In high-performing education systems, teaching is a highly-respected profession that attracts top candidates and ensures their retention. Studying their staffing strategies can help U.S. schools and districts think differently about effective recruitment, support, and leadership practices that drive educational success. Based on the findings of our recent brief, Thinking Differently About Strategic Staffing, this webinar explored:
- How do leading systems attract and retain their teachers? How do they prepare teacher candidates for the classrooms of today and tomorrow?
- What role does a powerful professional community play in schools and in teaching?
- How do systems create conditions to make teachers more successful (e.g., use of teacher time, access to high quality instructional resources play)?
Watch the full conversation on the right to see what’s working around the world and what it could mean for your context.
Educators, policymakers, and system leaders from around the world tuned in for a thought-provoking discussion about what it would take to build systems where every teacher can do their best work and every student benefits.
After a welcome from NCEE CEO Vicki Phillips, we heard from Jackie Kraemer, lead researcher for NCEE’s Thinking Differently About… research series. She kicked off the discussion with highlights from the new brief and explored how top-performing systems around the world are tackling teacher shortages by building strong, practice-based preparation pathways, reimagining recruitment, and creating school environments that enable teachers to thrive as true professionals.
“What we saw is that teaching is an attractive profession. It’s highly respected, as competitive to enter as law and medicine in some systems. Nowhere are teachers millionaires, but salaries are more comparable to those of similarly educated professionals in those systems than they are in the U.S.”
She also described how these systems elevate the professional culture of teaching:
“When we asked teachers about what their day was like and what work they did, what we heard described was really a professional community. You can even see it in the physical design of schools. In many systems, teachers are not assigned to classrooms. They’re assigned to offices, often shared offices, where they work, collaborate, and ask each other for advice. They go to classrooms to teach.”
Following Jackie’s overview, Vicki invited a panel of education leaders to reflect on how these ideas play out in practice. Each panelist brought a distinct perspective, from classroom, school, district, and national vantage points.
The conversation began with a discussion about how systems can better recruit and support new teachers. Cody Mackay, Assistant Principal, Colton Joint Unified School District (CA) and himself a recent classroom teacher, reflected on how U.S. schools often expect first-year teachers to take on the same workload as veteran teachers on top of required induction programs. Meanwhile, some high-performing systems intentionally structure time and support for growth.
“I was so excited when I saw what was going on in Japan with that 80% workload or New Zealand with their beginning teacher time allowance. Let’s get these teachers to practice teaching, but also give them time to reflect and grow in their pedagogy and give them the support they need.”
The discussion then turned to how teachers are prepared for the realities of today’s classrooms. Dr. João Costa, Director of the European Agency for Inclusive Education and former Minister of Education for Portugal, reflected on the disconnect that often exists between teacher preparation programs and the students teachers actually serve.
“In the way we prepare teachers in their initial teacher preparation, we are creating frustration when they start the profession, because we prepare them for non-existing students: either the ideal student, who doesn’t exist, or the average student, who’s the only one who does not sit in the classroom… The big challenge is how we can prepare teachers for what their real life will be.”
Next, the panel explored how schools can create time and space for meaningful teacher collaboration. Michele Mower, principal of Beech Avenue Elementary School in California, shared how her team’s work with NCEE’s Teaching for Effective Learning (TEL) experience has built a culture where teachers explore, experiment, and elevate their practice together. As a result, their focus on improving outcomes for students with special needs has resulted in double-digit gains for those students.
“The kids are winning, the families are winning, the teachers are winning, and I really believe that by focusing on that collaborative work, and by asking questions rather than posing solutions, we’re getting there. There’s always an answer, there’s always a solution. And we don’t have to go outside to find it. We can solve any problem of practice by learning ourselves, by continuing to grow, by talking to each other and sharing what works.”
Building on that theme of collaboration, Peggy Brookins, President and CEO of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, spoke about the importance of treating teachers as true professionals. Drawing on her own experience as a National Board Certified Teacher and school leader, she underscored how empowering teachers strengthens both retention and results.
“That wonderful word I love is autonomy. And having the autonomy to do some things within a school—and leading a school—I could stop in the middle, change the school day, make sure teachers had the support and the time they needed in order to plan and analyze in the ways that really had an impact on the students in front of them.”
As the discussion drew to a close, the conversation turned to what the future of teaching will require, and how quickly that future is arriving. As João reflected,
“It’s clear that we are not really talking about the future, we are already talking about the present… For centuries, being a teacher was exactly the same thing. You’d be in front of a class, you would be lecturing, you had the knowledge, and you were conveying the knowledge… Now, we have the technological revolution, and the digital revolution. Teachers are no longer the only source of information. So, this is really changing what being a teacher is like. And we don’t know enough yet, but we need to speed up in supporting the teachers for this.”
To close the conversation, Vicki Phillips posed one final question to the panelists—and to everyone participating in the lively chat: If you could magically change one teaching condition, what would it be?
Their answers captured both the urgency and the optimism that ran through the hour:
“That every teacher had access to board certification, and the supports and the networks that are connected to that.” — Peggy Brookins
“I would automate all of the nonsense that we ask teachers to do in addition to the really important work that they’re doing.” — Michele Mower
“Time. If I had this magical power, it would be about time management. because it is so difficult to find the time to cooperate and to collaborate.” — Dr. João Costa
“Making sure that we have the technology and the resources necessary to do our job. How do we provide teachers with a Swiss army knife, rather than asking them to be one?” — Cody Mackay
Participants in the chat echoed those priorities:
“Formalize collaborative time to see each other teach and develop practice together.”
“Compensation….it would be life changing for so many teachers and it would take a huge worry off of their plates and allow them to better focus on their craft. Teachers need a living wage too!”
“Elevate teachers into teacher leadership roles, along with the system changes to make it effective.”
“The system approach to change seems to be necessary. We want solutions that address real problems more than small bandaids.”
You can watch the full webinar above or read the brief, and others in our Thinking Differently series, to explore how education systems around the world are reimagining teaching and learning.
