Blueprint-11 17 21

THE NATIONAL CENTER ON EDUCATION AND THE ECONOMY
NCEE’s
BLUEPRINT
For a High-Performing
Education System
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VISUALIZING NCEE’S BLUEPRINT FOR A HIGH-PERFORMING EDUCATION SYSTEM .................. 1
THE CHALLENGE.................................................................................................................................................................. 2
HOW DOES NCEE DEFINE HIGH PERFORMANCE?........................................................................................... 5
OVERVIEW OF THE DESIGN OF HIGH-PERFORMING EDUCATION SYSTEMS ................................. 9
HIGH-PERFORMING EDUCATION SYSTEMS AT A GLANCE ........................................................................ 11
EFFECTIVE TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS ........................................................................................................... 13

RECRUITMENT OF A DIVERSE AND TALENTED TEACHING PROFESSION WITH INCENTIVES TO STAY ............. 13
TEACHER PREPARATION AND INDUCTION THAT PROVIDE A STRONG FOUNDATION IN CONTENT,
PEDAGOGY AND ACTION RESEARCH ................................................................................................................... 14
EDUCATOR CAREER PROGRESSION THAT SUPPORTS AND REWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT AND
SHARING OF EXPERTISE ........................................................................................................................................ 16
SCHOOLS ORGANIZED SO TEACHERS SUPPORT ONE ANOTHER TO GET BETTER AND TO IMPROVE
THE WHOLE SCHOOL ............................................................................................................................................ 17
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT FOR PRINCIPALS TO LEAD SCHOOLS AND SYSTEMS EFFECTIVELY .................. 18
RIGOROUS AND ADAPTIVE LEARNING SYSTEM ............................................................................................. 21

PRESCHOOL ALIGNED TO K-12 TO ENSURE ALL ARE READY TO LEARN .......................................................... 21
ENGAGING CURRICULUM THAT PROMOTES DEEP UNDERSTANDING AND ASSESSMENT THAT MEASURES
THE KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS STUDENTS NEED TO SUCCEED .......................................................................... 22
EARLY IDENTIFICATION OF STRUGGLING LEARNERS, AND ONGOING SUPPORT AND EXTRA TIME TO
ENSURE THEY MEET AND EXCEED STANDARDS.................................................................................................. 24
GATEWAY AT THE END OF COMPULSORY EDUCATION THAT LEADS TO HIGH-QUALITY OPTIONS ................ 25
STATE-OF-THE-ART CTE PROGRAMS THAT CREDENTIAL STUDENTS FOR JOBS OF THE FUTURE ................ 26
EQUITABLE FOUNDATION OF SUPPORTS ......................................................................................................... 28

PRE- AND POST-NATAL FINANCIAL AND PARENTING SUPPORT FOR NEW AND EXPECTANT FAMILIES ........ 28
FINANCIAL, HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES, AND HIGH-QUALITY CHILD CARE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
AND FAMILIES ....................................................................................................................................................... 29
SCHOOLS THAT COORDINATE ACCESS TO THE HEALTH, MENTAL HEALTH, SOCIAL SERVICES AND
SUPPORTS STUDENTS NEED TO BE SUCCESSFUL ............................................................................................. 29
COHERENT AND ALIGNED GOVERNANCE ......................................................................................................... 31

HIGHLY CAPABLE AND COORDINATED LEADERSHIP AT ALL LEVELS OF THE SYSTEM.................................... 31
ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS WITH INCENTIVES AND SUPPORTS TO PERFORM WELL AND INNOVATE TO
REACH STRATEGIC PRIORITIES ............................................................................................................................. 32
FINANCIAL SYSTEMS THAT DISTRIBUTE RESOURCES EQUITABLY AND EFFICIENTLY ...................................... 33

ONGOING BENCHMARKING OF SUCCESSFUL SYSTEMS TO INFORM STRATEGIES ............................................ 33
Copyright 2021 NCEE

VISUALIZING NCEE’S BLUEPRINT FOR A
HIGH-PERFORMING EDUCATION SYSTEM
NCEE’s Blueprint for a High-Performing Education System organizes what we

have learned and continue to learn from high-performing countries, provinces,
states, districts, and schools we study about the ways they design their
education systems to ensure that all students achieve at high levels.
The NCEE Blueprint guides our work with policymakers, researchers, teachers,
and leaders.
THE CHALLENGE
Students in the United States now perform in the middle of the
79 nations whose 15-year-olds are regularly assessed in
reading, mathematics, and science by the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD)
Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In
some jurisdictions, 15-year-olds are 2-3 years ahead of the
average 15-year-old in the U.S. Many developing countries
outperform the U.S. as well.
As a result, millennial workers in the United States are now tied

for the lowest level of basic skills in the industrialized world,
according to the results of the Programme for the International
Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC). Fifty years ago,
our country boasted the best-educated workers in the world.
How have so This fact has potentially catastrophic implications for our
many other economy, society, and the sustainability of our democracy. The
countries steady advances in the global integration of labor markets
gotten ahead
of the U.S., have put the workers of all nations in direct competition with
and what can each other, and advances in the automation of work have
our country resulted in increasing competition between machines and
do to exceed people for the available jobs. These two forces have
them and accelerated the rate of change in the labor market, making the
meet the
challenges of future nature of work increasingly uncertain. But what is
the future? certain is that the labor market will increasingly demand
workers with high levels of knowledge and technical skill.
Countries that redesign their education systems to be adaptive

to a future that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous
(VUCA) will enjoy high standards of living for years to come.
Those that fail to do so, especially high-wage countries like the
U.S., will struggle to compete and will face steadily widening
income disparities, deepening inequities, and growing civil
unrest.
This begs the question: how have so many other countries

gotten ahead of the U.S., and what can our country do to
exceed them and meet the challenges of an uncertain future?
For more than 30 years, The National Center on Education and

the Economy (NCEE) has been researching the answer to that
2 NCEE’s Blueprint for a High-Performing Education System

question by learning how high-performing education systems
around the world were designed. We study their history, visit
their schools, and interview teachers, principals, students,
parents, policymakers, and people outside the system. We
compare them to the U.S. and to one another to better
understand how they function as systems, the similarities and
differences between them, and the tradeoffs they have made.
And we explore how they are changing to anticipate the
future.
NCEE’s Blueprint for a High-Performing Education System

(referred to as the NCEE Blueprint) is a distillation of that
research. It organizes what we have learned and continue to
learn from the jurisdictions we study into a blueprint of the
core components and elements underpinning the design of
high-performing education systems. Because no two systems
are exactly alike, and there is no country, state, district, or
province anywhere that is doing everything described in the
NCEE Blueprint in exactly the same way, it is a composite
picture of a very high-performing system.
Therefore, the NCEE Blueprint offers a design that states or

districts that want to match or exceed the performance of the
world’s highest-performing systems can use as the conceptual
framework for redesigning their own system. Simply adding
discrete elements of this design to current systems is not
sufficient. The elements must be implemented with an eye to
how each connects with the others and fits together as a
mutually supportive whole. It is the overall system design —
adapted to the context of each specific education system —
that must be constructed by the leaders with input from the
entire community. State and/or district leaders must formulate
how best to design each element, in concert with the other
elements, to create a system in which each of these elements
mutually reinforce each other to produce dramatically
improved student learning at scale. This will not be a simple or
quick process: it will take significant effort and will require
ongoing input and reflection from all levels of the system —
including from school leaders, teachers, students, parents, and
the community. NCEE is supporting and collaborating with
leaders across the country to provide the tools, knowledge,
and skills necessary to bring these systems to life.

