PREAL - English

The Hard Evidence on Soft Skills

2012-01-25T09:52:00.000-08:00

By Alexandra Solano

Associate, Report Cards Program

With Scott Odell, Program Assistant

James J. Heckman argues thateducation systems

shouldplace a more significant emphasis on soft

skills suchas character and personality traits.

Image fromthe Heckmanwebsite.

In December, Professor James J. Heckman gave a lecture atthe World Bank in Washington, DC, entitled “Hard Evidence on Soft Skills”, inwhich he asserted that an emphasis on hard skills (such as knowledge in math,science and reading) at the expense of soft skills (such as character and personalitytraits) has unfortunate implications for education policy.

Heckman, a Nobel Laureate economist from the University ofChicago, claimed that soft skills are often interpreted as being “fuzzy”concepts that are difficult to quantify, and under this assumption, researchersand policymakers place little attention on the role of character or personalitytraits in predicting success in life. In fact, however, psychologists andeconomists have reached significant consensus on defining the most importantsoft skills and have developed accurate tools for measuring them.

The mostcommonly accepted set of soft skills associated with success is known as theBig Five Factors, which employs the acronym OCEAN:

Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism (or level of aberrant psychologicalbehavior)

Professor Heckman showed that tests measuring these factorsare better predictors of college GPA than tests of hard skills like the SAT.They also more accurately predict whether a person will graduate college by age30, be a daily smoker at age 18, be a teenage single mother, or even be injail by age 30.

“We have a growing body of evidence that shows that thesefactors matter, they predict, and the good news is they can be improved,”Professor Heckman states in an online video from his website. He argues thatsuccess in life requires more than academic achievement and that educationpolicy should focus more on developing soft skills from an early age. Althoughinterventions that promote character are relatively unexplored, in many casesthey play a greater role in determining outcomes than cognitive skills.

Although PREAL has followed the trend and emphasized theimportance of hard skills such as cognitive achievement, we believe thatHeckman’s argument merits attention. We recommend that you visit Heckman’s webpage for moreinformation, or view a short video entitled “TheHard Facts Behind Soft Skills” for a brief overview of his research. We also recommend the followingdocuments on the importance of improving soft skills in early years, by Heckmanand others:

Almlund, Mathilde, Angela LeeDuckworth, James Heckman, and Tim Kautz. Personality Psychology and Economics. February 2011. Discussion PaperSeries. IZA
Heckman, James. The Economics of Inequality: The Value of Early Childhood Education. Spring 2011. American Educator
Heckman, James, John EricHumphries, and Nicholas Mader. HardEvidence on Soft Skills: The GED and the Problem of Soft Skills in America. November 2010. Power Point Presentation inSantiago, Chile.

Winners Announced for PREAL’s Fourth Education Research Fund Competition

2012-01-25T09:11:00.000-08:00

The theme of the Fourth Competition was

“The teacher as a key actor for improving

education."Image Source: Wikimedia

Commons.

The Education Research Fund (FIE), a program coordinated by PREAL withthe Support of USAID, recently announced the nine research proposals that havebeen selected for funding as part of the fourth research competition, which hadas its theme, “The teacher as a key actor for improving education.”

The FIE received 75 proposals fromresearchers in 16 countries, each of which was reviewed independently by two academic evaluators. PREAL then convened a panel composed of Pablo Gonzáles, Michael Johanek, Patrick McEwan, and Robert Myers, who used the evaluations to select the final winners, in collaboration with PREAL’sco-directors and the executive secretary of FIE, Santiago Cueto.

The winning proposals will form the basis ofresearch projects to be carried out in 2012. The winners are:

Learningand the Opportunity to Learn in Latin American Primary Education: The TeachingPractice. Researchers: Rubén Cervini, Nora Dari, SilviaQuiróz, and Emilio Tenti of the Universidad Nacional de Quilmes,Argentina.
EducationalReform and Teachers Unions in Brazil. Researchers:Fernando H. E. Guarnieri and Maria Helena Guimarães de Castro of the Centro Brasileirode Análise e Planejamento (CEBRAP), Brazil.
The Effects of Accountability Pressures on Teacher Policies and Practices in Low-performing Schools: The Case of Chile. Researchers: Elacqua y Ernesto Treviño of the UniversidadDiego Portales, Chile.
How do you teach this topic? Pedagogical content knowledge of primary school teachers. An analysis of six fundamental themes in the teaching of reading, writing and mathematics. Researchers: Tatiana Cisternasand Marisol Latorre of the Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo en Educación(CIDE) of the Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile.
EffectiveTeaching Practices in Multi-grade Classrooms in Impoverished Rural Contexts. Researchers: Mario Alas, German Edgardo Moncada, Russbel Hernández, and Dania MaríaOrellana of the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional Francisco Morazán, Honduras.
Public School Teachers in a Collective Context: The Transformational Power of Tutorial Relationships and Learning Communities. Researchers:Gabriel Cámara, Santiago Rincón Gallardo Shimada, and Annette Santos del Realof Redes de Tutoría, S.C. México.
A Teachers' Profession or a Professional Teaching Service? The Political Economy of Reforms that Favor the Evaluation and Promotion of Teachers in the Mexican Education System. Researchers: Felipe Hevia and Jorge Javier Romero of the Centro de Investigaciones yEstudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Mexico.
TeacherAbsenteeism: Associated Factors and their Effects on Performance. Researchers:Gabriela Guerrero and Juan León of GRADE and Penn State University, Peru.
Evaluationof Learning in the Natural Sciences in Latin American Secondary Schools. Researchers: Pedro Ravela, Julia Leymonié, and Beatriz Picaroni of the UniversidadCatólica del Uruguay, Uruguay.

We would like to thank all of the applicants for their proposals. We expectto announce another competition in the coming months on the subject ofleadership in education.

Study: Teachers' "Value-added" has Life-long Impact

2012-01-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

By Jeffrey Puryear

PREAL Co-director

Image from the New YorkTimes article "Big Study Links

Good Teachers to Lasting Gain.”

