Around the world, education systems are confronting many of the same challenges, from recruiting and retaining great teachers to preparing young people for changing labor markets and making the most of finite resources.
On October 14 at 11am ET the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) hosted a conversation on the findings of Education at a Glance 2026, and what they reveal about the choices countries are making.
Watch the video to see a panel conversation looking beyond the numbers to examine what’s really driving shortages in the educator workforce and what we can do about it.
“We tend to talk about this as a teacher shortage. And certainly, shortages are real. But as we’ll hear today, the story is more complicated than simply having too few people entering teaching.” -Vicki Phillips
Phillips opened the conversation by framing the educator workforce challenge as more than a question of teacher shortages, pointing to the importance of how countries recruit, support, develop, and deploy their teachers.
Inside the Data
“How you configure space, time, people, technology, and relationships has a huge influence on the results that you get and on the cost structures that you face.” -Andreas Schleicher
Schleicher began with one of the report’s central puzzles: Despite widespread concerns about teacher shortages, many education systems have more teachers per student than ever before. The challenge, he explained, is not simply how many teachers are available, but where shortages occur, how teachers spend their time, and how countries define the role of the profession.
Drawing on international comparisons, Schleicher explored the tradeoffs countries make among class size, teaching hours, salaries, and opportunities for collaboration and student support. He contrasted the United States, where smaller classes come with some of the highest teaching hours among OECD countries, with Japan, where larger classes allow teachers more time to collaborate, mentor students, engage with families, and support learning beyond the classroom. The comparison illustrated how countries can deploy similar resources in very different ways, with important implications for teachers’ working conditions and students’ experiences.
Beyond the educator workforce, Schleicher highlighted several other findings from the report. Rising educational attainment has not always translated into stronger skills, and too many young people still struggle to transition from education into employment. International student mobility continues to reshape higher education, while opportunities for lifelong learning remain uneven, often reaching those who already have the strongest qualifications rather than those who need them most.
Schleicher also underscored the importance of investing in early childhood education, an area where the United States continues to lag behind many peer countries.
And while the U.S. remains among the highest-spending education systems, he emphasized that greater spending does not necessarily produce better learning outcomes. How countries invest their resources, and the policy choices behind those investments, can make all the difference.
Beyond Teacher Shortages: Building a Sustainable Workforce
“You can have a state or a jurisdiction that appears to have enough educators overall, and still have a serious shortage of primary or elementary or secondary mathematics teachers, or teachers in any particular field.…We need much better workforce intelligence systems overall, and particularly within education.” -Nathan Driskell
Following the presentation, Phillips moderated a discussion with Schleicher, Driskell, and Kraemer about what the international findings mean for U.S. education policy and how systems can move beyond filling vacancies toward building a sustainable, attractive teaching profession.
The panel emphasized that teacher shortages are not uniform. They vary by subject, geography, and community, requiring more targeted solutions than broad recruitment campaigns. Driskell called for stronger workforce data systems to help policymakers understand where shortages exist, why they occur, and which solutions are most appropriate.
Driskell pointed to NCEE’s work with Teach Plus and other partners through PA Needs Teachers as an example of this evolving approach. After helping advance student teacher stipends and teacher apprenticeships, the initiative has increasingly focused on retention, strategic staffing, and career pathways that make teaching a more sustainable profession.
Making Teaching a Profession Worth Staying In
“Time communicates what we value, what we think the job is…. In a lot of ways, if most of their time is spent in front of students in classrooms, we’re really pushing to the margins a lot of the things that develop and keep excellence in teaching.” -Jackie Kraemer
The discussion also explored what makes teaching attractive beyond compensation. Schleicher highlighted examples from Finland and Singapore, where professional growth, strong leadership, collaboration, and opportunities for career advancement help attract and retain talented educators.
Kraemer drew on NCEE’s research into leading education systems to describe a fundamentally different model of teaching: one built around collaboration, professional autonomy, continuous learning, and opportunities to advance without leaving the classroom. She emphasized that time for mentoring, planning, and working with colleagues must be built into the job itself, rather than treated as an additional responsibility.
The panel also examined how stronger induction and mentoring programs can help new teachers develop the expertise and confidence needed to remain in the profession.
Can Policy Shape Culture?
“What we often admire as culture is really often an outcome of the way we organize the work, the kind of policy choices that we make.”— Andreas Schleicher
Responding to an audience question about whether cultural differences limit what countries can learn from one another, Schleicher challenged the idea that educational culture is simply inherited. He argued that the way schools organize teachers’ work, allocate time, and define professional responsibilities can actively shape that culture.
Using Japan as an example, he explained that the strong classroom relationships and collaborative learning often attributed to Japanese culture are also the result of deliberate choices. Teachers have time to engage with students beyond academic instruction, build relationships, and foster a sense of shared responsibility for learning.
Designing Education Systems Around Student Learning
“This really is a systems design problem. What do you stop doing, start doing? What do you do differently? What do you invest in differently? How do you shift your policies to reinforce all of that?”—Vicki Phillips
A central theme throughout the discussion was that the structures of teaching are not fixed. How schools organize staffing, allocate time, support professional growth, and define teachers’ responsibilities reflects deliberate choices that can be reconsidered.
In closing, Driskell reminded us not to think of teacher shortages as the same problem everywhere, instead these are localized problems that need local data to lead solutions. Schleicher emphasized recruiting and retaining teachers requires policies that raise the status of the teaching profession.. And finally, Kraemer challenged policymakers to move beyond layering new reforms onto existing structures and instead begin with a more fundamental question: How should schools be organized to help students learn best?
Phillips closed by reinforcing the central message of the conversation: Addressing educator workforce challenges is ultimately a question of systems design, requiring alignment among policy, resources, professional expectations, and the needs of students.
