[vman650]

I have a relative in Florida who is graduating from a college and has NEVER taken a math course in college. She has just accepted a teaching job in Florida. She will be teaching math in middle school. All she had to do was pass a written test. As a retired math teacher, I am sickened by this. I taught High School math and physics and can tell you that if students do not have a good math background when they get to high school it is almost impossible for them to be successful. Every five years I had to take classes in math to keep up my certification as well as having taken lots of college math and science classes. With the new emphasis on an educated work force, your state is in huge trouble.

[Rhett_Butler]

Originally Posted by vman650

I have a relative in Florida who is graduating from a college and has NEVER taken a math course in college. She has just accepted a teaching job in Florida. She will be teaching math in middle school. All she had to do was pass a written test. As a retired math teacher, I am sickened by this. I taught High School math and physics and can tell you that if students do not have a good math background when they get to high school it is almost impossible for them to be successful. Every five years I had to take classes in math to keep up my certification as well as having taken lots of college math and science classes. With the new emphasis on an educated work force, your state is in huge trouble.

I CLEP'ed out of math as well and never touched it in college (went to a Florida university)..... It depends what classes were taken in High School in most cases...

As for becoming a teacher? Math is SUCH a high-needs area that in MANY states all you have to do is take a crash course in being an educator and pass your Praxis II subject mastery test in whatever subject you want to teach and you're on your way....

I'm in Virginia and actually considering doing this.... I'd be a History Major who never took a college math course (in college anyway) and could become a math teacher in 4 months here if I decide that's the route I want to take career-wise.... It isn't just Florida doing it.....

[pianogal]

Originally Posted by TANaples

working in the tech department in the software firm, where my husband works, is a Florida educated person. They are from all over the country, except Florida. When they have openings, the company posts on national online boards, not locally.

I work for the school district. I have met very few teachers here who are Florida educated. The vast majority are from out of state. In fact last year there was a program called, "Home Grown Teachers", where a Florida retail chain was giving scholarships to apparently address this situation.

We aren't making this up.

Interesting...my son works at Lockheed Martin as do several of his friends and several of my husband's friends. ALL of them are Florida natives, born and educated in Florida. According to him, most of the employees in his area are also Floridians. Interesting also, that the University of Central Florida's PHD program in Computer Science is rated in the top 10 in the US. My son is in that program along with a number of young men from China and Korea. WOW - they came all the way from China to study at a program that is substandard!!

I can't imagine why DS was offered jobs with high tech companies such as Northrup Grumman and NavAir in Maryland and Virginia. They flew him up from Florida - knowing he was educated in Florida - and offered him great packages. Obviously, the NE has much better school systems, nobody would offer someone educated in Florida that kind of job, right?

It's a pity Florida's kids are so dumb and our school systems so incompetent.

By the way, I am a teacher at one of the best and most academically challenging schools in Central Florida - very few of our teachers are from out of state.

[pianogal]

Originally Posted by vman650

I have a relative in Florida who is graduating from a college and has NEVER taken a math course in college. She has just accepted a teaching job in Florida. She will be teaching math in middle school. All she had to do was pass a written test. As a retired math teacher, I am sickened by this. I taught High School math and physics and can tell you that if students do not have a good math background when they get to high school it is almost impossible for them to be successful. Every five years I had to take classes in math to keep up my certification as well as having taken lots of college math and science classes. With the new emphasis on an educated work force, your state is in huge trouble.

Florida teachers are also required to take classes to maintain certification.

[Gatornation]

I know a couple business majors that where hired as math teachers. Of course they aren't teaching at very good schools.

[FLBob]

I think that when we look at math and sciences in k-12, those with great credentials can normally find much better paying/more interesting jobs in the private sector. This issue has been around for decades, and defiantly isn't just a Florida issue.
I also think that the skills needed to teach may be as or more significant than the number of semesters of calculus taken in college.
As and example; I used to teach adult computer courses to computer professionals, curriculum such as systems programing, operating systems internals. I was the only CS major on staff. The other staff members were career educators that learned the course materials. Most performed very well.
So just because someone didn't major in math doesn't mean that they can't teach HS algebra.

[DailyJournalist]

Originally Posted by pianogal

Interesting...my son works at Lockheed Martin as do several of his friends and several of my husband's friends. ALL of them are Florida natives, born and educated in Florida. According to him, most of the employees in his area are also Floridians. Interesting also, that the University of Central Florida's PHD program in Computer Science is rated in the top 10 in the US. My son is in that program along with a number of young men from China and Korea. WOW - they came all the way from China to study at a program that is substandard!!

