Best roads, worst schools. But money has nothing to do with that.

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Calling to the underworld. Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls.

I asked: "But...since when is a 2.75 GPA "exemplary?" Are we sure that particular college student will become the teacher we hope to see produced?"

...And, lo and behold, this Education Week article landed in my inbox just moments later ((link...)).

One point made by Strategic Management of Human Capital's 30-member task force:

It said raising the bar for who can enter undergraduate-level teacher education programs—perhaps by requiring a minimum score on the SAT or the ACT—is necessary to improve the talent that enters the profession.

But detractors offer this counter-point:

One superintendent took issue with what he saw as the report’s main thrust: recruiting “the best and the brightest” people to become teachers. “In our profession, not everyone can teach regardless of how smart they may be,” said David C. Ring Jr., the superintendent in Delmar, Del. “We need people who can relate to children.”

The task force's chair, though, got in the last (wry) word:

Gov. Pawlenty said that districts need to strike a better balance between teachers who are experts in their subject areas and those who are skilled in running their classrooms and relating to children. “I don’t think we are in any danger at the moment of overemphasizing smart people going into teaching,” he said.

(Strategic Management of Human Capital is a project of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education and is supported by funding from foundations. It is headed by Allan R. Odden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and James A. Kelly, the founding president of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty chaired the task force over the course of the past year.)