"start recognizing that hiring content experts in K-12 is more important than hiring someone who has studied education pedagogy for 4 years. Just imagine how ma

"start recognizing that hiring content experts in K-12 is more important than hiring someone who has studied education pedagogy for 4 years. Just imagine how many folks interested in STEM want to take all those School of Education classes to get their teaching certificate." This was the best comment in the entire article. When my wife and I were in grad school (math for her, applied math for me) we were both interested in teaching. But the system put a lot of extra hurdles and disincentives in our way: - Certification required an extra year and a half of lame classes, at great out-of-pocket expense. - Teaching pays significantly less than engineering, and has less room for advancement and intellectual improvement. - Teachers don't get a whole lot of respect from parents, students, or society in general. - I spent some time in a public school classroom as a specialist, and was surprised by the lack of professionalism from teachers and administrators. I had an administrator warn me that if I didn't hold specific political views, I'd get yelled at. Sure enough, one teacher angrily demanded to know why I wasn't voting for her favorite candidate (though I'd never said anything to her about it -- that info was spread to her behind my back). It was made very clear to me that I wasn't personally welcome in that environment. - Teaching (at least in the public schools) is heavily unionized. Advancement doesn't seem to be directly merit-based. Seniority, politics, and being in with certain "cliques" seem to be important. After grad school, I spent four years teaching STEM concepts for a museum with a large K-12 outreach program. Based on teacher, parent, and student comments and on performance evaluations, I'm pretty sure I would have been a great classroom teacher. But it simply wasn't worth the extra time, money, and effort to get a low-paying, low-advancement job in a politically hostile environment.