We can probably agree that great schools, without exception, are staffed by great teachers. It follows that if one wants an entire nation, state, or province with great schools, then one must provide all those schools with great teachers. Few, I suspect, would disagree with that. But then the question arises, how can that be done?

Roll the clock back to the United States in the years leading up to the American Civil War. We know now that this was the period in which the outlines of the current American school system were taking shape under the pioneering leadership of Catherine Beecher and Horace Mann. Those communities that had any schools hired young men to tutor the children who were not working in the fields. Their wives were at home, and an increasing number of their daughters were working long hours in the mills for next to nothing. Those students who got any education got mostly drill and practice in the rudiments of reading, writing and, as they said, “‘rithmetic.”

Beecher and Mann had another idea. Send the men into the mills. Take the young women who had been working in the mills and put them in the schools. Although Beecher and Mann saw this move as building a profession for women, and advocated the creation of normal schools for professional preparation, the feminization of teaching typically took another turn as it played out across the country.

Scientific managers and town guardians often favored the move for financial reasons. They argued that schools could pay the women a pittance, because they were either single and living with their parents, and so did not need much pay, or they were married and it was up to the husband to provide for the family. They would not need much skill because they did not need to know much more than their students, and their students did not need any more than the basics. As the system grew, these young women were fired when they became pregnant, so it was hardly worth while investing in their development as teachers. Of course, it would take real skill and ability to manage this system, especially in the big cities, where there were lots of schools and lots of people and money to manage, but the managers would be men who would be paid a lot more than the teachers to tell the teachers what to do and how to do it. This was the model that was being used in America’s burgeoning industrial enterprises with enormous success, and there was no reason why it should not work in the schools.

And it did. The United States used this model to set one new global benchmark after another in educational attainment. By the middle of the 20th century, it had the best educated workforce in the world. It had done it with a classic blue-collar model of work organization in its schools.

Educators from all over the world came to look at the American education system, learn its lessons, and take them home. Variations on the American model popped up everywhere.

But, as the 20th century drew to a close, the world was changing. Poor countries were learning how to use the model of schooling just described to deliver the same basic skills that schools in the more developed countries were delivering. But the graduates of those schools in these poor countries were willing to work for much less than their counterparts in the more developed countries. Jobs for people with only the basic skills in the more developed countries migrated to the countries where employers could get the same skills for much less. Hundreds of millions of people in the less developed countries were lifted out of poverty this way, but people in the more developed countries who had only the basic skills were in real trouble. Then the jobs of people who do mostly routine work began to be done by robots and other automated machinery. Between outsourcing and automation, the market for people with only the basic skills in the most developed countries was devastated.

That fact was a death knell for the blue collar model of school work organization. One country after another began to realize that cheap teachers responsible only for teaching the basic skills, working in schools in which they were expected to do what they were told to do by school administrators who were selected not for their ability as teachers but for their skills as managers, could no longer do the job that had to be done. A model in which teachers were expected to come from the lower ranks of high school graduates, to be educated in the lowest status higher education institutions, who were paid poorly, all of whom did the same job and had no career to look forward to, who were not rewarded at all for getting better at their work but simply for their time in service, while others, not them, were expected to figure out how to improve student performance—a model like that could never accomplish what now had to be done.

What now had to be done was to provide almost all students in the most developed nations with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values that only the elite students had been expected to develop before. All students would have to emerge from schools with the qualities that only the future leaders of society had been expected to have before if the nation was going to be able to maintain its standard of living. In an era like the middle of the 19th century in the United States, in which only a handful of people had any education beyond high school, it was obvious that only the high schools educating the future leaders of the whole society could afford to staff their schools with well-educated teachers. The blue-collar model of teaching was, in fact, the only model available to a country at that time that wanted to educate the masses.

