海角大神

Debate about how to keep up with countries that perform best on international tests has been percolating for years in the United States. Now there鈥檚 a new comparison to consider 鈥� one that ranks 21 countries on the status of teachers, a factor that experts say can influence the effectiveness of education.

China tops the first-ever Global Teacher Status Index, with Israel coming in last. The US ranks ninth 鈥� beating out No. 13 Finland, a country that often ranks high in comparisons of student performance.

The index is based on surveys comparing teaching to other professions and how much respect the public says teachers get from students. The report also includes the context of teacher pay, the degree to which parents encourage children to become teachers, and public opinion on pay-for-performance policies. The Varkey Gems Foundation, a London-based nonprofit devoted to improving education for disadvantaged students, released the index Wednesday evening.

In the US, 鈥渢here is consensus that we need to not just improve the status but also the performance of the profession,鈥� and the two go hand-in-hand, says Tom Carroll, president of the National Commission on Teaching & America鈥檚 Future, in Washington. An international comparison on teacher status is a valuable addition to the increasingly global dialogue about how best to do that, he says.

In China, about one-third of those surveyed said teachers could be compared with doctors. In two-thirds of the countries (including top-performers in student testing such as Singapore, South Korea, and Finland), the profession was most often compared with social work. In the US (along with Brazil, France, and Turkey), the most common comparison was to librarians.

That鈥檚 telling, says Mr. Carroll, because it means that the US public sees 鈥渢he core role of teachers as providing students access to content,鈥� which for so long has been measured by multiple-choice tests, while 鈥渢he countries that say it鈥檚 like social work [are saying] teachers need to collaborate with students, support their personal and emotional growth, and work in teams.鈥�

That latter approach is key to the success of many top-performing countries, Carroll and other education experts say, and it鈥檚 a shift that has more potential than ever to occur in the US as schools start to implement Common Core State Standards, which demand that students not just learn facts and figuring, but also how to apply knowledge and solve problems.

To the degree that state policymakers realize that potential of the Common Core, Carroll says, it will put 鈥渟tudents in a tremendous position in a globally competitive economy.鈥�听

Top-performing countries all do several things the US could emulate better, says Betsy Brown Ruzzi, who focuses on international benchmarking as vice president of the National Center on Education and the Economy in Washington. 鈥淭hey recruit teachers at a minimum from the top third of the achievement cohort鈥�. They also pay them well鈥�. And when they enter teaching, they are treated like professionals,鈥� she says.

Yet high status and high salaries don鈥檛 always correlate, this new report shows.

Adjusting salaries relative to the cost of living so that countries can be compared, the report shows that Egypt, ranking sixth on the status index, has an average teacher salary of just $10,604 a year. In Israel, which ranks last, teachers make $32,447.

鈥淚n many countries, a teacher is a civil servant,鈥� where the salary might be low but where other factors, such as respect and stability, come into play, says the index report鈥檚 co-author Oscar Marcenaro-Gutierrez, a professor of applied economics at the University of Malaga in Spain.

In another look at the public鈥檚 views of salaries, the report shows that those surveyed in the US guessed that secondary school teachers earned a starting wage of about $36,000 a year; they said a fair wage would be about $41,000, while the actual wage was about $45,000.

Better pay would help improve status, but it would need to be accompanied by more selectivity in education schools and training programs, because听 鈥渢he听public is unlikely to want to [raise pay] if the profession is seen as open to anyone regardless of aptitude,鈥� says Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality in Washington.

In ranking three categories of teachers among 11 other professions (listing them from 1 to 14 in terms of status), teachers averaged a ranking of seven across all countries. China, South Korea, Egypt, and Greece ranked teachers the highest.

China was the only country where at least half of parents said they would likely encourage their children to become teachers.

The US did well in the measure of parents鈥� trust in teachers, coming in fourth, just behind China.

One lively debate in the US that is touched upon in the index report is whether to link teacher pay to students鈥� performance. Across the 21 countries, an average of 75 percent supported the idea. In the US, 80 percent did.

But it鈥檚 difficult to know how reliable that finding is for the US. In the 2013听PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public鈥檚 Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, 58 percent oppose requiring teacher evaluations to include student scores on standardized tests.

Finland is known to have a high respect for teachers, generally, for instance, so the rankings are surprising and the methodology needs to be scrutinized, says Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, N.J., and an advocate for improving teacher preparation in the US.

Overall, he鈥檚 disappointed to see some low figures on respect and trust of teachers. 鈥淭his is, with the possible exception of China, a stinging critique of the teaching profession and the status in which we hold it," he says.

The good news, says Ms. Ruzzi, is that 鈥渋t is possible to change public policy to improve the respect of teaching.鈥