After lying dormant for nearly 10 years, the first national teacher performance evaluation in the Dominican Republic has delivered stark results that are pushing education leaders to prioritize comprehensive professional development for the country’s teaching workforce. Data presented by the Dominican Ministry of Education to the National Council of Education shows that more than three-quarters of participating teachers received either failing or just basic ratings on the new Professional Performance Exercise, a competency-based assessment designed to measure how well educators can apply their knowledge and skills to solve everyday challenges in the classroom.
Officials called 122,919 teachers across the country to take part in the evaluation, which was conducted in six sequential stages between October 30, 2025 and June 30, 2026. To execute the process, the ministry trained and deployed 2,418 technical support staff across all 122 national educational districts and central headquarters, ultimately achieving a 91.75% completion rate, with 112,778 teachers finishing all required stages and 109,338 receiving valid final scores.
Breaking down the overall results, 58.4% of participating educators earned an insufficient grade, while an additional 16.7% only reached the basic regular level, bringing the share of teachers scoring below the good competency benchmark to 75.1%. Just 14.6% of participants achieved a good rating, with only 10.2% landing in the competent to outstanding range. When combining all evaluation components, the national average score across all participants came out to 85.4 points, with 22% scoring insufficient or regular, 42.3% earning good or very good marks, and 35.7% reaching competent or outstanding levels.
The data also revealed clear performance gaps tied to both the educational level teachers work in and their years of professional experience. Among the evaluated classroom teachers, 34,663 primary school educators posted an average score of 84.2 across the three assessment sections, while 18,180 secondary school teachers recorded a slightly lower average of 83.9 points. The gap by years of service was far more pronounced: for early-career teachers with just 1 to 5 years of experience, only 13.7% scored insufficient or regular, and nearly half — 47.1% — hit the competent or outstanding threshold. By contrast, for veteran educators with 26 to 30 years of service, more than a third (34.6%) landed in the insufficient or regular categories, and just 28.5% achieved competent or outstanding ratings.
In response to the evaluation findings, the Ministry of Education has announced a sweeping, targeted continuous training plan to address the identified competency gaps. Minister of Education Luis Miguel De Camps formally designated the national teacher performance evaluation as a top policy priority via Departmental Order 50-2025, issued on May 16, 2025. The Vice Ministry of Accreditation and Teacher Certification oversaw implementation of the assessment, which aligned with the country’s official Professional and Performance Standards for the Certification and Development of the Teaching Career.
The new training initiative will be systematic and sustainable, with a laser focus on the specific competencies the evaluation found are most in need of strengthening. Each educator will receive differentiated training strategies tailored to their individual professional profile and teaching context, paired with ongoing pedagogical support and formal monitoring mechanisms to track improvements in teacher performance over time. Ministry officials emphasized that the evaluation data will serve as a foundational tool for the education sector: it will be used to identify specific professional development needs, guide policy decisions around teacher certification, prioritize institutional goals, allocate public resources more effectively, and measure the long-term impact of future training interventions.