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Prismattic comments on If You Were Brilliant When You Were Ten... - Less Wrong
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This is where I think the prevailing attitude on Lesswrong that politics is a pointless activity is particularly unfortunate. In the US, education policy is largely set at the state and (except for CA and TX) the local level, and a small group of highly motivated individuals can have a meaningful impact on hiring and curriculum policy.
This seems to pass unnoticed except when people complain about creationists and the like doing it.
What do you think would be good things to lobby for?
Even making sure that math teachers actually understand math seems like a rather subtle problem.
Number 1 on my list is probably demanding that teachers above, say, the 3rd grade level, have degrees (or equivalent certfiication of some sort) in their subject area rather than in education or child development.
I recognize that the signalling theory of education means that a degree in mathematics isn't a perfect yardstick, but a degree in education already sends a relatively bad signal, so I would still expect improvement over the status quo.
Also, I realize that relying on academics to do research about academic policy creates certain issues (on top of the general mind-killing problem), but it appears that the ball is now in the court of people opposed to simply paying teachers more to get better results to make the counterargument.
I would expect your first proposal to lead to a serious shortage of math and science teachers unless paired with a commensurate increase in incentives, and possibly with other systemic changes.
If the school administrators that I've talked to are to be trusted, there's already a shortage severe enough to pretty much guarantee employment for people with even a modest math or science background (read: a few classes, or a major in a tangentially related field) who have teaching credentials. That's probably not a situation where you want to be introducing stricter qualifications.
Requiring a math degree seems like overkill for math teachers up to grade 9 or so. What's actually needed is a solid understanding of the math they're teaching plus a few years ahead so that they can recognize and help bright students.
Teaching really is a different skill than knowing the subject matter. If education courses aren't good, that's another problem to be solved, not a reason for giving up on teaching how to teach.