The NCEE Blueprint builds on previous documents, such as the
9 Building Blocks for a World-Class Education System, that
have guided our work. As we explain, it is crucial that high-
performing systems are dynamic and constantly evolving. They
benchmark their performance against their peers around the
world, respond to the latest research and advances in learning
science, technology, and leadership theory, and work closely
with theorists and economists to anticipate the challenges of
the future. And so the NCEE Blueprint, like previous iterations,
is a living document that will continue to evolve as the high-
performing systems do.

HOW DOES NCEE DEFINE HIGH
PERFORMANCE?
We define high-performing education systems as those that
achieve excellence, equity, and efficiency: world-class levels of
performance, for every student, at a sustainable cost. These
three goals reinforce one another. In order to achieve excellent
performance, it is necessary for all students to achieve
equitably and for money to be spent well. It is not enough to
pursue excellence in isolation from equity or efficiency.
Policymakers and practitioners must prioritize all three.
Excellence
NCEE uses performance on the OECD’s Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA) as the measure of
whether education systems achieve excellent performance.
Every three years, the PISA survey provides comparative data
World-class on 15-year-olds’ performance in reading, mathematics, and
levels of science. PISA is not tied to a particular curriculum; it tests a
performance,
for every student’s ability to apply what they have learned in school to
student, at a the kinds of problems they will encounter in the workplace and
sustainable elsewhere outside school.
cost
While no single test is perfect, we believe PISA provides by far
the richest, most valid, and most useful comparative data on
student performance available. It is more comprehensive than
the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and
covers more countries and more subjects than the Trends in
International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) or the
Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).
In addition to performance, PISA also collects data on

students’ wellness and social and emotional learning. This
allows us to measure not only whether students have
developed a solid foundation of skills and knowledge and the
ability to apply them, but also whether they are safe, happy,
satisfied with their lives, and content with their school climate.
We look closely at the extent to which excellent systems
successfully attend to both.

Equity
Every child should have the opportunity to achieve at high
levels. This is not only a moral imperative but is essential to
economic success and societal well-being.
In order to select high-performing systems to benchmark,

NCEE uses a set of quantitative measures of equity. These
measures include:
• the gap in performance between the highest- and

lowest-achieving students;
Achieving an
equitable • the percentage of students from the lowest quartile of
public-school socioeconomic status who perform at the highest levels
system is in of achievement;
the best
interest of all • the variance in academic performance explained by
our students, socioeconomic status;
and indeed,
our economy • the percentage of low-performing students;
and our entire • the performance of students who are from diverse racial
society. and/or ethnic backgrounds;
• the performance of students who are not native
• speakers of the language of instruction;
• the gap in performance by gender; and
Efficiency…is • the variation in performance within schools and among
about strategic schools.
investments
over the NCEE relies on these quantitative measures in our
course of a
student’s benchmarking methodology. But we do not mean to imply that
education they capture all of the complexity associated with equity.
experience Achieving equity is no easy task in a system like the U.S. We
that reap long- have done very little to organize our schools and support our
term benefits. teachers to alleviate the enormous problems concentrated
poverty causes for our students: toxic stress and a lack of
consistent access to food, shelter, and safety. These problems
are compounded by low expectations for poor students, as
well as culturally and linguistically diverse students. Further,
systemic inequality, inherent bias in curricula, and the enduring
racism in this country combined make it enormously difficult
for our most disadvantaged students to have a foundation of
security and well-being that enables them to succeed in
school. In order to build and sustain equity, educators will need

the skills and understanding needed to recognize the assets all
students bring to the classroom as well as the conditions that
deny some students access to the educational opportunities
enjoyed by other students.
Ensuring equity is in everyone’s best interest. When society is

equitable, democratic institutions are strong and economies
flourish. When pervasive inequity festers and class mobility
becomes impossible, social, economic, and political systems
begin to unravel. Achieving an equitable public-school system
is in the best interest of all our students, and indeed, our
economy and our entire society.
Efficiency
High-performing education systems find ways to maximize
efficiency: to get world-class, equitable achievement for all
children at the lowest possible cost. Efficiency does not
necessarily mean buying the cheapest goods or paying
teachers less. It is about strategic investments over the course
of a student’s educational experience that reap long-term
benefits. These strategic investments have paid dividends for
high-performing education systems. While many invest more
up front for the youngest children, most spend significantly
less than the U.S. does on primary and secondary education.
Some spend as much as 50 percent less—while getting results
that are far better than ours. These returns on investment are
particularly significant given the fiscal constraints schools all
over the world currently face.
It turns out that beyond a baseline level of adequate spending,

how much you spend matters far less than how you spend it.
And the high-performing education systems spend their
money very differently than we do. A few examples of
inefficiencies in the U.S. will make the point.
Educators in high-performing systems classify about 5 or 6

percent of their students as special education students—all of
them with moderate to severe physical or cognitive challenges.
In the U.S., about 14 percent of the students are classified as
special education students, yet only about 5 to 6 percent of
students have moderate to severe challenges. This is not
because high-performing education systems don’t provide the
support students need. It is because only about half the

proportion of students that need that support in the U.S. need
it in high-performing systems. And that is because they
provide so much more support to very young children before
they get to school and to students who start out behind when
they get to school. Many fewer students need very expensive
special education services over the course of their entire
educational career. The students end up achieving at much
higher levels and the cost to the system is far less than in the
U.S.
Forty-five percent of the young people who go into teaching

leave the profession within five years in the U.S. But it takes
about 10 years to become fully proficient in any profession. In
high-performing education systems, recruits typically remain in
the profession two to three times as long as they do in the U.S.
Yes, they are paid more on average. But the cost of finding,
preparing, and supporting new hires is enormous, and the U.S.
ends up with a much less qualified workforce, because so
many U.S. teachers have not had a chance to fully develop
their expertise.
Greatly raising student achievement while simultaneously

closing the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged
students are essential goals. But they are no less important
than ensuring that the nation can afford the cost of reaching
those goals. The key to that goal is not just adding costs and
additional programs to the system we already have, but
instead redesigning that system to get rid of the enormous
waste of resources currently built in. Meeting that goal will
require a willingness to challenge norms, creative design
thinking, and broad and deep political will. NCEE is ready to
help its partners meet that challenge.

