ABSTRACT
Many urban school districts in the United States fail in carrying out their primary mission: to help all children become fully literate. The central reason, at least from my perspective, is that the initial training of teachers in colleges of education, and the subsequent professional development (i.e., inservice training) provided by school districts for practicing teachers, lack sufficient depth to ensure the development of expertise or capacity in essential teaching methods. In this chapter, we first examine some of the causal factors for this failure in capacity building by teachers colleges and school districts. Later a model for effective professional development is offered that could be applied to each venue.
