Understanding the Aims and Assumptions of the World Bank's Report on "Great Teachers" for Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract

We analyze elsewhere how teachers unions globally are responding to the Global Education Reform Movement or GERM. In this article we interrogate five key premises that drive policy recommendations in the 2014 World Bank report Great Teachers: How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean and examine the evidence for its prescriptions. We find that Great Teachers report ignores earlier World Bank research on education in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), fails to address contradictions in its own findings, and, as it has done previously, omits acknowledgment of educational research that challenges its analysis. We also scrutinize the World Bank’s research on LAC teacher quality and performance as reported in Great Teachers, identifying significant flaws in methodology that limit the credibility and usefulness of its findings and the recommendations based on its research.