Followingup on the article we shared last week on the value-added approach to teacherevaluation in Washington, DC, a recent NewYork Times article, alongwith a columnby Nicholas Kristof, report on a new study that examines whether thevalue-added approach effectively distinguishes between good and bad teachers,and how much impact those teachers have on students. After tracking 1 millionstudents over 20 years, the authors concluded that 1) value-added approachesaccurately measure teacher quality over time, and 2) students of teachers withhigh value-added scores were subsequently more successful in many dimensions,including attending college, earning higher salaries, and avoiding teenagepregnancy.

Inthe words of one of the co-authors, John N. Friedman of Harvard University: “Ifyou leave a low value-added teacher in your school for 10 years, rather thanreplacing him with an average teacher, you are hypothetically talking about$2.5 million in lost income.” Kristofconcludes that “The obvious policy solution ismore pay for good teachers, more dismissals for weak teachers.”

Use the value-added tag to access previous PREAL analyses of value-added ratings.

Washington Proposes Making Great Teachers Rich

2012-01-06T08:15:00.000-08:00

By Jeffrey Puryear

PREAL Co-director

WashingtonDC’s new Impact Plus program

employsthe value-added approach to teacher pay

byrewarding high-performing teachers – like Tiffany

Johnson,above – with large bonuses and raises.

Imagefrom the New York Times article “In

Washington, Large Rewards in Teacher Pay.”

“Wewant to make great teachers rich.” This quote, by the chief of the Office ofHuman Capital of Washington DC’s public school system, summarizes thedistrict’s new value-added approach to teacher compensation. The Impact Plusprogram rewards teachers with bonuses of between $2,400 and $25,000 if theirstudents learn more than would be expected based on previous test scores.Consistently high performance merits permanent raises, and annual remuneration canreach as high as $130,000. In a recent New York Times article, Sam Dillon provides several examples of how the programappears to be achieving its intended objective.

Inorder to receive the extra pay, teachers must waive the right to tenure, anaction that 30 percent of those eligible for bonuses and 20 percent of thoseeligible for raises refused to take. As we noted in a previouspost on the subject, the program also includes provisions to fire thelowest-performing teachers, and 400 have been dismissed in the last two years.While other districts, such as Houston and New York City, have implementedprograms similar to Impact Plus, Washington’s is the most innovative, and leadsthe country in testing whether value-added pay will improve learning inAmerica’s schools.

View the full text of Dillon’s article on the subject,“In Washington, Large Rewards in Teacher Pay" here.

PISA Scores for 10 new Education Systems Announced

2011-12-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

By Alexandra Solano

Associate, Report Cards Program

With Katie Hufnagel and Scott Odell, Program Assistants

TheAustralian Council for Educational Research (ACER) just released the document “PISA 2009 Plus Results: Performanceof 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science for 10 additionalparticipants,” which presents results from the Programfor International Student Assessment (PISA) for countries that participatedafter the initial round of examinations. The new participants include two LatinAmerican education systems: Costa Rica and Venezuela’s Miranda Province. It isrelevant to note that Miranda-Venezuela did not meet the PISA standard onschools response rate, and that Himachal Pradesh-India and Tamil Nadu-India did notmeet PISA standards for student sampling, so caution should be exercised wheninterpreting results from these education systems.

Mean Scores onPISA Reading Test, 2009

Key: Dark blue: LAC;Green: SecondRound Countries; Red: Costa Rica and Venezuela-Miranda

Sources: OECD (2010) and ACER (2011). Note: Not all differences between countries are statistically significant.

InAugust, PREAL summarized the first round of PISA results in “Measuring Up? How Latin America andthe Caribbean Performed on the 2009 PISA.” We werecurious whether the performance of Costa Rica and Miranda-Venezuela would follow thetrend of the nine Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries that participated previously.Here are some key observations from the new results:

Low average scores among the 10 new participantsbumped the relative results of a few LAC countries out of the lowest third ofall participating countries.

Chile remains the highest-performing LAC country inreading and science, and continues to be tied with Uruguay and Mexico in math. But Costa Rica’s meanscores in reading are so close to Chile’s that the differences arestatistically insignificant. Costa Rica also came close to matching Chile’sperformance levels in science but scored behind in math.

At just 3 percent, Trinidad & Tobago and Uruguaycontinue to have the highest share of top performers in the region in allsubjects, while Panama and Peru maintain the highest share of low-performingstudents at 65 percent. In other words, the new scores do not change the factthat an alarming proportion of students in the region fail to demonstrate minimumlevels of performance.
Costa Rica and Venezuela-Miranda follow the regionaltrend for gender gaps: girls outperform boys in reading and boys outperformgirls in math. Additionally, Costa Rican boys outperformed girls in science(all differences are statistically significant).

In reading, both Costa Rica and Venezuela-Mirandaperformed above what their levels of education investment would predict, andCosta Rica performed better than what its GDP per capita would predict (forMiranda, please use caution given its low school response rate and the fact that the results are not representative of the country as a whole).

% of Students at the Lowest Performance Levels on PISA Math Test, 2009

Key: Dark blue: LAC;Red: Costa Rica and Venezuela-Miranda


Sources: OECD (2010) and ACER (2011). Note: Lowest levels include Leve 1 and below.

Outside of LatinAmerica and the Caribbean, two states in India—Tamil Nadu and HimachalPradesh—also participated in PISA for the first time. Whilethese two states are not representative of India overall and did not meet PISA standards for student sampling, initial indications seem to suggest that their scores were low, with few high performers. This is contrary to whatPritchett and Viarengo predicted in 2009, when theysuggested that India would have low overall scores with significant pockets of highperformers. In fact, the share of underperformers for these two states rangedfrom 82-90% in all subjects.

To be sure, low scores in India and theother new participating countries are troubling. However, we believe that the realvalue of these new 2009 PISA plus results is that more education systems aretaking the crucial first step toward improving education quality by allowingcross-national assessments of their students’ performance. Of course, rankings are simply quick glimpses into howa country is doing compared to others, and it is how governments respond that has the most value.

