Washington's National Center for Alternative Certification is out with another survey, this time profiling Troops to Teachers recruits. Troops to Teachers is a program that recruits retired members of the armed forces into teaching.

With roughly half of the 3,000 teachers responding, the program appears to make a real dent in correcting the profession's traditional gender and race disparities, with a profile of 82 percent men and 23 percent African-Americans. Perhaps reflecting previous battlefield experience as well as years of coping with military red tape, these soldiers-turned-teachers reported routinely being less bent out of shape over problems that seem to drive other teachers crazy, such as unruly kids, paperwork, and NCLB compliance.

Unlike other teacher recruitment programs, the genesis of Troops is in the US military's effort to provide gainful employment to retiring servicemen--not to reform the teaching profession. Its approach to the states in which it operates reflects this apolitical, non-reform agenda. Accordingly, there's no bucking the system here. For example, participants are actually likely to take more education coursework than traditionally trained teachers.