But the blue-collar model of teacher work organization could not produce elite outcomes for the great mass of students. Only a professional model of teacher work organization could do that. So the search was on. What would such a model look like? Where would the future teachers come from? How would they be attracted to teaching? What sort of education would they need? How would they learn their craft? How would they be selected? Against what criteria? How would their work be organized? What sort of career could they be offered? What sort of incentives would they need to do the best work of which they were capable? How could their workplace be organized so that they would be constantly working to improve their skills, the curriculum, the schools, and student performance? What would schools look like if it was teachers, not managers or policy analysts or the research community, who was expected to lead the schools to higher performance? How would the answers to these questions change the kind of school leadership that would be needed? What, in other words, would a professional model of teaching look like when applied not just to an isolated elite school but to an entire country, province, or state?

That question—perhaps the single most important question facing educators today—is the question this book and the study on which it was based was designed to answer. Three years ago, my colleague, Betsy Brown Ruzzi, the director of NCEE’s Center for International Education Benchmarking, and I asked Linda Darling-Hammond if she would be interested in leading a major international comparative study of teacher quality to look at how the leading countries were answering the kinds of questions just asked. Darling-Hammond, of course, is one of the world’s leading education researchers and has had a lifelong interest in the teaching profession. She leaped at the chance. Such studies are usually done by a lead researcher with a gaggle of graduate students actually doing much of the field work. Darling-Hammond did not do that. She assembled a team of leading researchers from all over the world to join her in this very large research program. The result is a stunning piece of work, the result of a true collaboration among an all-star cast of researchers. It is everything we hoped it might be and more.

Don’t look here for the one country, state, or province to be copied. What you will find is a picture in which the jurisdictions described tried first this and then that. Some had opportunities that others did not have. Some worked on this while others worked on that. As they were doing this, they looked over each other’s shoulders for inspiration, ideas, and tools. Gradually, themes emerged. If you want a model, you will have to assemble it from those themes and the mosaic of policies and practices you will find in this volume and the others in the series of books from this project. And then you will have to adapt what you have learned to your own goals, values, and context.

There is plenty of inspiration here. Some of the key changes these countries made were nothing if not dramatic. Some countries look at their teacher education systems in despair, thinking there is no way that they can make the changes they ought to make in the education of teachers at the scale that is needed, given the politics. But look at how Finland decided to abolish all of its teacher education institutions at once and created in their stead a much smaller number of institutions, all of them at their research universities and all of them with a similar curriculum intimately tied to that nation’s aims for its schools. Or look at Shanghai, which created out of whole cloth a career ladder system in which teachers get more compensation, more authority, more autonomy, and more status as they go up the ladder, in the process transforming what it means to be a teacher from the blue-collar model to the professional model. Or consider Singapore and Australia, where carefully considered standards for teachers and school leaders have been developed to drive their systems forward in the same way that the development of professional standards have characterized the professionalization of medicine, the law, engineering, accounting, and many other professions.

But be careful. Darling-Hammond and her colleagues point out that it is not any one of these innovations and others like them that account for high teacher quality. It is the whole system and the way it fits together that is most important. They point out that it is not just all the parts and pieces of the teacher quality system that account for the differences they observe in student performance; it is also the way that these teacher quality systems fit together with the larger design of the education systems of which they are a part. The issue of equity is a case in point. It is not just a matter of making sure that new teachers have had classes in which they are introduced to the essentials of teaching students from low-income and minority backgrounds or get some experience in doing that in their clinical work. Shanghai has designed its career ladder system so that it is virtually impossible to go up the ladder without having worked in a variety of schools serving low-income and minority students. In Singapore, one is very likely to find that the best teachers are the ones working in classrooms with the highest concentrations of low-income and minority students. Singaporean teachers are taught early diagnosis and intervention in order to make sure that vulnerable students do not fall behind. In Toronto, with one of the most diverse student populations in the world, equity considerations govern virtually every aspect of the continuing development of teachers. Australia is working with its teachers to make sure that the curriculum they develop provides rich opportunities for indigenous students to see themselves in the materials they use in the classroom.