Developing Networks for Reform

2011-12-23T08:41:00.000-08:00

Rossana Castrellón, president of UNCEP,presents on

PREAL’s Basic Partnershipin Panama. To the left and right

are PREAL Co-directorJeffrey Puryear and CECC/SICA

Secretary General María Eugenia Paniagua,
respectively.

On December 8-9, PREAL staff and partners from five CentralAmerican countries and the Dominican Republic met in Washington, DC, to reviewa broad spectrum of PREAL activities and discuss priorities for improvingeducation policy in the coming year. By acting on the conclusions reached during the meeting, PREAL and its partners hope to continue providing sound recommendationsto Latin American policymakers on how to improve the quality and equity ofeducation in the region.

To find out more, check out the PREAL Event Brief of the meeting, "Developing Networks for Reform."

New Issue of Pro Educación

2011-12-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

Manuel Alfredo Álvarez,

President Proyecto Educar 2050

Weare pleased to share with you the most recent edition of PREAL’sBusiness-Education newsletter, ProEducación.

Thenewsletter opens with an opinion piece by the president of Proyecto Educar2050, an NGO that works to improve education in Argentina, on the role ofcivil society in education. It then highlights several recent activities bynetworks of businesses supporting education and citizens campaigning to improveeducation quality, including the work of Proyecto Educar 2050; a recentstudy about private education investment in Latin America and the Caribbeancarried out by the Brookings Institution; Unidos por la Educación, a newmovement in Panama that recently held its first forum; the II Forum forEducation in Nicaragua, organized by several of PREAL’s business-educationalliance partners; and a debate among public and private organizationsdiscussing challenges of a new high school in Guatemala. The section of Tools,Experiences, and References (Herramientas, Experiencias y Referencias)announces new initiatives in PREAL’s business-education database and summarizestwo new publications: “Education for Sustainable Development” by UNESCO and“Education, Values and Citizenship” by the Organization of IberoamericanStates.

Thebulletin can be found online here.

PREAL's Working Groups Hold Experts Meetings

2011-12-15T13:41:00.000-08:00

PREAL Co-director MarcelaGajardo speaks during the experts

Meetingof the GTGEE in Santiago, Chile. To her left are CIEN

Vice-President Jorge Lavarredaand Javier Lasida, director

of the department of Management and Education Policy at

the Catholic University of Uruguay.

On November 23-25, PREAL's working groups on School Management and Effectiveness and the Teaching Profession convened experts from throughout Latin America at the Hotel Atton in Santiago, Chile, to discuss the next steps in education policy reform. The meetings provided a unique lens into what those who know education policy best are saying about current trends in Latin America and what must be done to successfully develop education systems of the highest quality for the region's children.

To find out more, check out the PREAL Event Brief of the meeting, "Next Steps for Education Reform."

Goals: The State of Education in Mexico 2011

2011-12-15T07:49:00.001-08:00

We are pleased to share with you the third annualreport of the civil society group Mexicanos Primero, entitled “Metas: Estado dela Educación en México 2011” (Goals: The State of Education in Mexico 2011).This edition emphasizes that the few education goals set in Mexico lackfollow-up, accountability, and vision, placing Mexican students well behindtheir counterparts in other countries in terms of student performance.

Despite some slight modifications, this reportmaintains the same format and indicators as previous editions, showing theprogress – or setbacks – of both the Inclusive Education Performance Index (acomparative analysis of the performance between systems and educationaloutcomes of the 32 states) and the teaching profession, presenting for thelatter a public policy evaluation of the Carrera Magisterial.

As its name suggests, the report presents fivenational goals accompanied by some of their associated indicators. Each ofthese goals – which range from professionalization of teachers to increasingscores on international student achievement tests – will require a great effortby all stakeholders, but, according to Mexicanos Primero, they are crucial foraccelerating educational change in Mexico.

The report can bedownloaded here.

Toxic inequality in Chile

2011-12-13T11:18:00.001-08:00

In a recent article in El País,Moisés Naím compares the protests occurring in Athens, Madrid and New York withthose occurring in Chile. Naím argues that the protests, and the growingdiscontent that fuels them, are a consequence of Chile’s success in bringingmany of its poor into the middle class, and its failure to provide the servicesand opportunities that the new middle class expects. “Building a school or ahospital,” he points out, “is easier than improving the quality of education orhealthcare.” The emerging middle class expects the state to help it continuemaking progress. Naím suggests that Chile’s experience in addressing thischallenge may produce valuable lessons for other countries, in Latin Americaand beyond.

For more context on the protests occurring in Chile,please click on this link to the audiorecording and event summary of a discussion hosted at the Inter-AmericanDialogue on September 7, 2011, where Senator Juan Pablo Letelier of theSocialist Party and Senator Hernán Larraín from the Independent Democrat Union(UDI) Party shared their insights on this movement.

PISA results for additional systems coming out soon

2011-12-07T11:42:00.001-08:00

By Alexandra Solano

Associate, Report Cards Program

Image source: dropoutnation.net.

In the next few days, OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) will be publishing the results of an additional nine education systems that implemented the 2009 exam, including two LAC education systems – the State of Miranda in Venezuela and Costa Rica. (For an analysis of how the nine Latin American and Caribbean countries participating in the original application of the 2009 exam fared, see PREAL’s Measuring Up?: How Did Latin America and the Caribbean Perform on the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessement (PISA)?).

India’s recent participation in PISA may also give us initial insights into how well its recent efforts to reform its education system are going (or at least the magnitude of the challenge that it faces in improving student learning) and how that might affect potential competitors in LAC. In an event held at the World Bank this past October, Mr. Kapil Sibal, Minister of Human Resource Development in India, noted that he is striving to use education to transform India into a global center for research and development and technological innovation. Although the two Indian states participating in PISA 2009 may not be representative of the country – Tamil Nadu is the most urbanized state of India's 28 states and the fourth largest contributor to the country's GDP, while Himachal has the highest per capita income and ranks second in terms of least corrupt states – knowing their results will certainly shed some light on student learning in a country that is widely seen as a benchmark when it comes to math and science performance. Indeed, a 2008 paper by Lant Pritchett and Martina Viarengo, predicts that while India’s PISA average scores in math may turn out to be lower than Mexico’s, they will likely have many more high performers. It is increasing the amount of high performers, the authors argue, and not the average scores, that will most likely make a country competitive in the knowledge-based global economy.

