Supplemental Reports

Teacher quality is one of the variables that most impacts student learning. As a result, education systems worldwide are paying close attention to the practices of countries with high-quality teachers. Shanghai, one of the best-performing education systems in the world, supports teachers with an integrated professional development framework that incorporates multiple levels of continuing education, regular performance evaluations, and a structured career path with mechanisms for teacher promotion. In contrast, the Dialogue’s series of reports on teacher policy in Latin America have shown that, although progress has been made towards improving teacher policies and developing consensus around their importance, there remain significant gaps and bottlenecks.

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In Central America and the Dominican Republic there is growing concern about the quality of education. Schools do not teach children and youths the skills they need to successfully enter the labor market and contribute to society.

Despite the importance of teachers in the learning process, in most countries of the region the systems for recruiting, selecting, training, retaining and supporting teachers remain deficient. Moreover, the groups that should be most engaged with governments to demand improvements in teaching and students’ learning—parents, business people, and society in general—are often on the margins of the debate.

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POLICY BRIEFS

PREAL Policy Briefs provide non-technical summaries of key topics in the field of education policy. The following series offers eight policy briefs that aim to promote informed debates on how to improve the quality and effectiveness of teacher policies Latin America.

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MORE ON TEACHER POLICY