The National Staff Development Council always has interesting and informative things to say on educational practices that might improve student achievement. Here s one that might fall on deaf ears in light of school leadership s tendency to panic over pressure from above, but consider this nugget from the November 2003 issue of Results:

"A widely held view of instructional improvement is that good teaching is primarily an individual affair and that principals as instructional leaders will interact one-on-one with each teacher to strengthen his or her efforts in the classroom." [&]

"NSDC's view&is that some of the most important forms of professional learning occur in daily interactions among teachers in which they assist one another in improving lessons, deepening understanding of the content they teach, analyzing student work, examining various types of data on student performance, and solving the myriad of problems they face each day. [S]ustained teacher-to-teacher communication about teaching and learning is one of the most powerful and underused sources of professional learning and instructional improvement."