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Have you ever thought to ask those teachers how much they make, and what their expenses are?

No, I've never done that because that would be rude. It's not my place to judge them. Of the one with whom I had a personal relationship, I know he had a child with greater-than-average medical needs. The others seemed to signal that they were just trying to make some extra money.
I don't know where you live, but in my state, the average teacher salary is ~$50,000/year (source). I wouldn't exactly call that rolling in dough, especially when you consider that many have a master's degree and also have their own kids to take care of. Also, our budgets for resources and supplies is garbage in this state. Many teachers ask for donations of paper, glue, etc from the parents. Many end up buying the stuff they don't get with money out of their own pockets (so that employee discount helps). The problem just magnifies when you get to poorer school districts.

If you want to see the types of questions on the FCAT, you can look at the item sampler here.

There was only one question I didn't instantly know how to solve: the one about sums of interior angles on a regular polygon. I don't recall how many sides a 140-degree per side shape would have, and I don't remember the pattern to solve for it (but I bet it's a 7-sider).

So, because this businessperson / board member didn't know a single answer on the math test, and only scored 62% on the reading test, you think the person is not stupid?

Here's the links to the FCAT tests: http://fcat.fldoe.org/fcatrelease.asp
And here's the direct link to the Grade 10 testbook with answers: http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/releasepdf/06/FL06_Rel_G10M_AK_Cwf001.pdf

Here's an example question which this person apparently got wrong:

An artist sells earrings from a booth at a fair. Rent for the booth is $250. The artist
makes $6 from each pair of earrings sold. The profit in dollars, P, can be found
using the following equation, where n is the number of pairs of earrings sold.
P = 6n - 250
How many pairs of earrings must the artist sell to earn a profit of $500 ?

And here's another:

The number of shoppers at a Fort Myers flea market ranges from an average of 55,000 per weekend during the tourist season to an average of 18,000 on a summer weekend.

What is the percent of decrease, to the nearest whole number, in the number of shoppers at the flea market from the tourist season to a summer weekend?

Those problems are equivalent to (and actually easier than, IMHO) the 8th grade salary-based word problem. The article says that this board member is actually responsible for the budget at a multi-million dollar company. If this person seriously can't calculate percentages, and seriously thinks that this skill is not useful in anyone's everyday life, this person is a moron. Also, all of this person's supposedly business-savvy friends are morons, since they also somehow don't see the value in calculating profit as the difference between gross sales and expenses.

So, because this businessperson / board member didn't know a single answer on the math test, and only scored 62% on the reading test, you think the person is not stupid?

Here's the links to the FCAT tests: http://fcat.fldoe.org/fcatrelease.asp
And here's the direct link to the Grade 10 testbook with answers: http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/releasepdf/06/FL06_Rel_G10M_AK_Cwf001.pdf

Here's an example question which this person apparently got wrong:

An artist sells earrings from a booth at a fair. Rent for the booth is $250. The artist
makes $6 from each pair of earrings sold. The profit in dollars, P, can be found
using the following equation, where n is the number of pairs of earrings sold.
P = 6n - 250
How many pairs of earrings must the artist sell to earn a profit of $500 ?

And here's another:

The number of shoppers at a Fort Myers flea market ranges from an average of 55,000 per weekend during the tourist season to an average of 18,000 on a summer weekend.

What is the percent of decrease, to the nearest whole number, in the number of shoppers at the flea market from the tourist season to a summer weekend?

Those problems are equivalent to (and actually easier than, IMHO) the 8th grade salary-based word problem. The article says that this board member is actually responsible for the budget at a multi-million dollar company. If this person seriously can't calculate percentages, and seriously thinks that this skill is not useful in anyone's everyday life, this person is a moron. Also, all of this person's supposedly business-savvy friends are morons, since they also somehow don't see the value in calculating profit as the difference between gross sales and expenses.

FCAT are the right sample tests. Slightly harder, but I'd still expect any halfway intelligent person to get 90+% of them correct.

For all you smug people, how about trying a sample for the real test (pdf)? They are all 10th grade level geometry and algebra. This surprised me a little, because even the GRE you take for graduate school has a few questions of the sort in the test the OP linked to.