OVERVIEW OF THE NCEE BLUEPRINT
Our research suggests that high-performing education systems
have four components: Effective Teachers and Principals; a
Rigorous and Adaptive Learning System; Equitable Foundation
of Supports; and Coherent and Aligned Governance. Within
each component is a set of elements. Combined, they create a
composite picture of a system that performs at world-class
levels and that U.S. states and districts should aspire to match.
But a system is more than the sum of its parts: the
components have to reinforce one another. Effective teachers
The most and principals activate the rigorous and adaptive learning
important system for students. An equitable foundation of supports
feature of ensures that teachers and principals can teach and lead
high-
performing effectively and that all students come to school ready and able
education to learn at the highest levels. Coherent and aligned governance
systems is incentivizes each component to work in tandem, creates
that the accountability for achieving results, and provides a structure to
components organize the system.
are aligned
and designed The most important feature of a high-performing education
to work
together as system is not that it contains all of these components. It is that
a system. the components are aligned and designed to work together as
a system. They are highly customizable and should be adapted
to fit the context of a specific education system; the NCEE
Blueprint should not be interpreted as a rigid plan.
Visitors come from every corner of the globe to see the “peaks
of excellence” in U.S. schools: people with great ideas can be
found here, as can many practices well worth taking home. But
the strong ideas and the highly effective programs they spawn
rarely affect more than a handful of students. This is because
the U.S. does not have an effective system of education.
Education systems are not simply collections of independently
effective parts and pieces. Effective systems, by definition, are
parts and pieces that work in harmony with one another, each
one reinforcing and supporting the functioning of the other
parts and pieces, and all of them together contributing to the
system’s high performance.
It is critical for state policymakers and district leaders to

carefully study these elements, compare them to their systems,

consider their context, and work aggressively to design and
implement high-performing systems. If they fail to do so, the
U.S. will continue to drift behind other countries, with dire
consequences for our economy and the wellbeing of our civil
society.

HIGH-PERFORMING EDUCATION SYSTEMS AT A GLANCE
Effective Teachers and Principals Rigorous and Adaptive Learning
High-performing education systems System
deliver a world-class education to From preschool to secondary
all their students by ensuring that school, including career and
all teachers have a strong technical education (CTE), high-
foundation in content and performing learning systems are
pedagogy and powerful incentives flexible enough to adapt to the full
and supports to do their best work. range of students’ needs and
This means that every school has an interests, but also built on a set of
excellent principal who organizes very high standards that all
work in ways that promote students are expected to meet.
effective teaching and learning, Strong, aligned curriculum and
encourage collaboration, support assessment enable all teachers and
the development of expertise, and students to do their best work,
focus on continuous improvement. even those who need additional
support or greater challenges.
• Recruitment of a diverse and Learning systems are dynamic, and
talented teaching profession they adapt to ensure that students
with incentives to stay are prepared to compete in a
• Teacher preparation and changing global economy and lead
induction that provide a healthy and fulfilling lives in the 21st
strong foundation in content, century.
pedagogy, and action
• Preschool aligned to K-12 to
research
ensure all are ready to learn
• Educator career progression
that supports and rewards • Engaging curriculum that
promotes deep
the development and sharing
of expertise understanding and
assessment that measures the
• Schools organized so knowledge and skills students
teachers support one another need to succeed
to get better and to improve
the whole school • Early identification of
struggling learners, and
• Leadership development for ongoing support and extra
principals to lead schools and time to ensure they meet and
systems effectively exceed standards
• Gateway at the end of
compulsory education that
leads to high-quality options

• State-of-the-art CTE Coherent and Aligned Governance
programs that credential When governance is well-designed,
students for jobs of the future it enables the entire system to
Equitable Foundation of Supports function as a system: ensuring that
elements of the whole fit together,
When young children come to incentivizing coherence and
school healthy, eager, and ready to alignment, supporting educators to
learn, they tend to do well in school. do their best work and ensuring
High-performing education systems accountability for results. To do
strive for equity of opportunity by that effectively, system leaders
providing strong supports for must be capable, strategic,
young children and their families adaptive in the face of volatility,
before students arrive at school. and deeply knowledgeable about
But while supports for the youngest all parts of the system. Leaders set
children can help level the playing ambitious goals and incentivize all
field, the field can tilt again toward actors to meet and exceed
the advantaged students if systems expectations. At the same time,
do not continue to provide they give educators the autonomy
resources to less advantaged to innovate in ways that support
students throughout their school those goals. At all levels of the
careers. system, roles and responsibilities
are clear and do not overlap.
• Pre- and post-natal financial
and parenting support for • Highly capable, strategic, and
new and expectant families coordinated leadership at all
• Financial, health and social levels of the system
services, and high-quality • Accountability systems with
child care for young children incentives and supports to
and families perform well and innovate to
• Schools coordinate access to reach strategic priorities
the health, mental health, • Financial systems that
social services and supports distribute resources equitably
students need to be and efficiently
successful
• Ongoing benchmarking of
successful systems to inform
strategies
The four core components of the NCEE Blueprint work together to support
excellence, equity, and efficiency. Each is described in more detail in the
pages that follow.

EFFECTIVE TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS
Recruitment of a
diverse and High-performing education systems deliver a world-class
talented education to all their students by ensuring that all teachers
teaching have a strong foundation in content and pedagogy and
profession with powerful incentives and supports to do their best work. This
incentives to
stay means that every school has an excellent principal who
organizes work in ways that promote effective teaching and
• learning, encourage collaboration, support the development of
expertise, and focus on continuous improvement.
Teacher
preparation and RECRUITMENT OF A DIVERSE AND TALENTED TEACHING
induction that
PROFESSION WITH INCENTIVES TO STAY
provide a strong
foundation in
content, High-performing systems have policies in place to ensure that
pedagogy, and they are recruiting a world-class teaching force. They accredit
action research few teacher preparation programs, and all are housed in top
research universities. Most U.S. states have 50 or more
• programs, whereas high-performing education systems of
comparable size to these states have fewer than 10, and
Educator career
progression that sometimes fewer than five. In this way, teacher recruitment is
supports and immediately limited to only students who can get into top
rewards the universities. These students have a much stronger grasp of the
development subjects they will teach and are ready for university-level
and sharing of coursework. The universities set academic requirements for
expertise
becoming a teacher to levels comparable to other high-status
• professions. Some have a rigorous entrance test, others have
stringent interview processes, and others require candidates to
Schools have strong academic backgrounds. Many do all of these
organized so things.
teachers support
one another to Being a good teacher is about more than just academic
get better and to capability in high-performing systems. These jurisdictions
improve the screen for other qualities, like a passion for teaching, patience,
whole school
empathy, and a gift for relating to young people. They
• intentionally recruit and hire a culturally, ethnically, and
socioeconomically diverse group of candidates who can relate
Leadership to the life experiences of their students.
development for
principals to lead But getting strong candidates is not enough—strong systems
schools and keep teachers in the profession. It is impossible to get a world-
systems class teaching force if new teachers are constantly resigning
effectively

and need to be replaced. For this reason, architects of the
high-performing systems offer a professional career for
teachers. That means giving them opportunities to build their
skills, collaborate with their peers, and take on new roles and
new opportunities when they demonstrate that they are ready
and capable. Throughout society, teachers enjoy widespread
respect, with some jurisdictions seeing them as “nation-
builders” who take responsibility for society’s future health and
prosperity. Public communications, advocacy, and national
awards for teachers all reflect this. As a result, annual attrition
rates in high-performing education systems are far below the
U.S.’s rate of 8 percent, at only 2–3 percent. And the benefits
to efficiency are significant. Principals are able to spend far
less time onboarding and developing new teachers and worry
much less about students taught by inexperienced teachers.
TEACHER PREPARATION AND INDUCTION THAT PROVIDE A

