What the Best Schools in the World Do

“A school is only as good as its teachers!” I have made that declaration hundreds of times in hundreds of forums. Not exactly rocket science. It is akin to making the obvious observation that the success of

one’s heart surgery is dependent on the quality of one’s surgeon. Nevertheless, it is encouraging when a major study of the world’s best school systems echoes the same sentiment. In How the World’s Best-Performing School Systems Come-Out on Top, (Barber & Mourshed, 2007) published by McKinsey&Company, a South Korean policy maker asserts: “The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” Teachers matter—a lot! In addressing the importance of teachers in creating world-class schools, Barber and Mourshed outline the three things that matter most in producing top performing school systems: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors, and, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child.

To get the right people to become teachers and in the classrooms, the top performing school systems in the world focus on three strategies. First, they develop strong processes for selecting and training teachers. Second, they pay good, not great, starting compensation. Finally, they carefully manage the status of the teaching profession (p. 26).

Once you have the best people in the profession, you have to effectively develop them. There is a tendency for educational reform efforts, including efforts at producing positive change in our Christian schools, to focus on school structure, policies, and programs rather than on what matters most—what happens in each classroom. We can confuse sound and fury with systemic change. The sad reality is that the noise we make about excellence and sustained change may signify little. Cuban provides a provocative analogy to a common experience in our schools--a storm’s effect on the ocean:

The surface is agitated and turbulent while the ocean floor is calm and serene (if a bit murky). Policy churns dramatically creating the appearance of major changes while deep below the surface, life goes on largely uninterrupted. (Cuban, How teachers taught: Constancy and change in American Classrooms, quoted in (p. 35)

To put this into perspective, think back over the number of in-service training sessions, conferences, workshops, and seminars that your teachers have attended over the years. Now, ask yourself a hard question; how much different are my classrooms today than they were 10 or 15 years ago? How much different do my teachers teach? How many of the ideas, concepts, and skills presented and discussed at all of these training sessions have actually taken deep root in my classrooms? How much of the research is actually practiced in my classrooms? In describing the priority of ensuring systemic change in the classroom, one very effective principal declared:

Being a teacher is about helping children to learn. Being a principal is about helping adults to learn. That’s why it’s tough…I walk the halls, walk the halls, and walk the halls…I only look at my inbox after everybody leaves. (p. 34.)

Ensuring that the school delivers the best possible education to each child is the third major finding. The top performing school systems focus on setting high expectations. They monitor and intervene against these standards at both the school and student levels. For our schools, this translates into monitoring and intervening at the classroom/teacher level as well as for individual students.

Response:

What challenges do you face in recruiting the best people as teachers? What strategies have you employed to get professional development to “stick”?

Reference:

Barber, M., & Mourshed, M. (2007). How the best performing school systems come out on top: McKinsey&Company.

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