Which Teacher Policies Improve Student Performance?

This post is also available in: Spanish

Alejandro Ganimian, former PREAL staff member and current doctoral candidate at Harvard University, gave a presentation (in Spanish) at the Universidad Torcuato di Tella in Buenos Aires regarding the impact of teacher policies on student achievement.

The presentation was based on a working paper to be published soon by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), co-authored with Emiliana Vegas, chief of the education division at the IDB. The paper is based on the most rigorous impact evaluations of teacher policies in developed and developing countries. It is organized around eight goals that all education systems should try to achieve with their teacher policies, established in the World Bank’s SABER-Teachers program: 1) set clear expectations for teachers; 2) attract the best into teaching; 3) provide teachers with useful training and experience; 4) match teachers’ skills with student needs; 5) lead teachers with strong principals; 6) evaluate learning and teaching; 7) help teachers improve instruction; and 8) motivate teachers to perform. The presentation summarizes what recent research and experience tell us about achieving these goals.