The problem has never been the curriculum; it’s been the low pay of teachers that have kept people who actually know the subject the way they should out of high school classrooms and definitely out of elementary and middle school classrooms.

This doesn’t get solved by raising salaries for all teachers. That doesn’t get you great math teachers. That floods the school board offices with applications for Social Studies, English and Physical Education jobs. This also doesn’t get solved by raising salaries for people teaching math who do not have degrees in mathematics. That fills the classroom with highly paid, unqualified teachers who got whatever pitiful license their state gives them, because they couldn’t find a job doing stuff they actually like.

Do we want our kids to learn math well? If so, we must hire teachers with degrees in mathematics, who score 90th percentile or above on the Praxis in Mathematics, and who had SATs themselves over 650 in math and GREs over 750. An advanced degree is nice, but if they have all the above, then they know the stuff on the level it needs to be understood to teach it.

There are far too many teachers in mathematics classrooms that simply don’t have the understanding of mathematics to get it across to the kids even if they are masters of all teaching techniques.

It’s a tough degree to get, because your answers are objectively right or wrong and you can’t fake your way to a good grade in the courses.