As in the case of India, results from the state of Miranda in Venezuela, will not be nationally representative – Miranda has the highest Human Development Index out of the 23 states, and is the second most populated with nearly 3 million people who live mostly in urban areas. But the state has been working to improve its education system, and the current governor, who is also a presidential candidate, has made education one of his top priorities. Moreover, given that Venezuela does not apply internal tests to measure the quality of student learning, this will be the first attempt to assess student knowledge in the Venezuelan education system in over a decade and will allow for comparisons with its Latin American peers and the rest of the world. The last time Venezuela participated in an international comparative exam – UNESCO’s 1998 First Regional Student Achievement Test – results showed Venezuela performing below the regional average for all grades in all levels tested. It will be interesting to see if the PISA results show a similar pattern.

These results will be the first on this exam for Costa Rica, Georgia, Malaysia, Malta, Mauritius, Moldova, the United Arab Emirates (except Dubai), the states of Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh in India and the state of Miranda in Venezuela. The results from India, often singled out for its competitiveness in the world labor market, its high technological development, and its achievements in math and science, are likely to be of particular interest. This will also be the first comparative student achievement data for Venezuela since 1998. Costa Rica, which participated in UNESCO’s SERCE (Second Regional Student Achievement Test) in 2006, consistently performed above the regional average for all subjects and grades tested on that exam (see PREAL’s 2009 publication, How Much are Latin American Children Learning?: Highlights from the Second Regional Student Achievement Test (SERCE)).

Stay tuned for more on the new results and their implications for Latin America in this blog once the OECD releases them.

Understanding Chile's Conflict

2011-11-23T10:39:00.001-08:00

Graffiti in Santiago stating "No más lucro en educación" (No more profit in education).

The confrontation between students and government inChile, very much in the news recently, is both complex and changing rapidly.Here are three (click 1, 2, 3) documents that provide context to better understand the debate.

The first is a letter signed by a diverse group ofChile’s leading education specialists and published today in El Mercurio.The group argues that, although the current debate is almost entirely aboutspending more on higher education, the best approach to improving equity,education quality and social mobility is to give priority to public spending onpreschool and basic education—which have been left almost entirely out of thecurrent debate.

The second article, by Jose Joaquin Brunner, placesChile’s higher education system in the context of broader changes underway inhigher education in Latin America and world-wide. It suggests that thetraditional model of the research university cannot be sustained when highereducation is extended to large segments of the population.

Finally, former minister of education Sergio Bitarreviews the changes that have occurred in Chile’s higher education system overthe past several decades and makes several recommendations for improvement.

Scientific Commission of TUS 2012 Event

2011-11-21T07:19:00.001-08:00

The Central Eastern University and Ministry ofScience and Technology of the Dominican Republic have released a call forproposals for their International Science Conference of Higher Education: “Technology,University, and Society.” This conference will take place in the DominicanRepublic from October 9 – 12, 2012. Please click here for event and applicationdetails (document in Spanish).

Hanushek & Ravitch Debate Firing the Worst Teachers

2011-11-15T13:41:00.001-08:00

Images from the Stanford website and dianeravitch.com.

Eduwonk recently hosted an online debate between Stanford economist Eric Hanushek andNew York University education historian Diane Ravitch on the pros and cons ofdismissing the lowest-performing teachers in U.S. schools.

Inhis two posts, Hanushek argues that replacing the bottom 5-10 percent ofteachers with average teachers would raise the test scores of American studentsat least to the level of Canada and perhaps to the level of Finland. Whileacknowledging the importance of improving policies to hire and retain the bestteachers, he maintains that none of these policies have been successful atimproving the least effective teachers. Moving a bad teacher out of a schoolserving disadvantaged students, he argues, is not a bad thing, and would raisethe prestige of the profession. Hanushek also points out that research showsthat teacher evaluations by principals and by test scores both tend to identifythe same teachers at the top (outstanding) and bottom (highly deficient) of thedistributions, reducing the risk that either approach would lead to firing goodteachers.

Inher two posts, Ravitch responds that while she agrees that bad teachers shouldbe fired, doing so will not necessarily drastically raise student performanceand she doubts that evaluation systems are accurate enough to avoid firing goodteachers by mistake. She suggests that teachers who are fired will be replacedby inexperienced teachers who need intensive support and training. She arguesthat instead, efforts should focus on raising teacher hiring standards andcreating a positive work environment to ensure that the best teachers willremain in the profession. “We should aim to build the profession, not to make itmore insecure and less professional.”

Read the complete using the following links:

New Edition of Education Synopsis No. 39

2011-11-14T09:04:00.001-08:00

Photo credit: Western Carolina University

We are pleased to share with you PREAL’s new issue ofEducation Synopsis series, No. 39. This issue discusses the value of usingmentorship to improve the skills of novice teachers, based on a publicationfrom the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) and the Institute ofDevelopment and Educational Innovation (IDIE) in Chile.

Providing experienced teachers as mentors may help newteachers learn how to analyze their work, understand their own strengths andweaknesses, and recognize the steps they need to take to improve. The mostimportant influence of mentor teachers may be to help novices develop theirprofessional identity and take ownership of their work.

The full text of the document can be found online here.

In Uno+Uno Interview, Puryear Calls for Education Reform

2011-11-14T08:20:00.000-08:00

In conjunctionwith the release of the second Education Report Card on the Dominican Republicon November 9, the Dominican television program Uno+Uno interviewedPREAL Co-director Jeffrey Puryear on the subject of education quality.

