Learning from the Best : Improving Learning Through Effective Teacher Policies

An education system is only as good as its teachers. Both developed and developing countries have increasingly become concerned with increasing the effectiveness of their teachers. Successful education systems achieve the eight SABER-Teacher teacher policy goals in different ways, but they all produce superior student and teacher performance. The World Bank has studied top-performing systems. These systems are particularly effective at attracting the best individuals to the teaching profession and preparing them exceptionally. Once teachers enter the profession, the system grants them ample discretion to decide how to best achieve superior student performance and focuses on supporting them rather than trying to steer them in any particular direction. Finland provides a good example of this type of system. These systems also place considerable trust in teachers. Such systems are built on the notion that excellent teaching is not the responsibility of a single instructor, but rather, of the profession as a whole. Thus, they institute mechanisms that foster collaboration and encourage teachers to hold their peers accountable for the quality of their work. Shanghai, China, offers a good example of this type of system. These systems exert tight control over teachers' daily work in the classroom. They provide teachers with detailed guidelines, closely monitor the execution of these guidelines, and use multiple incentives to reward outstanding teaching. At the same time, accountability mechanisms tackle poor teacher effort and performance.