McREL International CEO Bryan Goodwin and his counterpart at Community Training and Assistance Center, William J. Slotnik, dug into the research related to a commonly held belief that teachers’ professional skills reach a plateau early in their careers and then barely budge. Their reexamination of the research found this conventional wisdom to be a fallacy, as they outline in the April 2019 issue of Phi Delta Kappan. The authors then present key ways that districts can set aside these past beliefs and encourage a lifetime of learning with a smarter approach to talent development.