The Answer Sheet: professional development

he founding director of a center that fosters best teaching practices saw "Waiting for Superman" and writes: "Conventional thinking tells us the best way to improve teacher effectiveness is to remove the ineffective teachers and replace them with effective ones. No doubt, this strategy is needed. But if we’re going for a fundamental shift in what we expect from schools, then a wholesale cast change won’t be the fix we imagine. We’ll risk ending up with a new batch of well-intentioned, but improperly prepared players in a flawed system."

If Arne Duncan supports classroom teachers as he says he does, then why, a highly certified teacher asks, does he want to stop funding the National Writing Project, the best professional development program this teacher has experienced in nearly 30 years of teaching?