STRONG FOUNDATION IN CONTENT, PEDAGOGY AND ACTION
RESEARCH
Developing teachers’ knowledge and skills is critical to the

success of high-performing systems. Strong preparation
programs and intensive mentoring during the early years of
teaching are essential. Some systems offer teaching
certificates through four-year bachelor’s programs; others
offer master’s degrees; and some offer both. But still there are
several common features of both the content and structure of
high-performing preparation programs.
Programs emphasize deep understanding of content. Whereas

the U.S. has no common curriculum and therefore often trains
teachers on a set of generalized principles for effective
pedagogy, universities in the highest-performing systems
design preparation programs specifically focused on the
curriculum that teachers will be expected to teach.
Candidates learn first to understand where students are in their
learning and then how best to support them to make progress.
They also learn how to determine when students may have
specific learning challenges that need support from
appropriate specialists. Program content is specialized and
discipline-specific, with a focus on teaching for conceptual
understanding, deep knowledge, and transfer of learning to

new contexts. Elementary school teachers are required to
specialize either in math and science or language and social
studies. Candidates who are preparing to teach preschool are
given explicit preparation in teaching the youngest learners.
And career and technical education teachers are required to
demonstrate mastery of their field. Preparation for all teachers
includes learning to conduct action research, the study of a
teacher’s own practices, with a goal of improving their practice
and the performance of the whole school. Teachers in high-
performing systems do this kind of research in collaboration
with other teachers, as a regular part of their job.
Teaching candidates complete clinical experiences of at least

a year under the guidance of mentor teachers. In some
systems, these mentor teachers have been specifically selected
and prepared as part of a career progression system to be
mentors. Sometimes, these clinical experiences are reserved
for designated practice schools that collaborate closely with
the preparation program. These clinical experiences are
intentionally designed to be progressively more challenging.
Candidates move from observing lessons, to leading their own
breakout groups for parts of the day, to taking over full-time
teaching responsibility while the mentor teacher observes and
provides real-time feedback. Mentors are experienced and
skilled teachers who can give thoughtful and helpful feedback.
They frequently coordinate with faculty at the teacher-
education institution to ensure that what teacher candidates
are experiencing in clinical practice is consistent with what
they are learning in class.
In addition, teacher education, like the K-12 learning system, is

competency-based. Exiting teacher education requires a
meaningful demonstration of mastery of craft. This can involve
some combination of a written reflection, a videotaped lesson
submitted for peer review, a challenging exam, or a
demonstration lesson given to a live panel of experts.
Like doctors, who take part in internships and residencies

following medical school coursework, new teachers need
additional support. High-performing systems have developed
programs for mentoring and induction of new teachers.
Mentors are carefully selected from among a corps of high-
quality and experienced teachers and are coached to mentor

new teachers, often as part of an existing career progression
system. Mentoring and learning on the job take dedicated time.
So, both mentors and new teachers are given release time for
induction activities. These include collaborative lesson
planning, peer observation and feedback, modeling expert
teaching strategies, giving feedback on how specific content is
taught, and helping to design and grade assessments.
EDUCATOR CAREER PROGRESSION THAT SUPPORTS AND

REWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT AND SHARING OF EXPERTISE
In high-performing systems, teachers see teaching as a

meaningful, rewarding career that demands ongoing
development of knowledge and skills. When teachers develop
their pedagogy, content expertise and leadership, they have
the opportunity to take on different, increasingly demanding
roles without having to leave the classroom. This is in contrast
to the U.S., where teachers have the same job on the day they
retire as they did when they first entered the classroom.
The work of schools is organized around the idea of the

strongest teachers leading and mentoring new and struggling
teachers through formal, dedicated roles like lead and master
teacher. These expert teachers facilitate groups of teachers in
conducting collaborative action research; observing and
providing feedback on each other’s lessons; analyzing the
effectiveness of instructional materials, curriculum and
assessment and developing ways of improving them; and
reviewing school and student data to pinpoint what is working
and what might need improvement.
Teachers do not become lead or master teachers by simply

volunteering. They must apply for the position by
demonstrating the requisite skills and specialized expertise
needed for the position. Because teachers’ salaries are tied, at
least in part, to their roles and responsibilities, financial
incentives reward the acquisition of new skills and expertise
and the demonstrated ability to handle more responsibility,
rather than merely more experience. Teachers are rewarded
with greater responsibility, compensation, authority, and
flexibility when they: demonstrate strong skills as teachers;
become strong contributors to the work of teaching teams;
build skills to mentor new or struggling teachers; or become

strong researchers. Some systems have multiple career tracks
to encourage teachers to specialize in one or a few of these
important roles such as content specialists, mentors, or
curriculum developers. In these ways, teachers have incentives
to improve their own teaching, to help one another improve
and to improve the performance of the entire system.
In order to attract and retain effective staff, high-performing

systems pay teachers competitive salaries. Teachers in high-
performing systems do not go hungry, suffer from crippling
student loan debt, or take second or third jobs to make ends
meet. This is because these systems benchmark teachers’
salaries against the salaries of other professions requiring
similar academic qualifications—nurses, architects, civil
engineers—and regularly adjust teacher salaries to meet those
benchmarks. They may offer additional benefits, which may
include tuition reimbursement for undergraduate studies and
bonuses for teaching in high-need areas.
SCHOOLS ORGANIZED SO TEACHERS SUPPORT ONE ANOTHER

