Teach Teachers How to Individualize Instruction

To the Editor:

Regarding the June 8, 2005, front-page article "Teacher Education Homing In on Content":

I find it absolutely amazing that Bank Street College of Education, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, and the RAND Corp., among others, are focusing on improving professional development for teachers and investigating how teacher training could be made to parallel that of medical doctors through the formation of education “residencies” for new teachers.

If these influential entities want professional educators to adopt the training and practices of the medical profession, why not teach all new educators how to individualize their instruction?

Doctors do not take 20 patients into an office and treat them all for the same ailment. So why not educate new teachers in how to differentiate their caseloads through individualized instruction? That could go a long way toward professionalizing the field, instead of leaving it to wallow in its current civil-service state of mediocrity.