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Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Achievement Gap and Teacher Training | Mr. Teachbad

The Achievement Gap and Teacher Training | Mr. Teachbad:

The Achievement Gap and Teacher Training

Note: The tone of this post is a lit­tle more seri­ous and it has no very lit­tle swear­ing. I know that will turn some peo­ple off, and I apologize.

Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, analo­gies between teach­ers and doc­tors trig­ger in me a pow­er­ful, irre­sistible gag reflex. I hate read­ing about how we both have a prac­tice, for exam­ple. How­ever, I have found a place where the anal­ogy between teach­ers and doc­tors makes sense, but only if we pro­ceed seri­ously and fol­low where it leads.

Be warned.

It leads us to a very expen­sive, incon­ve­nient and time-consuming place. It leads us to a dis­rup­tive place where the value of sloppy but lucra­tive teacher prepa­ra­tion pro­grams is sharply ques­tioned. It leads us to a place where teach­ers will be forced to invest more and be far more delib­er­ate as they decide to take up this job. It’s a place where pol­i­