TO GET BETTER AND TO IMPROVE THE WHOLE SCHOOL
Teachers in the U.S. have little time to collaborate, few

opportunities to identify ways they can get better at their
work, limited options for advancement and minimal interaction
with others in the building outside of high-stakes evaluation. In
the U.S., many call teachers “professionals” but treat them as
blue-collar workers. In high-performing systems, principals and
teachers reorganize schools to enable teachers to continuously
improve and advance in their careers by using a professional
model of work organization akin to a researcher, law associate
or member of an architectural firm. Teachers are expected not
just to teach students but also to help run the school as a fully
contributing professional. They have deep professional
competence. They work in teams and are accountable to team
members for the quality of their work. Teachers conduct
collaborative action research, demonstrate new lessons to
their colleagues, and critique these lessons and revise them.
They have ample time to pursue professional learning
opportunities in school, at local universities and even abroad.
As teachers prove themselves and are entrusted with more

responsibility, they come to see themselves as leaders who
improve the effectiveness of the entire system.
The professional model of work organization has implications

for how school buildings are laid out, how school days are
scheduled and how classes are organized. Teachers often have
their own meeting space and time to work together during the
school day. Teachers spend much less time directly teaching in
classes: only about 40-50 percent of their time, instead of 70
percent in the U.S. They spend more time planning together,
observing and critiquing each other’s work, working with
individual students who need extra help or small groups of
such students, interacting with adults outside the school and
engaging in their own professional learning.
Giving teachers more professional discretionary time requires

flexible staffing, scheduling, and class sizes. School districts in
high-performing education systems have many fewer
administrative employees, which enables those systems to hire
more teachers. Principals may use creative scheduling, like
having all special subjects meet on a certain day for a
particular grade level in elementary schools, to create more
collaborative working time on those days. Finally, some classes
may be larger than is typical in the U.S. Principals rely on
teachers to make recommendations about class size, and
teachers may teach a few larger classes in order to teach
smaller classes for the students who need the additional
individualized support. Teachers often teach in teams, and
have the support of specialized instructional aides who can
provide one-on-one help, so they can handle larger classes.
Teachers have also developed strategies to manage larger
classes in cases where it is warranted, including using
formative assessment to monitor students carefully, organizing
small group independent work as well as self-directed projects,
and working with individual or small groups of students who
need additional direct instruction.
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT FOR PRINCIPALS TO LEAD

SCHOOLS AND SYSTEMS EFFECTIVELY
School leadership is crucial to the success of high-performing

education systems. In these systems, district leaders do not
wait for individuals to apply to become principals. They

proactively identify promising candidates from the ranks of
effective teachers. Principals and staff developers are on the
lookout for candidates who have a combination of strategic
skills, self-knowledge, patience, drive, ethical roots, moral
qualities, and knowledge of how to manage professionals
effectively. Teachers who have the qualities that might make
them strong future leaders are entrusted with additional
responsibilities designed to cultivate their leadership abilities.
Through a career progression system, educators get
progressively more demanding opportunities to practice
mentorship and leadership and demonstrate these skills over
several years. Only after they have proven themselves by
demonstrating their capacity to lead other teachers are they
selected as principals.
Once new principals are selected, the structure of their

leadership development varies, ranging from entirely on the
job or in a combination of formal academic executive
development and job-embedded professional learning. But the
leadership development always involves clinical experience
and mentorship. Experienced mentor principals, who are also
identified and cultivated using the career progression system,
support assistant principals and new principals as they grow in
their careers, give them opportunities to reflect upon their
practice and how to build their capacity through thoughtful
questioning, and help them realize their personal goals and
goals for the growth of their staff and students.
Giving principals the opportunity to reflect on problems of

practice in a community of peer principals and mentors is key
to the success of high-performing systems. Not only do
principals continuously develop their skills through ongoing
learning, but they also have funding, time, and incentives to do
so. This approach parallels the peer-to-peer learning that
teachers spend much of their time doing. Consistently, the
policies and practices of high-performing systems are
underpinned by a consistent theory of action that professional
educators, from teachers to principals to district leaders, build
their capacity through mentorship and collaborative action
learning.
Finally, principals have opportunities to regularly visit other

schools in their district, state or province, and even abroad.

Principals must learn about successful practices in those
schools, districts and countries and adapt their own leadership
practice accordingly. This practice is intended to promote a
benchmarking culture throughout the system. This instills the
mentality that it is always possible to learn better ways of
doing things and promotes collaboration and collegiality
across the system.

RIGOROUS AND ADAPTIVE LEARNING SYSTEM
Preschool aligned
to K-12 to ensure
all are ready to From preschool to secondary school, including career and
learn technical education (CTE), high-performing learning systems
are flexible enough to adapt to the full range of students’
• needs and interests, but also built on a set of very high
standards that all students are expected to meet. Strong,
Engaging aligned curriculum and assessment enables all teachers and
curriculum that students to do their best work, even those who need additional
promotes deep support or greater challenges. Learning systems are dynamic,
understanding and they adapt to ensure that students are prepared to
and assessment compete in a changing global economy and lead healthy and
that measures the fulfilling lives in the 21st century.
knowledge and
skills students PRESCHOOL ALIGNED TO K-12 TO ENSURE ALL ARE READY TO
need to succeed LEARN
• In high-performing education systems, early childhood

education is part of a lifelong education system that stretches
Early from early childhood to young adulthood and beyond. Early
identification of learning is structured around a curriculum that aligns with the
struggling primary school curriculum, while still being developmentally
learners, and appropriate and emphasizing learning through play. This
ongoing support enables teachers to determine whether young learners are
and extra time to ready to enter K-12 and makes the transition as smooth as
ensure they meet possible.
and exceed
standards Preschool for children as young as three may be optional, but
it is accessible to all. Slots are available for every parent who
• wants them, and participation is free or highly subsidized so
that all parents can afford it. Ensuring availability for all means
Gateway at the that most systems rely on a mix of public and private
end of preschools. But the private sector is subject to the same
compulsory stringent standards for quality of the learning environment,
education that safety, pedagogy, and teacher preparation as are public
leads to high- providers.
quality options
These systems ensure early childhood teachers have
• comparable professional standards to their K-12 peers. They
are prepared for their work in programs that emphasize
State-of-the-art effective pedagogy within the framework of a developmentally
CTE programs appropriate core curriculum. And they have the same kind of
that credential
students for jobs
of the future
opportunities for ongoing learning, professional collaboration,
and leadership available to primary and secondary school
teachers. This means equitable pay, benefits, working
environments with shared office spaces and time to plan,
opportunities for career progression that recognize teaching
expertise and the willingness to mentor colleagues, and
ongoing learning opportunities to enable early childhood
teachers to get better at their work.
ENGAGING CURRICULUM THAT PROMOTES DEEP

