The issue of teacher effectiveness has risen rapidly to the top of the education policy agenda, and the federal government and states are considering bold steps to improve teacher and leader effectiveness. One place to look for ideas is the experiences of high-performing education systems around the world. Finland, Ontario, and Singapore all have well-developed systems for recruiting, preparing, developing, and retaining teachers and school leaders, and all have attained high levels of student performance and attribute their success to their teacher-effectiveness policies. This report examines lessons from these high-performing systems that the United States can apply, and provides detailed descriptions of the policies from each system. This report contains the case studies: (1) Lessons Learned from Finland, Ontario, and Singapore (Linda Darling-Hammond and Robert Rothman); (2) Developing Effective Teachers and School Leaders: The Case of Finland (Pasi Sahlberg); (3) Systems for Teacher and Leader Effectiveness and Quality: Ontario, Canada (Barry Pervin and Carol Campbell); and (4) Creating Effective Teachers and Leaders in Singapore (Tan Lay Choo and Linda Darling-Hammond). Individual sections contain endnotes. [This paper was co-published by the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Additional funding was provided by the Education Funders Strategy Group. For related report, "Teacher and School Leader Effectiveness: Lessons Learned from High-Performing Systems. Issue Brief", see ED517674.]