Relation to IDB Institutional Priorities

Education is one of the IDB Presidential Initiatives. Teacher Quality being one of the main topics recognized as priority for the sector in the Region, and thus is one of the 3 flagships of the Education Division (with Early Childhood Development and School to Work transition).

The education coverage in the region has increased enormously during the last twenty years; however, the equivalent increase in education quality has not followed. This research agenda is based on the evidence that a good teacher is the main driver of in-school effects on student learning, and the evidence gap on the characteristics and paths through which a good teacher impacts learning, as well as the public policy actions to influence the profession.

The Bank has directly financed the training of thirty percent of the 9 million teachers in the region over the past decade. Given the Bank’s prominent role in this realm, better quality interventions could be a promising policy lever to improve student outcomes.

Ongoing Studies

During 2008, SCL/EDU formed an Advisory Group on Teacher Quality to discuss and establish a research agenda (2009-2012) to tailor current research, design and implement innovative pilot projects to inform public policy decisions of the Bank’s clients. Based on the first meeting of the group and further discussions, three main areas to research and evaluate over the coming few years were established:
 

• Incentive based – with a focus on teacher incentives
• Input based – with a focus on teacher training and capacity building
• Management based – with a focus on the contracting of aspects of school management to professional non-profit/for-profit entities in education

The main conclusions derived from the studies will be presented as a set of policy recommendations shedding light on the possibilities of human resources reform for countries in the Region. Dissemination will take place in seminars and workshops, as well as the publication of a book on Teacher Quality.

Future Work

Teacher career paths in most Latin American countries typically do not depend on their effectiveness in the classroom. In this context, the use of policies that measure and reward effective teaching could both improve the motivation and effort level of existing teachers and also serve to attract higher-quality teachers to the teaching profession (since higher quality would be better recognized and rewarded).

There are two relevant strands of academic research that support the use of policies to measure and reward effective teaching (incentives). First, several studies in the US show that while there is substantial and persistent variation in teacher effectiveness, this variation is poorly predicted by the observable teacher characteristics on which teacher compensation is usually based (Rivkin, Hanueshek, and Kain (2005), Rockoff (2004)). Thus, the typical basis for differential compensation (education levels and experience) does not correspond to greater teacher effectiveness. Second, recent rigorous studies in developing country contexts show that spending additional resources on schooling resources are less effective in improving student learning outcomes compared to spending the same resources on performance-linked pay for teachers (Lavy (2002) in Israel; Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2009) in India).

Taken together, these research studies suggest that directly measuring teacher effectiveness in improving student learning outcomes and basing incentives on these measures could be a more promising policy option for improving education outcomes in Latin America than continuing to pay exclusively for credentials and experience. Several countries and several school districts in the US are now experimenting with various forms of performance-linked pay for teachers.

However, it is important to conduct pilot projects and rigorous evaluations of these pilots in Latin America before recommending similar policies to education ministries of the region.

The IDB research agenda’s future work includes the design, implementation, and evaluation of pilot projects intersecting incentives and capacities. There is need to further design and analyze policy options that combine information about benefits (incentives) and various training options (capacities) both for pre service and in-service teachers, considering the cost-efficiency of different options. Little is known of the potential interactions of institutional structures and teacher quality. There is also a gap in the research of retention and selection policies with the aim of improving quality while considering the political economy of incentives policies.

It is clear that incentives –monetary and non-monetary- have direct implications on teachers’ characteristics and behavior: on one hand they determine who enters the profession; on the other, incentives play a role in determining teacher quality and constant updating of skills. However, the current literature is less clear on how incentives work and under what conditions they create the types of changes desired. Similarly, little is known about the determinants of effective teachers, or what precise behavior composes good teaching. Though some reviews of teacher conditions in the Region are available, most academic research on teacher quality and incentives has focused on industrial countries.

The existing research has not been conclusive on certification nor on the characteristics on which to certify. At the center of the debate is the dichotomy between central regulation of teacher labor markets, versus decentralization of authority to schools and local education authorities. Nor is there consensus on the pecuniary and non-pecuniary incentives that can improve teaching.

All research will consider the interaction of teacher unions with teacher quality. So far these have been accounted as introducing rigidities in the systems, yet little analysis has been done on their impact and magnitude.

A further hurdle for teacher quality research is in the methods used, measurement and available data. There is a basic need to separate true causal effects from associations due to selection, omitted variable bias and causation. Future research needs to better observe schooling outcomes and have adequate information to separate teacher effects reliably from interrelated factors and decisions such as elements of students, parents

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