UNDERSTANDING AND ASSESSMENT THAT MEASURES THE
KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS STUDENTS NEED TO SUCCEED
High-performing education systems have a common

curriculum set to very high standards. The curriculum is
organized by grade span and by subject, even if the
expectation is that teachers design interdisciplinary projects.
The standards establish a progression through each subject
that is logical, consistent, developmentally appropriate, and
based on what we know about how young people learn. The
core curriculum is broad: it includes not only literacy and
mathematics, but also foreign languages, civics, history,
science, art, music, and health and wellness. But it also covers
the subjects in enough depth so students build the conceptual
frameworks that allow for retrieval and application of
knowledge. This allows them to develop disciplinary thinking;
for example, the beginning of the ability to think and reason as
a historian or mathematician. In addition to developing both a
broad and deep understanding, students are expected to be
able to apply concepts from many disciplines to address real-
world problems, have the capacity to reason, and think
critically and creatively.
External assessments are demanding and set to very high

standards. But they are also purposeful: assessments measure
what students need to be able to do to succeed at the next
stage of education or in work and life. The goal is not just to
measure recall of facts and mastery of basic skills. They
capture the ability of the student to analyze newly presented
material; synthesize material from many sources to address
complex, real-world problems; demonstrate deep
understanding of the concepts underlying the discipline

studied; apply what has been learned to new challenges; and,
in general, demonstrate a capacity for thoughtful, fluent,
informed use of the material studied. These assessments do
not presume that all students have the same history, culture,
and lived experience. Students have the opportunity to draw
on their own cultural backgrounds and experiences as assets
when they construct their responses. Assessments clearly
communicate to students and teachers what knowledge and
skills are necessary to succeed at the next level of education
and passing them enables students to show that they are
qualified for the next stage. They also give policymakers the
ability to track the knowledge, skills and capabilities of the
system’s graduates and future workforce. These assessments
are administered periodically as checkpoints at key intervals in
students’ careers, not at every grade level; thus the extensive
use of performance tasks is not prohibitively expensive.
The opportunity to participate in cultural experiences, civics,

the arts, team work, and social and emotional development is
just as valuable as subject mastery. Teachers in high-
performing systems offer students of all income levels and
backgrounds learning opportunities that take place outside
the classroom. These might include arts, music, and sports, but
also museum visits and science experiences. Many high-
performing systems engage community partners in providing
these opportunities to students. In contrast to the occasional
“class trips” and extracurricular experiences, these learning
opportunities are seen as “co-curricular.” They are a valued
piece of the system’s curriculum.
Successful policymakers and system leaders know that they

cannot rest on their laurels: the skills and competencies that
are needed to be successful today and in the future are always
evolving. For that reason, the curriculum, standards, and
assessment in high-performing education systems are
dynamic and educators regularly refresh them in order to
anticipate a changing future. Educators are continually
benchmarking their standards, curricula, and assessments to
other leading education systems and anticipating what the
knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to be successful
in the future will be. This benchmarking informs a regularly
scheduled curriculum review and update. This process brings
together educators, policymakers, economists, and academics.

They carefully consider what students need to know and be
able to do to meet the needs of the future, how the curriculum
should change in response and what supports will be needed
to help teachers transition to the new curriculum. These
experts see regular updates as essential to getting their
students to match the world’s best and enabling them to stay
there even in an uncertain future.
EARLY IDENTIFICATION OF STRUGGLING LEARNERS, AND

ONGOING SUPPORT AND EXTRA TIME TO ENSURE THEY MEET
AND EXCEED STANDARDS
In high-performing systems as in the U.S., teachers screen the

young learners for developmental issues to ensure that they
receive appropriate supports from a young age. But “early
identification” means much more than just developmental
screening in high-performing systems. Formative assessment
is central to teachers’ practice. Teachers strategically assess
students’ learning as it is being taught, and are adept in using
the real-time results to diagnose misunderstandings, adjust
their teaching strategies, determine when students need
additional support, and decide when students are ready to
move on to more complex concepts in a sequence. Students
are actively engaged in the process of formative assessment to
help them learn actively and develop critical thinking and self-
motivation skills.
Teachers and support staff come together to ensure that all

students receive the support or enrichment they need to
ensure that they not only don’t fall behind but also
excel. Teachers support students who are struggling. When
students demonstrate they are ready to move faster or study
subjects more in-depth, they get a curriculum that enables
them to study some subjects in more depth and when they
reach high school, to get qualifications earlier if they prefer.
The standards are immovable; the time and support needed to
achieve them may be different for different students. To do
this, teachers use the non-instructional time they have to
screen students early for learning issues and ensure they do
not fall behind by giving struggling learners more one-on-one
support during the school day, after school, and outside of
school. Struggling learners receive a flexible range of supports

that can start, stop, or change as needed including extra help
outside of class, small group work in class, or help from
professionals with specific expertise. And all students,
including those who learn material more quickly, have access
to learning experiences that will challenge and engage them.
GATEWAY AT THE END OF COMPULSORY EDUCATION THAT

LEADS TO HIGH-QUALITY OPTIONS
In the high-performing systems, educators work very hard to

ensure that students graduate from K-12 with the skills needed
to succeed in college, career, and life. Graduating students
pass competency-based exams and complete specific courses
to earn a widely recognized qualification signaling that they
have mastered the core curriculum and are ready for their next
step. Because the courses and the exams are developed
nationally, everyone knows just what the student has
accomplished. External experts have carefully validated the
exams to ensure that they are accurately measuring the skills
needed to succeed at the next level of education. Universities
and other higher education institutes require students to earn
these qualifications in order to be admitted, because they
know that the qualifications demonstrate that students have
the skills they will need. And the assessment authority reports
the results and publishes exam questions and sample high-
scoring answers so everyone understands what is required to
succeed and how to meet the high standard.
Once students have earned this credential certifying their

ability to succeed in college and career, they have access to
many different options for learning. These include not only
globally recognized advanced academic programs like
Advanced Placement, Cambridge A-Levels, International
Baccalaureate, and others, but also career and technical
education (CTE) programs. CTE programs demand high levels
of knowledge and skill in core context, so CTE students must
meet high standards just like students in advanced academic
study. The academic options include abundant opportunities
to engage in applied learning. Students have opportunities to
move between programs, and all options are all designed to
give students the opportunity to further their education
depending on their interests.

Flexible pathways open doors. They do not close them.
That's because the pathways rarely lead to dead ends, as
pathways in the U.S. often do. Students in the U.S. enrolling in
two-year colleges often face significant remedial coursework
before they can enroll in credit-bearing courses, and students
in the U.S. who earn a two-year associate's degree sometimes
find it difficult to enroll in a four-year liberal arts university
later because their credits do not transfer. In contrast, high-
performing systems ensure that students can move from
secondary school to two-year programs to universities easily,
in addition to more advanced forms of education or the
workplace.
STATE-OF-THE-ART CTE PROGRAMS THAT CREDENTIAL

STUDENTS FOR JOBS OF THE FUTURE
In high-performing education systems, expert economists work

hand in hand with employers and economic development
agencies to anticipate the skills needed in the future. After
that, educators work with employers to create work-based
programs that ensure that students develop those skills. They
recognize that state-of-the-art career and technical education
(CTE) is key to a healthy economy. But the first challenge they
face is overcoming the stigma that CTE is what students
pursue if they cannot succeed in academics. These systems
make CTE attractive to large proportions of their students.
They ensure that CTE must offer a viable route not only to
well-paying occupations that do not require a four-year
college degree, but also a pathway into further academic and
applied education that can prepare students for positions that
do require further education. Many systems also offer students
a competitive “training wage.” Others partner with businesses
to ensure that students have first pick of lucrative jobs
available to them after they graduate.
Employers take a lead role in the design and governance of

CTE programs to ensure that they are targeting skill standards
that reflect industry expectations and current and future skill
needs. It is important that CTE programs are aligned with
industry demand to ensure that newly credentialed students
can smoothly transition from school into in-demand jobs.

