From The Hechinger Report Why Americans should not be coming up with their own solutions to teacher training issues A look at British Columbia, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore by MARC TUCKER Professional development of American teachers costs up to $18 billion a year with at least half of that spent on workshops for teachers. But no matter how much we spend, it doesn’t seem to result in much improvement in student achievement. Several other countries are doing a better job than the U.S.