Part of TIME?s cover package on improving public schools focuses on recruiting better teachers.

As other media reports have noted about public education, a key to reform involves overriding the objections of teachers? unions (or associations):

[The New Teacher Project] and [Teach for America] are controversial among teachers? union members and education professors because the organizations put new teachers in classrooms after only five to seven weeks of boot-camp training.

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?By almost any standard,? [Secretary of Education Arne Duncan] said, ?many if not most of the nation?s 1,450 schools, colleges and departments of education are doing a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st century classroom.?

More than 85% of U.S. teachers have an education degree. But many ed schools are fusty, politicized institutions that seemed designed to turn out reliable teachers? union members rather than reliable educators. And their lecture halls aren?t exactly brimming with overachievers. According to a forthcoming McKinsey & Co. study, just 23% of new teachers in the U.S. come from the top third of their college classes; 47% come from the bottom third.