From the mid-20th century to the present, comparative pedagogy has been participating in students’ education in different countries, including Russia where the number of migrants is constantly growing. For this purpose, a particular model of education, upbringing and training is chosen. Based on comparative research, the new pedagogy provides a voluminous interaction between education and culture, the quality of educational services and forecast of its development. A significant resource in achieving these goals is to improve a teacher’s training who is prepared for various practical problems, has skills of distance education and knows the requirements for quality education and its various philosophical underpinnings. The article analyses the eight options of democratic education - elitist, liberal, neoliberal, deliberative, multiculturalist, participatory, critical and agonistic. Different options for democratic education meet different (a) ontological and epistemological prerequisites, (b) normative approaches to democracy, and (c) concepts of the relationship between education and politics. However, all innovations in pedagogy should be combined with the achievements of past scientists, from Socrates onwards, including Pestalozzi, Ushinsky, Montessori and others. COVID-19 has updated distant education in the world, the use of e-courses and all kinds of educational technologies. All innovations recorded in PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS programs are ultimately aimed at improving the quality of education. The article gives examples of ambiguous understanding of training and its forms in different regions of the world: USA, Europe, Asia.