International Teacher Policy Study - Country Briefs

How do the highest-achieving school systems in the world develop their teachers?

 To prepare students for an evolving and increasingly interconnected world, a growing number of countries have remodeled their education systems to deliver an education built for the 21st century, producing higher achievement and greater equity than the U.S.

With the support of the Center on International Benchmarking at the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), and the Ford Foundation, the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) drew together a global team of education researchers in the three-year study, producing unparalleled insights for U.S. educators, researchers, and policymakers. The result is the International Teacher Policy Study (ITPS). The study reveals key answers to the central question of how other countries have surpassed the U.S. in preparing their students to compete in the 21st century global economy. For details on the study and a full listing of publications and videos produced by the study go to >>>

Researchers investigated seven jurisdictions across four continents. Their findings reveal that high achieving countries have long-term strategies to build effective systems and that these strategies focus on a sustained commitment to professionalizing teaching as a career.

The study produced five country briefs to summarize the key strategies used in each of the high-performing countries to ensure all students have high-quality professional teachers.

The country briefs are part of a series of publications produced as part of Empowered Educators – a landmark, international comparative study of teacher and teaching quality in the world’s top-performing education systems, commissioned by the Center on International Education Benchmarking® of the National Center on Education and the Economy®. For a complete listing of the materials produced by the Empowered Educators project, including a searchable database of recorded interviews and authentic tools, please visit www.ncee.org/empowered-educators.