First, they cite the wrong exam. This school board member was not complaining about the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, but rather the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT. (The NAEP test adjusts the skill level of its questions on the fly as you're taking the exam, and returns a score that is percentile-based. I'd actually like to see what this board member scores on the NAEP...it's a very good metric that can be used to measure one's skill level, and is not biased or corrupted by political influence.)

Second, the sample questions are misleading. Not only are they "4th grade" & "8th grade" leveled questions (not the 10th grade exam that this board member was complaining about), but even those questions are not as difficult as you will commonly find on a state exam. If you want to see the types of questions on the FCAT, you can look at the item sampler here.

I work in Education up in Minnesota. As you can see on page 13 of this report, there is a downward trend across grade levels in "percent proficiency." While the average joe might conclude that most 3rd grade teachers are fantastic while most 11th grade math teachers need to be fired, the skeptic while (rightfully) question the validity of the test. For example, on that table, you'll see that all the 2011 results are about 10-12% lower than their previous years (except the 11th grade). That's because, in 3rd - 8th grade that year, the state moved to a newer, more difficult exam which emphasizes heavier Algebraic understanding (with completion of Algebra I by 8th grade). Because the standards became more difficult, scores dropped. But the uninformed Joe would just conclude that teachers are getting lazier and use these results as a way to blame schools for not doing their job. (These changes to the standards have not affected the 11th grade yet, but will in two more years.)

I personally coached students for and administered the 11th grade exam last year at my school. The questions on the exam are not simple. Rather than throw traditional skill-based questions at you, the questions are worded in a very complex manner, requiring a deep level of understanding of the skills required to solve the problem in order to recognize which skills are required to solve the problem, much like that FCAT exam I linked to above. This test is not a valid metric of what students know or don't know; I saw one student personally who had no problems with the worksheets I provided him during our coaching sessions, but bombed the exam, not because he was stupid, but because he gets severe test anxiety. Other students told me that they just didn't understand what many of the questions were asking them to calculate.

The upper-level state exams are engineered to fail students, so that schools can be labeled failures. Particular politicians want schools to appear as though they are not doing a good job, to validate the privatization of our educational system. While you hear the expression "raising the bar," what they are really doing is increasing the failure rate. It's absurd what kids are being asked to accomplish; cognitive science has shown that what kindergartners and 1st grade students really should be doing is playing and reading, and we're trying to sit them down and teach them Algebra skills. (If you don't believe me, ask a 1st grade teacher in the state of Minnesota...even 1st grade standards now are engineered to incorporate "Algebraic thinking".) It's downright ludicrous, and it's all a political game.

Tests from 2005 to 2007 are available at http://fcat.fldoe.org/fcatrelease.asp

Orange County Florida board of education member Rick Roach took the 10th grade FCAT test. His less than stunning results were narrated by Marion Brady in the Washington Post.

The informal quiz on the Washington Post's web page has example questions from 4th and 8th grade questions by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

Visit the practice FCAT test page to download a practice FCAT math test and answer key. It's an entirely different kind of test than the one at the Washington Post's web site. Consider the very first question:

Figure ABCD is a rhombus. The length of AE is (x + 5) units, and the length of is EC (2x 3) units.

[Figure deleted]

Which statement best explains why the equation x + 5 = 2x 3 can be used to solve for x?

A All four sides of a rhombus are congruent.
B Opposite sides of a rhombus are parallel.
C Diagonals of a rhombus are perpendicular.
D Diagonals of a rhombus bisect each other

As others have pointed out, these questions are for 4th and 8th graders. The Florida sample questions for 10th graders, i.e. the level of test that this guy flunked are here: http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/sample/0910/reading/FL517300_10_Rdg_TB_WT_r2g.pdf These still seem to be pretty straightforward for anyone with a BSc and double Masters...

Similarly, we have no problem blowing tons of money on old people, spending hundreds of billions on medicare and medicaid so grandma can get a new pacemaker on the public dime, but lets see what happens if you suggest that grandma just dies so that kids can get better schools.

Nowhere is that more true than in Florida. We've got the nicest retirement communities and the worst schools. When a former superintendent of the Manatee County School system was told by the guidance counselor of an elementary school that her school needed better security after after a student was gunned down in the crossfire between two gangs a matter of yards away from school property, the superintendent's response was, "But your FCAT scores are up."