I can't imagine why DS was offered jobs with high tech companies such as Northrup Grumman and NavAir in Maryland and Virginia. They flew him up from Florida - knowing he was educated in Florida - and offered him great packages. Obviously, the NE has much better school systems, nobody would offer someone educated in Florida that kind of job, right?

It's a pity Florida's kids are so dumb and our school systems so incompetent.

By the way, I am a teacher at one of the best and most academically challenging schools in Central Florida - very few of our teachers are from out of state.

Have any proof of this?

Also, being the most academically challenged school in Central Florida does not say much. Why would good out of state teachers come to Florida to work for lower wages. Its no surprise most of the teachers in your school are from Florida.

[DailyJournalist]

Here are some examples of the brain drain Florida is already starting to experience:

Florida's shrinking university budgets create brain drain - St. Petersburg Times

[psouth]

It's simple. Just look around and you will see who is replacing educated Americans as they leave Florida.

As for the education system, I guess not every school is third world but it is generally known that Florida has one of the worst educational systems in the country. I could have fallen asleep in every class and still passed. I think the colleges and universities are like anywhere else though.

[pianogal]

[quote=DailyJournalist;8306055]Have any proof of this?

Also, being the most academically challenged school in Central Florida does not say much. Why would good out of state teachers come to Florida to work for lower wages. Its no surprise most of the teachers in your school are from Florida.[/QUOTE

Well, those poor, underpaid teachers must do something right...our graduates this year will be attending Harvard, MIT along with a number of other Ivy League schools. We have some outstanding young students - hard working kids and caring teachers.

I'm not sure what proof you want. I know what happened to my son - took him to the airport for those interviews myself. I know and he knows those with whom he works. I have worked at the same school for 20+ years - and know almost everyone there.

Here is info regarding the CS doctoral program at UCF. Any of it is readily confirmed with a quick search on the internet.

NAGPS National Ranking for Top 20
Computer Science Doctoral Programs
Institution
Score
1. University of Washington-Seattle
2. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
3. University of California-San Diego (UCSD)
4. Harvard University
5. Georgia Tech University
6. John Hopkins University
6. Cornell University
6. University of California-Berkeley
6. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
10. Columbia University
10. University of Central Florida
10. University of Cincinnati
10. SUNY-Stony Brook
10. University of Wisconsin-Madison
15. University of Delaware
15. Stanford University
17. Rice University
18. Princeton University
18. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
18. University of Texas-Austin
18. Texas A&M

Also:
U.S. News & World Report ranked UCF as one of America's Best Graduate Engineering Colleges in 2006.

In 2008, UCF's College of Engineering and Computer Science was ranked among the top 10 graduate engineering schools for Hispanic students by Hispanic Business magazine.

It is a fact the UCF programming teams have won five Top-10 finishes out of 6,000 teams World Wide.

Also, published in US News & World Report, UCF ranks in the top 50 universities nationwide for the number of National Merit Scholars of first-time-in-college students.

This is a write up of just one of DS Chinese friends in the grad program at UCF...

(Name withheld for privacy reasons) was born in 1979 in Suzhou, China. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China and University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, USA in 2002 and 2004, respectively.

Currently, is working towards his Ph.D. degree at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Central Florida, Orlando. His Ph.D. study concentrates in the area of modeling liquid crystal display and photonic devices. From 2003 to 2005, he participated in the display project for Toppoly Optoelectronics Corp., Taiwan, on developing new transflective liquid crystal displays for small panel devices, and high transmittance in-plane switching mode for LCD TV and monitor applications. Since April 2006, he has been working on novel liquid crystal display
development project contracted by Chi-Mei Optoelectronics Corp., Taiwan.

Meanwhile, he is also a lead student for developing dynamic modeling tools of liquid crystal based spatial light modulators for Raytheon Company, Boston, MA.

also participates actively in academic services. He is currently serving as Chair of Society of Information Display UCF Student Branch. He is also a reviewer for IEEE/OSA Journal of Display Technology, Applied Physics Letter. He is one of the recipients of the 2006 IEEE/LEOS Graduate Student Fellowships. In addition, he also received the “Meritorious” Award of American Mathematical Contest in Modeling in 2001. He would thank IEEE/LEOS for giving him this great honor, and acknowledge his advisors Prof. Shin-Tson Wu and Prof. Thomas X. Wu at UCF for their dedicated mentoring.

I picked this young man at random - there a many others.