an AP science class to one or two students, but even that is rare. And so, I worry that many of our kids, who could succeed in science and math careers, are not being prepared for college level-work. In keeping with others who have suggested that the K-12 model we have inherited evolved out of very different kind kind of society, I believe that students need a better way of transitioning out of secondary school. Many are accepted into college, but many drop out. Perhaps we could offer an extra year, a hybrid of high school and higher education. I am well-aware that many professors find undergraduate students "unprepared" for college-level work. Why be ruled by frustration? The "blame game" is equally unproductive. We need to act! I applaud the president's effort to graduate more math and science teachers from college, but where are these future tachers going to come from? And where will they go?

excuse the typo..."teachers"

The physics community has an NSF-funded project, PhysTEC (www.phystec.org), whose man objective is to provide funding to Physics Departments interested in producing more and better prepared physics teachers. The shortage of well-prepared teachers is especially acute in physics where only a third of the teachers have a major or minor in physics and a third consider themselves unprepared to teach physics (AIP Statistical Research Center). We have found that in many cases it is not the salary that discourages students from choosing teaching as a career, but the working conditions and lack of respect from their administrations, as well as parents.

We have found that Physics Departments who consider preparing physics teachers an important part of their mission can increase the number of well-prepared physics teachers by factors of 5 or more. Eight Physics Departments participating in PhysTEC in a recent year graduated 30 certified physcis teachers, approximately 10% of the 300 certified physics teachers produced that year. There are almost 800 physics departments that have an undergraduate physics major and the need is for about 1200 new physics teachers each year, or about 1.5 teachers per year. Certainly a solveable problem.

10,000 well-prepared STEM teachers is a steady-state situation and you cannot expect to go from 7,500 to 10,000 in one or two years. If the institutions that pledged to increase the number of qualified STEM teachers graduated from 7,500 to 10,000 can do this in the steady-state, it will be a significant commitment on their part.

Just to comment on two other aspects of this important issue
(sadly to say that I expected more people sharing this conversation; but high school education is the way as it is, higher education faculty members and administrators never touch bases consistently).
1) on attracting students, an example: the way teachers teach algebra, comparing with how it is taught in other countries, it is overcomplicated and, once you learn the basics, non time-productive. It does not allow students to go over very effective short cuts.
2) on students and teachers in higher level: mostly in tier II, III and IV higher institutions, they have to patch and repair all the huge gaps not only in science but also in humanities, overall most of students are not prepare after school, and this also is cost-contraproductive

The current shortage of math teachers is a self-inflicted wound brought on by the stupid high school administrators of a generation ago. I graduated in the mid-Seventies with a teaching credential in secondary mathematics and found no takers. Every interview began with the same question: "What can you coach?" As soon as they realized the answer was "nothing", the interview was effectively over. As the chairman of one high school math department said to me, "I have 150 applications here from people who can teach math. What I need is a winning football coach." Of the "math people" I knew in college, not one ever found a job teaching math; we ended up instead as cashiers, waitresses, and secretaries. A few years later, we began hearing a lot of whining about a "critical shortage" of math teachers, but by then our credentials had expired and we had all moved on--and the word had already filtered down to the next generation not to go into math because there were no jobs.

I, the "Messiah," ("that we have all we been waiting for," bringing "Hope and Change" and other useless slogans and speeches) through the government that can't even stop a terrorist on an airplane with all the dots except 48-hours explicit advance notice, using part of the unplanned/ill-planned stimulus legislation that threw countless billions of dollars of taxpayer money down the hole lacking accountability (and didn't even know how to spend what they appropriated) and is now planning health-"care" in a back room with just a handful of incompetent people with no transparency (despite election promises), will now throw billions of dollars at select universities to produce "thousands" of STEM teachers through Departments that have no way of increasing their faculties due to lack of graduates because American kids (Bauerlein's Dumbest generation, already lacking the math-science K-12 basic preparation) can't learn these demanding fields on TV and with fun-computer games and foreign kids who CAN learn these skills will take the knowledge and abilities home to THEIR countries, and with low registration for courses that take HARD WORK.... And how can the two university systems in the Peoples Republic of California (in a state that is going bankrupt through bipartisan incompetence, mismanagement, and overspending) proclaim that if they build it, the students will come? What a vision!

Mine is a vision reminiscent of and evoking the constituent pieces of Franz Kafka and William Faulkner and Ludwig von Mises and no "New-Age" "education," but frightfully realistic. The "Anointed" has all the answers of Saul Alinsky and the his law-school professoriate without any real-world experience; hopefully in two years we will reject simplistic slogans and return to reality, electing others to do some deep analysis and problem-solving, avoiding bandaids and other "cures" to the symptoms. But as I look at the Republicans, choosing the lesser of two evils, I request that you don't color me skeptical, color me cynical - so add in Camus and Sartre and the "myth of Sisyphus" to the mix. If you don't understand my diatribe, that proves the value of your post-1960s "education"; if you do, it proves that students can learn despite going to school.

Reading so many of the above comments filtered through eyes that
started teaching high-school math 42 years ago, now teaching
collegiate computer science to students, many of whom have no work ethic and low ability (and interests) in reading, I am amazed at this prescient view of so many of the above commenting readers who seem to share much of my vision of reality - they seem to get it!

BTW, Jeff1, we are looking at history (I lived through Sputnik and Telstar long before your recent rosy-viewed graduation) AND present reality, not "feel-good" crap. Unfortunately, we ARE focused in responding to this "positive focus on education" (in an article that has doesn't even have the correct tense of the verb "train" in the third paragraph - so much for reading and writing!)

"The current shortage of math teachers is a self-inflicted wound brought on by the stupid high school administrators of a generation ago." I will extend this comment by septentriones to include community college administrators. As a retired executive dean of a state community college I can tell you it is a lot worse than people think. These under-educated dead heads are more interested in local politics and self-empowerment than educating the people. Because I was also a science researcher and science teacher, I can also tell you that NSF will ignore programs that work in favor of the status quo. After all everything is peer review! After millions of dollars spent to improve opportunities for including minorities in STEM programs, only the elite programs, which perpetuate the same bias and prejudices that existed when I earned my Ph.D (with honors)20 years ago, get funded. Cloning teachers with a state funded mindset and without passion and creativity will produce nothing positive.

My wife is a lateral entry middle-school teacher with an MS and worked in both private industry and academia before deciding to teach in the public schools. What is truly appalling is she has consistently encountered resistance and negative bias from science teachers who were "education majors" and have comparatively little training and even less actual experience in science. While some have valued her experience, the majority she has encountered are threatened.

Every man and his dog has an opinion on this one. The same problem exists in most Western countries. Australian politicians say the same fluff as this, then send their own siblings off to private schools. The basic problem is that teaching is not an attractive job. The pay, conditions, job satisfaction and social status are all lousy. Then there are the kids and their beastly parents. The most depressing aspect is the see the type of students that go into Education courses. Education students have a well deserved reputation to be the worst students you will find in a university in both ability and teachability. Well, if you pay peanuts it is not reasonable to be surprised when you get monkeys.