Over seven million teachers file into classrooms across Latin America and the Caribbean every day. These women and men represent four percent of the region's overall labor force, over twenty percent of its professional workers, and their salaries absorb close to four percent of the region's GDP. Their working conditions vary widely -- from mud-walled, one-room rural schools to world-class facilities – but teachers everywhere are the key actors in the region's efforts to improve education quality.
This book shows that teacher quality is crucial for economic development, and presents a first-ever picture of how LAC's teachers perform inside the classroom, drawing on new research in over 14,000 classrooms in seven countries. It presents the latest evidence on the three core strategies for raising teacher quality: attracting high-talent students into teaching careers, developing their skills effectively, and using incentives to motivate high performance. Finally, the book analyzes the political dynamics of teacher policy reforms, drawing lessons from recent cases of successful and unsuccessful reforms in the region.