Teacher and Leader Effectiveness in High-Performing Education Systems

Teacher effectiveness has rapidly risen to the top of the education policy agenda. The U.S. Department of Education (ED) identified the issue as one of four key elements in its Race to the Top competition, and more than a dozen states, responding to Race to the Top incentives, adopted laws revamping teacher education and evaluation systems, hoping to ensure that teachers are effective in the classroom.

A new report by SCOPE and the Alliance for Excellent Education outlines lessons learned from three of the highest-performing education systems in the world: Finland, Ontario, and Singapore. The report, Teacher and Leader Effectiveness in High-Performing Education Systems, looks at these systems, which demonstrate that states and national governments can develop policies that create a highly effective educator workforce that produces improvements in achievement for all students.

On March 28, the Alliance hosted a webinar focusing on the report and its implications. The webinar featured Alliance president Bob Wise and authors Linda Darling-Hammond and Robert Rothman.