Excellent Teaching…

Bill Gates’ address to the National Governor’s Association last month was an ode to excellent teaching. Except that it wasn’t. What we have to do, Gates chirped (to the tune of former DC Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee), is “measure, develop, and reward excellent teaching…We have to identify great teachers, find out what makes them so effective, and transfer those skills to others.” But excellent teaching –as sociologists Lori Dance (2002) and Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot (1984) have shown through their research,...