What emerges from this composite picture is almost the antithesis of the world that Catherine Beecher and Horace Mann created more than a century ago. The leading jurisdictions are selecting their teachers from among the more capable of their high school graduates. They want to make sure that they are not only strong in academics, but that they can connect with young people and have a passion for teaching. They are upgrading the status of the higher education institutions that are responsible for preparing teachers, making sure that they have a deep, conceptually based understanding of the subjects they with teach and have really mastered the craft of teaching. The most advanced are creating real careers in teaching to match the kind of careers that are available in the high status professions. They are creating professional standards for teachers, paralleling the high standards set for professionals in the high status fields. They are reorganizing schools and changing the way they are managed so that teachers, far from simply doing what they are told to do in isolated classrooms, can instead work with one another in teams to design more and more effective experiences for their students. Teachers in these systems are increasingly seen as the engine for school improvement, not simply implementing the recommendations made by university researchers, but doing their own research, sharing it with their colleagues and advancing the field themselves, with the support of the research community. Teachers in these top performing countries are treated with respect not because these countries are mounting respect-for-teachers campaigns, but because they are treated like professionals, are expected to work to professional standards, and are producing professional results in a professional work environment.

This landmark study documents that transformation in detail.

MARC TUCKER, PRESIDENT

NATIONAL CENTER ON EDUCATION AND THE ECONOMY

NO MAJOR PROJECT LIKE this one is completed without the participation and assistance of many people. We wish to acknowledge and thank the many individuals and organizations who generously donated their time and energy to help with the planning and implementation of the study and who shared with us their knowledge and experiences in the preparation of this book.

First, we’d like to thank Marc Tucker and Betsy Brown-Ruzzi at the National Center on Education and the Economy for conceptualizing and guiding this study and helping it come to fruition. We would also thank the advisors of the Center on International Education Benchmarking who provided thoughtful reviews and feedback about the drafts: Kai-ming Cheng, Michael Day, Sing Kong Lee, Tony Mackay, Barry McGaw, Ursula Renold, and Minxuan Zhang.

We acknowledge the contributions of the Ford Foundation to the components of this research addressing the uses of time in the different educational systems we studied. We also offer our thanks to Barnett Berry and the Center for Teaching Quality, whose teachers contributed their experiences and perspectives to this work.

We would like to give our sincere appreciation to the members of the project team—Sonya Keller and Jon Snyder—for their critically important help in organizing and managing the research process—and to Maude Engstrom for her excellent research assistance in summarizing key themes for the cross-case volume. We thank Kathleen Cushman, Ben Pender-Cudlip, and Justin Samaha for their wonderful work developing the many audiovisual items that accompany this volume, along with Brendan Williams-Kief and Jennifer Craw for their work on the project website.

In addition to the leaders of the case study teams, named as authors of this book, we want to gratefully acknowledge the other contributors to the teams: Raisa Ahtiainen, Jesslyn Hollar, Jiacheng Li, Ann Lieberman, Pamela Osmond-Johnson, Shane Pisani, Pasi Sahlberg, and Jacqueline Sohn. Robert Rothman assisted in drawing from their work for the cross-case analysis.

We’d also like to thank the many educational experts with whom we spoke. We acknowledge in particular the faculty and staff members of the Universities of Melbourne, Sydney, and Wollongong, and of La Trobe University; Shanghai and East China Normal Universities; University of Helsinki; Universities of Alberta, British Columbia, Calgary, and Ontario; and the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technical University.

We are grateful to the many policy makers who gave their time to this project. This work would not have been possible without the cooperation of the ministries of education, teachers’ federations, and other governmental and regulatory agencies in each jurisdiction. We give our thanks to the many senior staff members who provided important information on the context and goals of policy reforms, and we are grateful for their generosity with their time and thoughtful perspectives.

Special thanks go to the many schools, principals, teachers, staff members, and students who so generously opened their doors to us, provided us with information and materials, and allowed us to enter and observe their classes. In particular, we’d like to thank the staff members and students of Engadine High, Canley Vale Primary, Homebush West Primary, Footscray North Primary, Willmott Park Primary, and Rosanna Golf Links Primary schools in Australia; Myllypuro Primary, Poikkilaakso Primary, Langinkoski, Koulumestari, and Viikki Teacher Training schools in Finland; Shanghai Jiangsu Road No.5 Primary, Qibao Experimental Junior High, Pujiang No. 2 Elementary, and Qilun Elementary schools in Shanghai; and Kranji Secondary and Raffles Girls’ schools in Singapore.

