Briefly: The Challenge of Recruiting Teachers

There is an excellent article by Ann Hulbert at Slate Magazine on the challenges that public schools face in recruiting teachers. In the United States, teaching is neither a lucrative profession nor a particularly well-regarded one. This is not the case in other parts of the world.

The world's best educational systems—among them, Singapore, South Korea, Finland, and Alberta, Canada—cull their teaching forces from their top college graduates. The United States draws from the bottom third to staff a profession that, like many traditionally female-dominated pursuits, inspires reverence, at its best, but lacks social status. If there is one thing school reformers agree on, it's the importance of raising the caliber of teachers.

But there is no consensus on how to engineer the image upgrade that would help lure more of the best and the brightest. Look abroad, to the premier school systems, and a spectrum of tactics emerges. On one end is South Korea, where teachers get big paychecks—and big classes, which make the salaries affordable. On the other is Finland, where teacher salaries aren't high but social status is: Considered on a par in prestige with lawyers and doctors, teachers are well-trained and wield real influence over curricular and other school policies. Yet to judge by the behind-the-scenes view of American schools that Perlstein and Klein provide, teacher autonomy and authority are rare commodities in the NCLB era. And recruitment incentives and merit pay, while welcome, alone aren't likely to give the cultural boost the profession requires.