Puryear emphasizedthe critical role of teachers in improving student learning and called on theDominican Republica and other Latin American countries to seek out the bestand the brightest. “A [teaching] degree is not enough,” he stated. “We mustfirst recruit very motivated and talented teachers and not recruit thelowest-performing applicants.”

He also notedthat the most successful education systems have longer school days than thosecommon in Latin America – generally six to eight hours each day. They alsoplace special emphasis on under-achieving students by recognizing them earlyand providing extra support to help them catch up.

While callingfor these and other changes, Puryear recognized that education reform ispolitically challenging. However, he maintained that governments, civilsociety, and parents must work to ensure a quality education for LatinAmerica’s children. “Education policy does not change from one day to the next;it is a medium and long-term effort. It is a struggle in which we mustpersevere.”

Quality is the Challenge: A Report Card on Education in the Dominican Republic, 2010

2011-11-11T07:00:00.001-08:00

PREAL Co-director Jeffrey Puryear spokeat the

launch of the second Education ReportCard on the

DominicanRepublic, El Reto es la calidad (Quality is

the Challenge), in Santo Domingo onNovember 9.

View his slideshow presentation here. Imagefrom

the article “Informe: Es vital inversion y formación

demaestros,” published by Hoy.

Actionfor Education (EDUCA), PLAN Dominican Republic, and PREAL released the secondeducation report card on the Dominican Republic in Santo Domingo on November 9.The launch featured an address by PREAL Co-director Jeffrey Puryear andattracted over 80 participants, including Vice Ministers of Education VíctorSánchez and Adarberto Martínez, Director ofEvaluation Ancell Scheker, Director of the Dominican Institute of Research andEvaluation on Education Quality (IDEICE) Leo Valeiron, Director of EconomicStudies David Lapaix, USAID Education Officer Jana Wooden, IDB representativeto the DR Manuel Labrado, and representatives of NGOs, universities, theprivate sector, and the media, among others.

The report card, entitled El reto es la calidad (Quality is the Challenge) highlights the achievements andchallenges of the Dominican education system in terms of coverage, quality,equity, teacher training, investment, and management, and emphasizes changesobserved since the last report card in 2006.

Althoughthe Dominican Republic has achieved significant advances in basic educationcoverage and teacher certification in recent decades, the quality of educationcontinues to be a major challenge. Indeed, in a test of student learning in 16Latin American countries, Dominican students scored at the bottom (UNESCO,2007). In light of the proposals to improve education in the 10-YearEducation Plan (2008-2018) and the National Development Strategy (2010-2030),it is critical that all Dominicans – government authorities and the generalpublic – work to confront the problems of the educationsystem, setting objectives and clear achievement indicators to follow-upon established goals.

Thereport card seeks to stimulate an informed discussion of the educationchallenges that the Dominican Republic faces internally and in comparison withother Latin American countries to provide an equitable, high quality,relevant education for all Dominican youth.

ThePDF version of the report card in Spanish can be downloaded here.
View a two-page Executive Summary of the report in Spanish here (PDF).
View the slideshow presentation that Puryear delivered at the launch event here.

MediaCoverage:

“Seguimos sacando malas notas,” Listín Diario, November 10, 2011
“Notas deficientesen educación en AL,” by Argénida Romero, Diario Libre, November 10,2011
“Informe:Es vital inversión y formación de maestros,” by Soila Paniagua, Hoy, November9, 2011
For more news coverage of the Dominican Republic Report Card, please see this week's "Central American News" section, here.

New Edition of Policy Series No. 38

2011-11-07T14:40:00.000-08:00


Professor David Hopkins photo credit: DEECD

We are pleased to share with you the most recentedition of PREAL’s Policy Series No. 38, “Large-Scale School Improvement.Challenges for schools and education systems.”

This issue discusses the approach of David Hopkins,professor emeritus at the University of London’s Education Institute, tolarge-scale school improvement.

After reviewing successful reforms of individualschools over the past 25 years, Hopkins identifies 5 different phases that mostmature systems have gone through. Each phase builds on the previous one, andnone are mutually exclusive. The phases involve first understanding theorganizational culture of the school; then, developing action research andindividual initiatives (including teacher and school review); managing changeand emphasizing leadership; building capacity for learning at the local level;and finally, identifying the path towards systemic improvement.

Hopkins argues that in the fifth phase, which iscurrently underway, successful school reforms must be applied on a large scaleto achieve systemic improvement. In the past, many systemic reforms effortshave failed because they have focused on the wrong variables--only on teachingand learning (rather than looking at the organizational conditions of aschool), or did not take a systemic approach to reform. A key concept ismaintaining a balance between the national agenda and school leaders. Theadaptive, systemic changes that turn a school into a great school are driven bytargeting personalized learning, professional teaching, developing networks andcollaboration, and intelligent accountability. These ingredients require the abilityto “segment” schools based on their developmental stage and a strong, systemicleader in order to maximize impact.

Hopkins argues that reforms should also anticipate asixth phase and consider the challenges that will arise in the future.

The full text of the document can be found online here.

In the News This Week: Empresarios por la Educación on Reform in Guatemala

2011-11-04T14:50:00.000-07:00

Image fromthe article “Dificultadesfinancieras

impidenfortalecer la calidad educativa,”

published by el Periódico.

PREAL partner Empresarios por la Educación (Business Leaders for Education) highlights the need for education reform in Guatemala. Read about this and other education news from Central America and the Dominican Republic by selecting a country in the "Central American News" tab above. The news summaries are updated each Friday by PREAL staff.

Occupy the Classroom

2011-11-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

A meeting of the Occupy Wall StreetGeneral Assembly

Image from the WikimediaCommons.

"Occupy the Classroom," a column written by Nick Kristof of the New York Times, suggests that the “Occupy WallStreet” movement in the United States is fueled at least in part by thiscountry’s rising inequality, and argues that expanding early childhoodeducation is the single step that would do the most to reverse the trend. “[A]good education tends to be the most reliable escalator out ofpoverty…[and]…disadvantaged kids often don’t get a chance to board thatescalator.”

