Incentives to Improve Teaching (Lessons from Latin America)

Latin America faces tremendous challenges, particularly those of development, poverty, and inequality. Education is widely recognized as one of the most critical means of defeating these challenges. Democratizing education, by improving both its coverage and quality, is critical to overcoming the social and economic inequality that plagues Latin America. Ensuring that all children have the opportunity to learn critical skills at both primary and secondary level is paramount to overcoming skill barriers that perpetuate underdevelopment and poverty. A growing body of evidence supports the intuitive notion that teachers play a key role in what, how, and how much students learn. Attracting qualified individuals into the teaching profession, retaining these qualified teachers, providing them with the necessary skills and knowledge, and motivating them to work hard and do the best job they can is arguably the key education challenge. 'Incentives to Improve Teaching' focuses on education reforms that alter teacher incentives and the impact their on teaching quality and student learning. The reforms explored in this volume represent efforts by several countries in the region to increase teacher accountability and introduce incentives to motivate teachers to raise student learning.