It is the job of research mathematics departments not only to promote mathematics research but also to train undergraduate and graduate mathematics students. In the United States and some other countries it is also their job to help train future high school mathematics teachers; especially in their junior and senior years at university future high school teachers will be in classes taught by research mathematicians.
In spite of this exposure there is considerable anecdotal evidence that high school math teachers do not see the relevance of the upper level math courses they took in college to the mathematics that they are teaching in high school. Two programs at Michigan State University have led several of us to look at this situation more closely. The first is a Teachers for a New Era (TNE) grant whose purpose is to examine our undergraduate education of future teachers very closely and identify improvements that might be made. The second is the development of a new senior-level capstone course for (math majors who are) future secondary math teachers that is jointly taught by a mathematician and a math educator.