Strong CTE systems are relevant to the world of work as it
exists today, and at the same time, adapting to meet the
needs of the future. Instructors and mentors offer learning
experiences on state-of-the-art equipment and in state of the
art environments. CTE teachers have recent and relevant
experience and practice in the field. CTE study can take place
in school settings that have all the attributes of real industrial
settings, in actual business settings or in a school-worksite
combination. Students work on assignments that matter,
gaining not only knowledge and skills but also the opportunity
to mature and to learn what is expected of them in high-
performance workplaces. Industry is encouraged to involve
itself in the provision of the up-to-date equipment and training
staff need to make the system work. Skill standards reflect the
state-of-the-art in the industries and a high level of investment
in the education of the students. Economists with expertise in
anticipating the jobs that will be needed five or ten years into
the future work closely with employers to ensure that work-
based learning prepares students for the jobs of the future.
Lastly and most importantly, students develop not only the
technical skills needed to begin a particular career but also the
ability to learn new skills quickly so that they can change
careers as industries adapt, and sometimes, die, and new forms
of work emerge. CTE systems are dynamic and constantly
evolving, and the qualifications offered regularly change to
anticipate future workforce demands.

EQUITABLE FOUNDATION OF SUPPORTS
When young children come to school healthy, eager, and ready
to learn, they tend to do well in school. High-performing
education systems strive for equity of opportunity by
providing strong supports for young children and their families
before students arrive at school. But while supports for the
youngest children can help level the playing field, the field can
tilt again toward the advantaged students if systems do not
continue to provide resources to less advantaged students
Pre- and post- throughout their school careers.
natal financial
and parenting
support for new PRE- AND POST-NATAL FINANCIAL AND PARENTING SUPPORT
and expectant FOR NEW AND EXPECTANT FAMILIES
families
High-performing countries have extensive government
• supports for new and expectant families. These often include
“family allowances,” one-time or ongoing payments to families
Financial, health with young children, to help defray the cost of raising children.
and social In some cases, these take the form of college savings bonds
services and
high-quality for the students. In other cases, they are unrestricted cash
child care for payments. Some systems also provide “care packages” for
young children expectant families, containing supplies like diapers, formula,
and families blankets, and clothes. High-performing systems provide
generous paid maternity leave, and, increasingly, paternity
• leave as well, to enable families to raise their children at home
during the first six months to a year with little to no financial
Schools that hardship.
coordinate
access to the How families raise their children is a personal choice and is
health, mental deeply informed by their cultural backgrounds. At the same
health, social
services and time, there are many best practices related to the healthy
supports physical and cognitive development of young children that
students need to families may not know. For this reason, high-performing
be successful education systems offer parent education and support.
Examples range from community-based or school-based
parenting classes at no cost to the families to home-visiting
from qualified medical professionals knowledgeable in offering
developmental support to newborns. This support may take
the form of access to home libraries, educational tools, and
toys to promote healthy brain development.

FINANCIAL, HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES, AND HIGH-QUALITY
CHILD CARE FOR YOUNG CHILDREN AND FAMILIES
High-performing systems provide comprehensive health and

medical care for all families of young children at minimal cost.
This includes early screenings for developmental and language
issues so that they can be addressed well before students
enter school by the appropriate specialists. They also provide
access to libraries for early reading material and opportunities
to participate in free cultural and recreational activities in the
community with young children.
Low-income families, especially, will struggle to balance the

need to work with the need to care for their children. In
addition to paid family leave, every family has access to
affordable, accessible, and flexible child care. Because
systems need to ensure that there are always sufficient slots
for those who need them, child care centers are often privately
run, but they are subject to very strict regulatory standards,
which are enforced by ensuring that only centers which pass
muster can qualify to accept government subsidies. These
standards ensure that all child care centers are staffed by a
cadre of well-prepared early education professionals who can
provide a safe, warm, and developmentally appropriate
learning environment. They also set limits on what child care
centers can charge to ensure that government subsidies are
keeping the cost of child care low.
SCHOOLS THAT COORDINATE ACCESS TO THE HEALTH, MENTAL

HEALTH, SOCIAL SERVICES AND SUPPORTS STUDENTS NEED TO
BE SUCCESSFUL
Many disadvantaged students struggle to access the critical

social services, health care, behavioral and mental health
services, nutritional supports, and other needs that students
from more affluent families receive as a matter of course. Many
students are living in neighborhoods where they experience
traumas that go untreated. To ensure equity of opportunity for
these students, in high-performing systems, schools
coordinate access to needed services to enable all children to
succeed academically. Schools are staffed with some teachers
who serve as behavioral health specialists, student learning

needs coordinators, and coordinators with community support
services in addition to their regular teaching duties. Teachers
are prepared to serve in these roles and given the time,
support, and ongoing professional learning to do them well.
Schools also employ dedicated medical professionals in every
school, or ensure that schools have strong partnerships with a
nearby medical facility and social services agency in the
community.
Teachers in high-performing systems recognize that while they

cannot do everything for all children, they can ensure that
every child is referred to specialists who can meet their needs
appropriately. They develop the expertise to identify when
students are facing challenges, through their preparation and
induction programs and collaborative professional learning.
They recognize behavioral and mental health issues, and signs
of trauma and stress and refer students who need support to
the appropriate professional, all while exercising empathy and
discretion. No less important, they also have opportunities to
be reflective about their own biases and are encouraged to
employ culturally responsive pedagogy and treat all students
with dignity and respect.

COHERENT AND ALIGNED GOVERNANCE
When governance is well-designed, it enables the entire
system to function as a system: ensuring that elements of the
whole fit together, incentivizing coherence and alignment,
supporting educators to do their best work and ensuring
accountability for results. To do that effectively, system
Highly capable leaders must be capable, strategic, adaptive in the face of
and coordinated volatility, and deeply knowledgeable about all parts of the
leadership at all system. Leaders set ambitious goals and incentivize all actors
levels of the to meet and exceed expectations. At the same time, they give
system
educators the autonomy to innovate in ways that support
• those goals. At all levels of the system, roles and
responsibilities are clear and do not overlap.
Accountability
systems with HIGHLY CAPABLE AND COORDINATED LEADERSHIP AT ALL
incentives and LEVELS OF THE SYSTEM
supports to
perform well All high-performing education systems have an institution
and innovate to
reach strategic comparable to a Ministry of Education, either at the state or
priorities national level. The Ministry is staffed by highly regarded
experts who understand the importance of designing an
• education system in which the various functions align and
support one another. The Ministry is understood to have
Financial authority, accountability and legitimacy for management,
systems that policymaking, and long-term strategic vision. While one
distribute agency may not oversee all functions—such as curriculum and
resources assessment; educator preparation, licensing, and professional
equitably and
efficiently development; financing; and more—the elements are designed
to work as a system, with agencies inside and outside the
• Ministry having clearly defined roles and coordinating agencies
serving to facilitate collaboration between them.
Ongoing
benchmarking Ministries of Education are expected to set goals for
of successful strengthening the education system, structure clear education
systems to policy initiatives to meet those goals, and allocate
inform responsibility for meeting targets and timelines. The
strategies government is expected to report periodically on progress
toward the goals, thus holding itself accountable for producing
the desired results.

ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEMS WITH INCENTIVES AND SUPPORTS
TO PERFORM WELL AND INNOVATE TO REACH STRATEGIC
PRIORITIES
High-performing education systems include mechanisms to

report on the success of the system. These use a range of
thoughtful metrics that go beyond test scores—including
climate, student well-being, and enrichment opportunities—
and they put equity front and center. These metrics are
reported to the public, to parents, to the business community
and employers, and across the different parts of the education
system (early childhood, primary and secondary, higher
education) so that they are able to be accountable to each
other. In some systems, schools with low results partner with
expert principals and teachers from higher performing schools
who develop recommendations and work shoulder-to-shoulder
to improve the performance of the school. Principals of high-
performing schools are given significant incentives to mentor
the principals of low-performing schools. Principals also
provide incentives for their outstanding teachers to help
teachers whose students are not performing well.
High-performing leaders know that how funds for education

are spent is at least as important as how much is spent in
determining student achievement and funding equity. They
hold schools and districts accountable for spending additional
dollars and using supports in ways that will lead to positive
outcomes for students. For example, struggling schools might
be required to use a specific set of curriculum materials
focused on helping all students to achieve equitably.
Education system leaders provide professional autonomy at

the school level but define the aims of the system and the
structures needed to achieve those aims at the system level.
This means that schools and teachers have as much flexibility
as they need to teach in ways that are best matched to the
needs of their students. They are also encouraged to innovate
within the framework of the systems’ strategic priorities, and
frequently teacher-driven innovation leads to new practices
being widely shared and adopted. At the same time,
curriculum and pedagogy have enough structure and

specification to ensure all students have an equal opportunity
to learn.
FINANCIAL SYSTEMS THAT DISTRIBUTE RESOURCES EQUITABLY

AND EFFICIENTLY
Policymakers and leaders in high-performing education

systems know that, if less-advantaged students are going to
achieve at world-class levels, they will have to have access to
more resources than students who come to school with
greater advantages. High performers have designed funding
systems that invest more in students who will need more help
to reach high standards than in those who will need less help.
These may be variations of the pupil-weighted funding
formulas common in the U.S., but they start from a common
base, rather than allowing students’ property tax values to
determine the base amount they receive. High-performing
systems monitor the use of this funding to ensure that it is
reaching the students it is intended to serve and having a
positive impact.
Equitable financial systems are about more than just the

structure of the funding formula. The best and most
experienced teachers need to reach those students who need
the most support. Schools are staffed so that more teachers
can work with students who need more help, and teachers
with the most expertise in working with struggling learners
work in the schools that need them most. Some are providing
strong incentives to the best teachers to work in classes and
schools serving students from low-income and minority
families.
ONGOING BENCHMARKING OF SUCCESSFUL SYSTEMS TO

INFORM STRATEGIES
High-performing systems are dynamic. In order to continuously

get better and keep up with their peers, system leaders know
that they must study what the best systems are doing and be
open to adapting their practices. They keep up with the latest
innovations in curriculum, pedagogy, technology, and
professional learning and adopt those that will help them meet
their goals. They also study the changing nature of work,

society, and life and ensure that their systems can adapt to a
volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous future. Maintaining
political will for these dynamic changes means leaders need to
promote extensive public conversation about the aims of
education and the strategies to achieve these aims. These
require planning processes that are highly inclusive yet
capable of producing complex, coherent, and comprehensive
designs. As part of this process, leaders conduct periodic “gap
analyses” in order to benchmark their system features against
those of other high-performing education systems. The overall
goal is to simultaneously enable long-cycle planning and
careful implementation of complex policies over decades; the
ongoing, planned evolution of those policies in response to
benchmarking; and the ability to be nimble and responsive to
rapid changes in society, work, and life.

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THE NATIONAL CENTER ON EDUCATION AND THE ECONOMY

HOW DOES NCEE DEFINE HIGH PERFORMANCE?........................................................................................... 5

OVERVIEW OF THE DESIGN OF HIGH-PERFORMING EDUCATION SYSTEMS ................................. 9

HIGH-PERFORMING EDUCATION SYSTEMS AT A GLANCE ........................................................................ 11

EFFECTIVE TEACHERS AND PRINCIPALS ........................................................................................................... 13

RIGOROUS AND ADAPTIVE LEARNING SYSTEM ............................................................................................. 21

EQUITABLE FOUNDATION OF SUPPORTS ......................................................................................................... 28

COHERENT AND ALIGNED GOVERNANCE ......................................................................................................... 31

FINANCIAL SYSTEMS THAT DISTRIBUTE RESOURCES EQUITABLY AND EFFICIENTLY ...................................... 33

Copyright 2021 NCEE

NCEE’s Blueprint for a High-Performing Education System organizes what we

As a result, millennial workers in the United States are now tied

Countries that redesign their education systems to be adaptive

This begs the question: how have so many other countries

For more than 30 years, The National Center on Education and

2 NCEE’s Blueprint for a High-Performing Education System

NCEE’s Blueprint for a High-Performing Education System

Therefore, the NCEE Blueprint offers a design that states or

3 NCEE’s Blueprint for a High-Performing Education System

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In addition to performance, PISA also collects data on

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In order to select high-performing systems to benchmark,

• the gap in performance between the highest- and

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Ensuring equity is in everyone’s best interest. When society is

It turns out that beyond a baseline level of adequate spending,

Educators in high-performing systems classify about 5 or 6

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Forty-five percent of the young people who go into teaching

Greatly raising student achievement while simultaneously

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It is critical for state policymakers and district leaders to

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TEACHER PREPARATION AND INDUCTION THAT PROVIDE A

Developing teachers’ knowledge and skills is critical to the

Programs emphasize deep understanding of content. Whereas

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Teaching candidates complete clinical experiences of at least

In addition, teacher education, like the K-12 learning system, is

Like doctors, who take part in internships and residencies

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EDUCATOR CAREER PROGRESSION THAT SUPPORTS AND

In high-performing systems, teachers see teaching as a

The work of schools is organized around the idea of the

Teachers do not become lead or master teachers by simply

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In order to attract and retain effective staff, high-performing

SCHOOLS ORGANIZED SO TEACHERS SUPPORT ONE ANOTHER

Teachers in the U.S. have little time to collaborate, few

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The professional model of work organization has implications

Giving teachers more professional discretionary time requires

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT FOR PRINCIPALS TO LEAD