Thank goodness for TFA. Teacher Education has long languished, as no one wants to beef up the curriculum when the challenge to fill classrooms with any teacher continues to exist. The courses are laughable - I took them myself and was astonished at the low level of expectation my professors had of us students. While at the same institution, I found my physics professors to be relentless, pushing us to higher heights of comprehension while ruthlessly giving out low grades to those who simply couldn't cut it. No such rigor in any of my education classes.

Saying that even most certified teachers are ill-prepared and/or unqualified creates an automatic response - everyone pleads for teachers, saying how great they are and how they give their lives for their students. In many cases this is true, however, teaching is a profession like any other and there are no shortage of slackers who show up for the check and little more. We're no angels, and treating the teaching profession with kid gloves does us no favors. By stopping any true discourse related to much-needed improvements in teaching across our nation, we slide even further into mediocrity, attracting fewer and fewer sharp minds to a demanding and rewarding field.

TFA demonstrates that bright minds and energy are what is needed to turn around poorly performing classrooms. If we could drastically change the image of teachers so that they are seen less as partially volunteering and more as highly qualified professionals, perhaps we can also change other ills associated with education. Perhaps parents would respect teachers more themselves, and stop hovering over their children, forcing the teachers to keep extensive paperwork simply to give a child a grade s/he deserves. Perhaps young, intelligent people would stay in teaching if pay were awarded based on merit, rather than years in service. And perhaps teachers would take responsibility for their career growth and continue to strive for their best work if they didn't have the unions and tenure to fall back on.

Yes, the education system in this country is broken. And teachers can be the solution. We have to be, as we are obviously part of the problem.

This is a measured, well-thought-out, searingly accurate, and overall excellent post. Brava or bravo for ignoring the polarizers at either end of the debate and seeking out common ground and sense.

The system in broken most in leadership and the aforementioned colleges of education. Having seen a sameness in my engineering studies at the undergraduate level, I was surprised at the ease for a graduate degree later in life.

I also agree from personal experience on laggards in every profession. However, there are also sistinct differences in performance between teaching theory to young minds and teaching application. I have had more than teacher say it was a more challenging class when students were asking how to apply the curricula than just regurgitate it.

TFA does have good idea but a deficiency of method. This includes their impetus on critical areas of math, sciences and technology. No fruit has been produced yet and the qustionable numbers are not an abstract in the real world. In fact I would suggest they are conservative on the fallout.

As a multi-disciplined professional that has been in the technical industry and education, a Type A personality does not guarantee success or fulfillment. As I have often told many young people that have found their apparent calling, don't be afraid to move and you can stand a couple of years in just about any place. So goes TFA and the promotion, though I would say is short-lived on real committment.

Connections are the key. Some organizations do recognize the need and the way to do it. They don't have the connections for all the feel good posts but have a desire for longer-term commitment and an ROI for the people that are there.

Having seen the hardness of acceptance of professionals entering education, the one-size-fits-all union mentality, reviewed the programs for education and industry connection and councils that are supposed to increase the effectiveness of the K12 system, they all fail to put the pieces together and rebuke anyone that sees the answers that are before them.

Teachers are more the symptom and not the cause.