Kristof cites Heckman’s work at the University ofChicago showing that investments in early childhood education pay a return of 7percent or more, and other studies suggesting that early childhood education isassociated with better health, lower levels of crime, higher graduation ratesand higher levels of home ownership.

GivenLatin America’s high rates of inequality, and the resentment—most obvious inChile—that appears to be growing among the region’s citizens, governments mightbe well-advised to take investments in quality early childhood education forthe poor more seriously. The question may be, as Kristof suggests, not whetherwe can afford early childhood education, but whether we can afford not toprovide it.

Innovative School Leadership Programs

2011-10-31T07:14:00.000-07:00

Image from the New Leaders website.

We are pleased to share with you the mostrecent edition of PREAL’s Best Practices Series, No. 37, “Formación deliderazgo escolar: programas pioneros en Estados Unidos.”

This edition reviews three exemplary programs in the United Statesthat recruit, train, and retain highly qualified principals. These programstarget school principals with incentives to make the role attractive toqualified leaders.

The first program, New Leaders for New Schools, contains atwo-part program for aspiring principals including a rigorous selectionprocess, a four-week training period, and one year of residency in a school.Successful candidates for this program have experience as leaders in the schoolsystem. The second program, Broad Residency in Urban Education, consists of atwo-year training period with interactive seminars and focused projects,combining training with work experience in high levels of schooladministration. This program targets residents with at least 4 years of priorwork experience who may be able to use business skills to improve educationalmanagement practices.

The third program, First Ring School Academy, was developed inresponse to the extreme shortage of qualified principals in an attempt toattract school leaders who will reform the education system in Cleveland areadistricts. Unlike the first two programs, this program recruits participantsfrom highly exceptional current teachers from within the local district. The15-month training emphasizes topics central to school management work and incorporatesinteraction with the school’s current principal. This program is beneficial inthat it uses the district’s own resources for its educational progress, leadersare selected with an understanding of local problems, and the relationshipsbetween school leaders and local authorities are strengthened.

Click here to view the full text of the document.

In the News this Week: Teaching Status in Honduras

2011-10-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

Image from La Tribuna

Teachers in Honduras propose an analysis of the Teaching Statutes. Read about this and other Central American and Honduran news from this week by clicking the "Central American News" tab above. The news summary is updated every Friday by PREAL staff.

Education Research Fund Competition

2011-10-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

We would like to inform researchers interested in applying to PREAL's Fourth Education Research Fund Competition that proposals must be submitted by Thursday, November 3, 2011. Winning proposals will be announced on Monday, January 16, 2012. All information needed on how to submit a proposal can be found here.

For questions regarding the competition, please contact Santiago Cueto (scueto@preal.org).

Steve Jobs on Education

2011-10-21T09:03:00.001-07:00

Image from the Wikimedia Commons.

The passing of Steve Jobs earlier this month generatednumerous tributes to the Apple icon’s simple solutions to technology’s mostintractable dilemmas. Two recent blog posts apply Jobs’ thinking to some ofeducation’s greatest challenges, and come up with very differentinterpretations.

In a post on Education Next, Jay P. Greenepulls together comments by Jobs on school vouchers (positive), teachersunions (negative), and digital learning (not a magic bullet). In an ASCD EDgeBlog, teacher Kelle Stewart suggests that Jobs’ most important legacy foreducation is his commitment to innovation: “Perhaps the best homage we can allpay to his legacy is taking a vow to think differently. We shouldn’t be forcedto keep buying these so-called solutions that really only cause us more pain.We should stand up and fight for what we know will work best for us and for ourchildren.”

Greene’s post, “Steve Jobs on Education” can be found online here,and Stewart’s piece, “Think Differently about Reform,” here.

In the News this Week: Forum Focuses on Private Sector Involvement in Education

2011-10-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

Image from thearticle “Unaapuesta por la

educaciónde calidad,” published by El

Nuevo Diario.

A forum held in Nicaragua this week encouraged business leaders to be involved in the effort to improve education in the country. Read about this and other education news from Central America and the Dominican Republic by selecting a country in the "Central American News" tab above. The news summaries are updated each Friday by PREAL staff.

United for Education Holds International Forum in Panama

2011-10-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

Image from the article "Realizan ForoInternacional

Unidos por laEducación," published bytvnNoticias

PREALco-director Marcela Gajardo joined leaders from throughout Latin America topromote sound education policy at the United for Education Forum in Panama lastweek. The event, which was organized in partnership with PREAL, attracted morethan 250 participants, including Minister of Education Lucy Molinar and othergovernment leaders, school administrators, teachers, academics, representativesof NGOs, business leaders, and journalists.

Theforum embodied the primary goal of United for Education to bring together themany parties committed to improving education in order to share ideas andpromote policy change. Gajardo, who is also a member of UNESCO’s GlobalEducation for All (EFA) Advisory Board, joined María Eugenia Paniagua,Secretary General of the Central American Education and Cultural Coordination(CECC/SICA), to discuss the valuable information contained in the EFA GlobalMonitoring Reports. Additionally, representatives from Mexico, Brazil, andColombia discussed the vital role of civil society in evaluating nationaleducation policies. Finally, a panel of Panamanian education leaders discussedthe implications of these international efforts for their country.

Unitedfor Education emerged out of a collaborative study carried out in 2009 toanalyze common threads of purpose in Panama’s education initiatives.Researchers distinguished four key objectives of education reform: 1) improvethe equity of access to education, 2) raise the quality of learning, 3)strengthen the teaching profession, and 4) improve administration of andinvestment in education. United for Education formed to bring these objectivesto the forefront of public debate and to make education a top nationalpriority.

News articles on the forum:

Realizan Forointernacional Unidos por la Educación – by Elkiriam Caballero, October 4, TVNnoticias

‘Unidospor la Educación’ pretende centralizar iniciativas educativas – by Rosalía Simmons, October 4, Prensa.com

In the News This Week: Quality the Next Debate for El Salvador's National Education Council

2011-10-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

Image from the World Fund website.

