The education establishment is not interested in better science teachers, they are interested in continuing to build up the education bureaucracy and increasing education credentialism.
I am a semi-retired engineer. I have an undergraduate and masters degree. I am technically very well qualified to teach high school science or mathematics. I took the same freshman and sophomore chemistry, physics, and math that the guys in those majors took. There are a lot of people like me. It should be a Summer’s worth of classes getting people like me ready for the classroom.
Instead, because of the credentialism hurdles that the education bureaucracy places in the way, it would probably take two college school years of credits, and more in some states, to get to a public school classroom.
My next door neighbor was a math major, she is fully retired (long career at IBM), has looked into this more deeply than I have, and has come to the same conclusion.
In New York State they offer alternative certification/ Vocational certification.
You would need to take five classes and student teach for 2 weeks. You can do this is you have 5 or more years of verifiable experience. If you already have a Masters degree you would automatically receive permanent certification.
Story I heard some 15+ years ago: GM was trying to reduce the number of engineers and other whit collar workers, offered to send under employed engineers and designers to Detroit Public Schools to teach paying the differential between their GM salary and the teaching salary. The Detroit Public School system refused to take advantage of the offer.
Yep, I've got both technical and liberal arts degrees at the Masters level (10 years altogether in school--paid for by myself through two jobs), and when I explored making a lateral career transition to become a high-school teacher in the Commonwealth of Virginia, I found that the Department of Education actually wanted me to go back to school for two more years just to fulfill some silly bureaucratic requirements.
I told them to go pound sand, and have since made a lot more money in the private sector than I would have in the rotten post-"No Child" school system.
Correct. This is the ONLY thing that the "education establishment" (aka "teacher's unions") exist to do.
I'm a semi-retired PhD chemist. In some few years, I'll stop actively doing research, and would LOVE to do some part-time teaching in high school. But I see no point into subjecting myself to the ludicrous "certification" requirements. Some enlightened states have changed things, but it is a hard row.
Those hurdles are able to exist because there is no real shortage of science or math teachers. Yes, there are more openings compared to other subjects, but the jobs still get filled.
How about teaching at community college?
My local school district gives HS juniors and seniors the option of taking courses at the local community college. This bypasses the ed establishment's requirements.
I just took a look at my local community college's web page for job openings. They have lots of openings for part-time instructors in various subjects. The jobs do not require an "ed" degree, just a masters or above in the subject, plus some teaching experience. Check out your local CCs.
I have a M.S. in Cell and Molecular Biology. I was apparently fully qualified to be a Teaching Associate at a State University - but would need a degree in Education to be able to teach High School science.
Having coached an ex wife through an education degree program I can tell you that it is absolutely a crapfest of idiotic buzzword indoctrination that is meaningless to someone being a good teacher or not.
I looked into taking a big pay cut to teach - because everyone has always told me I was so good at it (my student evals were exemplary), but I was NOT going to go back to school to take a pay cut.
I ran into a similar problem when I checked into a teaching job after the oil boom of the late 70s crashed.
Despite being a geologist who has not only taught when I was an undergrad and a grad student, and having years in my field in industry, without the 22 semester hours required to get a teaching certificate (actually more in my case because I took Archaeology courses as an undergrad instead of 101 Sociology and Psychology), they could not hire me to teach Middle School Earth Science.