Recruiting and selecting excellent teachers

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. […] The study produced five policy briefs to summarize each of the identified strategy components used in high-performing countries to ensure all students have high-quality professional teachers. This brief examines the practices of recruitment and selection of teachers in five countries: Australia (specifically, New South Wales and Victoria), Canada (Alberta and Ontario), Finland, Shanghai, and Singapore. It describes features that are unique to each and underscores themes that are common to all. Among these common themes are competitive compensation and subsidies for preparation that make teaching attractive and preparation affordable; careful scrutiny of potential candidates; and efforts to check the progress of teacher-candidates during preparation.