Following efforts to reduce school violence, El Salvador's National Education Council will now turn its attention to improving the quality of education in the country. Read about this and other education news from Central America and the Dominican Republic by selecting a country in the "Central American News" tab above. The news summaries are updated each Friday by PREAL staff.

Teacher preparation and qualifications

2011-10-07T14:51:00.001-07:00

Image from the University of Michigan

We are pleased to share with you PREAL Working PaperNo. 56, “A comparative study of teacher preparation and qualifications in sixnations” by Richard M. Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania.

This study compares training standards, selectivity,qualifications and teaching assignments of primary and secondary teachers inthe United States, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand andJapan, in an effort to determine how the United States might raise the qualityof its teachers. It finds that teacher training is much more decentralized andfragmented in the United States, and U.S. teacher training programs are muchless selective than in the other countries. It also found that U.S. teacherswere much more likely to be teaching in fields for which they did not havespecific training.

The full text of the document can also be found here.

Video of Puryear's Address at the III Forum on Education Quality

2011-10-05T13:33:00.000-07:00

We recently wrote that PREAL Co-director Jeffrey Puryear had spoken at the III Forum on Education Quality, organized by Proyecto EDUCAR 2050 in Buenos Aries, Argentina. We now supplement that post with a video of the speech.

El Excelsior on PREAL's Paper on Education in Mexico

2011-10-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

Image from El Excelsior.

We are pleased to share a commentary published in ElExcelsior, "Más voces sobre la educación," by Carlos Ornelas, of PREAL's forthcoming paper on education in Mexico written byJeffrey Puryear, Alexandra Solano, and Lucrecia Santibáñez (of the RAND Corporation).

Marches in DR to Demand 4% of GDP for Education

2011-09-30T15:30:00.000-07:00

Image from the article "Marcharán otra

vez por el 4% delPIB para educación este

domingo",published by El Diario Libre.

Marches are planned for this Sunday in the Dominican Republic to demand that 4% of GDP be allocated to education. Read about this and other Central American and Dominican education news from this week by clicking the "Central American News" tab above. The news summary is updated every Friday by PREAL staff.

Obama Offers Flexibility on NCLB

2011-09-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

On Friday, President Obama granted greater flexibilityto states struggling to meet requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB)Act that has guided U.S. education policy since its signing in 2002. While noting that NCLB appropriately focuses on raising standards,improving accountability and closing the achievement gap, he criticized thepolicy for pressuring teachers to “teach to the test,” reducing emphasis onsubjects like history and science, and incentivizing states to lower theirstandards to avoid being labeled failures. Aspectsof NCLB on which the administration will grant greater flexibility includerequirements for 100 percent of students toprove proficiency in math and reading by 2014 and for failing schools toprovide students with after-school tutoring and free transportation to betterschools.

In order to qualify for this flexibility, states mustmeet three requirements: 1) teachers and administrators must be effectivelyevaluated by taking improvements in the test scores of their students intoaccount, 2) they must set achievement standards that require high-performingstudents to be “college and career ready,” and 3) they must develop strategiesto address the problems of the lowest-performing schools.

Links to further information on the announcement is includedbelow.

Document from Secretary ofEducation Arne Duncan to the states, detailing 10 aspects of NCLB on which theadministration will offer flexibility:

· ESEAFlexibility – 23 de sept.

News Articles:

· ‘NoChild’ Fix Excites, Vexes –24 de sept., por Kevin Helliker, TheWall Street Journal

· Statescan opt out of No Child Left Behind school standards, Obama says, but argumentsremain – 24 de sept., WashingtonPost (AP)

· ObamaTurns some Powers of Education back to States – 23 de sept., por Sam Dillon, New York Times

· ObamaUnveils Education Plan – 23de sept., por Laura Meckler y Stephanie Banchero,The Wall Street Journal

· Obamato Waive Parts of No Child Left Behind –22 de sept., por Sam Dillon, NewYork Times

· Obamato Issue No Child Left Behind Waivers for States – 22 de sept., por Lyndsey Layton, Washington Post

Opinions:

· Obamaflex:Too much tight, too much loose – 28 de sept,por Michael Petrilli, Education Next

· NCLBFlexibility for States – 26de sept., Editorial del Washington Post

Teacher Protests in Guatemala

2011-09-23T15:30:00.000-07:00

Image from the article "Docentesbloquean

diezpuntos del país," published by Siglo 21.

Read about road blockades put in place by protesting teachers in Guatemala and other Central American and Dominican education news from this week by clicking the "Central American News" tab above. The news summary is updated every Friday by PREAL staff.

Teacher Evaluations Based on Student Performance

2011-09-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

Rob Meyer, whose organization, theValue-Added

Research Center, created a metric fortaking

student test scores into account inteacher

evaluations. Image from the WallStreet

Journal article.

Prompted by the Obama administration’s “Race to the Top” program, teachers in more than a dozen states in the U.S. will soon be evaluated in part on the test scores of their students, according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. The districts will use formulas that compare what students would be expected to score on a test – given past performance and outside factors like income and race – with their actual scores to estimate the influence of their teachers.

The results will be used to determine whether teachers receive incentives such as tenure or bonuses. While teachers unions argue that the measures are inaccurate and narrow, supporters assert that their use will improve student learning by holding teachers accountable for performance.

Click here to read the complete article, "Teachers Are Put to the Test."

New Edition of PREAL Informa No 38

2011-09-21T09:48:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to share with you the latest edition of PREAL Informa, No. 38 (August, 2011), which opens by discussing the participation by PREAL’s program directors in several international educational conferences, including the Global Forum on Learning Policy (Hong Kong, July 4-5) and the 8^th Congress of the Latin American Institute for Educational Leadership (ILALE, Dominican Republic, June 28).

This edition also provides current information on various PREAL programs, including its new Working Group on school management and effectiveness, the 2011-2012 study tour program, the Business-Education Alliance program, events recently organized by among national counterparts, and short summaries of quarterly publications.