This work has benefited from all those who contributed their time, energy, and expertise toward this research. Any remaining errors or omissions are our own.

THIS WORK IS MADE possible through a grant by the Center on International Education Benchmarking of the National Center on Education and the Economy and is part of a series of reports on teacher quality systems around the world. For a complete listing of the material produced by this research program, please visit www.ncee.org/cieb.

The Center on International Education Benchmarking, a program of NCEE, funds and conducts research around the world on the most successful education systems to identify the strategies those countries have used to produce their superior performance. Through its books, reports, website, monthly newsletter, and a weekly update of education news around the world, CIEB provides up-to-date information and analysis on those countries whose students regularly top the PISA league tables. Visit www.ncee.org/cieb to learn more.

The National Center on Education and the Economy was created in 1988 to analyze the implications of changes in the international economy for American education, formulate an agenda for American education based on that analysis, and seek wherever possible to accomplish that agenda through policy change and development of the resources educators would need to carry it out. For more information visit www.ncee.org.

Research for this book was coordinated by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) at Stanford University. SCOPE was founded in 2008 to foster research, policy, and practice to advance high-quality, equitable education systems in the United States and internationally.

Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute, is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University, where she founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) and served as the faculty sponsor of the Stanford Teacher Education Program, which she helped to redesign.

Darling-Hammond is past president of the American Educational Research Association and recipient of its awards for Distinguished Contributions to Research, Lifetime Achievement, Research Review, and Research-to-Policy. She is also a member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Education. From 1994–2001, she was executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, whose 1996 report What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future was named one of the most influential reports affecting US education in that decade. In 2006, Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation’s ten most influential people affecting educational policy. In 2008, she served as the leader of President Barack Obama’s education policy transition team.

Darling-Hammond began her career as a public school teacher and cofounded a preschool and a public high school. She has consulted widely with federal, state, and local officials and educators on strategies for improving education policies and practices. Among her more than 500 publications are a number of award-winning books, including The Right to Learn, Teaching as the Learning Profession, Preparing Teachers for a Changing World and The Flat World and Education. She received an EdD from Temple University (with highest distinction) and a BA from Yale University (magna cum laude).

Dion Burns is a senior researcher with the Learning Policy Institute and research analyst at the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. With a background in policy and quantitative analysis, his research has focused on international education policies, particularly those that promote high-quality and equitable learning opportunities.

Over the past 20 years, Dion has variously worked as a teacher in Japan, a higher education policy analyst in New Zealand, and an education diplomat with roles in Latin America and the Republic of Korea.

Carol Campbell is associate professor of Leadership and Educational Change and director of the Knowledge Network for Applied Education Research (KNAER) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. Her publications include Teacher Learning and Leadership: Of, By and For Teachers.

A. Lin Goodwin is the Evenden Professor of Education and vice dean at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. She recently served as vice president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA)-Division K: Teaching and Teacher Education.

Karen Hammerness is the director of Educational Research and Evaluation at the American Museum of Natural History. She has previously contributed chapters about teacher education to a number of books, including Teacher Education around the World: Changing Policies and Practices and Preparing Teachers for a Changing World.

Ee Ling Low is professor of Applied Linguistics and Teacher Learning at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where she is head of Strategic Planning and Academic Quality and elected member of the NTU Senate.

Ann McIntyre is an experienced principal, superintendent, and former director of Professional Learning and Leadership Development in New South Wales, Australia. In this role she led the development of professional frameworks, programs, and research. Ann’s work is recognized for its impact on quality teaching, leadership, and school improvement.

Mistilina Sato is an associate professor of teacher development and science education at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She is the inaugural holder of the Carmen Starkson Campbell Chair for Innovation in Teacher Development.

Kenneth Zeichner is the Boeing Professor of Teacher Education at the University of Washington, Seattle and a member of the National Academy of Education. His publications include Teacher Education and the Struggle for Social Justice (2009), and Struggling for the Soul of Teacher Education (2017).

Access online documents and videos at http://ncee.org/empowered-educators