The full document may be accessed here.

New Issue of Pro Educación

2011-09-19T08:20:00.000-07:00

PREAL has released the July/August issue of Pro Educación, which can be found online here.

This issue opens with an opinion column by David Calderón, CEO of Mexicanos Primero, regarding the importance of implementing high quality education investments as a necessary component to achieve education improvements. It also discusses recent activities of “Todos pela Educação” in Brazil as the group prepares for its upcoming international conference, “Education, an urgent agenda”; the recent launch of the Observatorio del Presupuesto en Educación (an initiative for the oversight of the education budget) in the Dominican Republic; activities of the Business-Education Alliance Program of PREAL during its recent visit to the Dominican Republic; a workshop on Education for All, organized by the Business Foundation for Education Development (FEPADE) in El Salvador for key players in local education policy; the creation of the movement “United for Education” in Panama; and a meeting between representatives from the Foundación Promigás of Colombia and from Business Leaders for Education in Guatemala, among others.

Debate Continues over Education Funding in the DR

2011-09-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

Imagefrom the article “Acogen Prespuesto 2012,”
published by El Caribe.

Read about debates in the Dominican Republic over the 2012 education budget and other Central American and Dominican education news from this week by clicking the "Central American News" tab above. The news summary is updated every Friday by PREAL staff.

Call for Proposals - Education Research Fund

2011-09-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

Image from the Wikimedia

Commons

PREAL’s Education Research Fund has just issued a callfor proposals for its fourth region-wide education research competition. Thetheme of the competition is "The teacher as a key actor for improvingeducation." Proposals are expected to help identify policies that improvethe contribution that teachers make to student learning and overall schoolperformance.

The competition will fund up to eight research projectsfor one year, for a maximum of $30,000 each. All application materials must bereceived by Thursday, November 3, 2011. For additional information and guidelines, please see the Call for Proposals: English/Español/ Português.

PREAL Blog Languages

2011-09-09T14:25:00.000-07:00

We have changed the language format of our blog bycreating two identical pages - one in English and one in Spanish. We believethat this is an improvement on our previous system of including the text inboth languages on one page. You are currently on the English page; to read theblog in Spanish, simply click the link “Lea en español” to the right. Pleasenote that our archives have not yet been completely copied to the Spanish page.

Hemos cambiado el formato del idioma denuestro blog a través de la creación de dospáginas idénticas – una en inglés y otra en español.Creemos que se trata de una mejora alsistema anterior de incluir el texto en ambaslenguas en la misma página. Ahora usted está viendo lapágina en inglés. Si desea leer el blog en español, haga clic en “Lea en español” a la derecha. Porfavor, note que nuestros archivos aún no han sido trasladados totalmente a lapágina en español.

Puryear Speaks at the III Forum on Education Quality

2011-09-09T11:29:00.000-07:00

PREAL Codirector Jeffrey Puryear at

the III Forum on Education Quality

in Buenos Aires. Image from the

Educar 2050 webpage.

On August 30, PREAL co-director Jeffrey Puryear spoke at the III Forum on Education Quality in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Forum was organized by Proyecto EDUCAR 2050, a group of civil society leaders seeking to improve education in the country. The minister of education of Buenos Aires, Esteban Bullrich, opened the forum. Puryear spoke on a panel with Marcelo Cabrol, chief of the education division of the Inter-American Development Bank, and Bernardo Kliksberg, advisor to the Latin American and Caribbean office of the United Nations Development Project (UNDP).

Other speakers included Manuel Alvarez Trongé, president of EDUCAR 2050, Priscila Fonseca da Cruz, executive director of Todos Pela Educaçao of Brazil, Juan Manuel Iturbey, governor of the Province of Salta, Gabriela Michetti, national deputy, Maria Eugenia Estenssoro and Ernesto Sanz, national senators, Gustavo Iaies, director of the Center for Public Policy (CEPP), Carlos Tramutola, Cimientos Foundation, and Gustavo Grobocopatel, director, Grupo LOSGROBO. Approximately 700 political and business leaders, education specialists, teachers and principals attended the meeting. Additional information may be found at www.educar2050.org.ar.

View Puryear's Slide Show Presention.

News about the Event:

Urgente llamado para superar la “indigencia educativa” en el país, by Agustina Lanusse, La Nación – August 31

“No nos engañemos, meter alumnos en un aula, no es calidad”, Noticias Urbanas – August 31

Charter Techniques in Public Schools

2011-09-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

A tutor helps a student with math in Houston. Image

from the New York Times article.

While evidence to support the claim that charter schools provide new opportunities for struggling students has received significant attention, a recent New York Times article entitled “Troubled Schools Try Mimicking the Charters” provides ground-breaking evidence to substantiate the hypothesis that competition with charter schools will lead public schools to adopt innovative techniques to improve student learning.

The article reports that the Houston, Texas, school district has enacted a set of education policies based upon five successful charter school practices identified by Harvard University researcher Roland G. Fryer: 1) longer school days and years, 2) more rigorous and selective hiring of principals and teachers, 3) frequent quizzes whose results determine what needs to be retaught, 4) ‘high-dosage tutoring,’ and 5) a ‘no excuses’ culture. The district spent $19 million on the effort during its first year, hiring new principals, teachers and tutors and paying severance to teachers that retired instead of participating. With 100 charter schools competing with 300 public schools, Houston is a likely location for education competition to result in innovative practices in public schools.

Protests in Chile

2011-09-07T11:17:00.000-07:00

In response to a PBS article citing Inter-American Dialogue Senior Fellow Genaro Arriagada, PREAL co-director Jeffrey Puryear discusses the student protests in Chile.

Students march in Chile on June 30. Image from the

Wikimedia Commons.

A core issue of the protests is certainly the unequal character of Chile's education system, which Genaro Arriagada expresses nicely: "Education is very segregated, from your birth until you become a professional." It's worth noting, however, that Arriagada's characterization is true for virtually all of Latin America, and Chile is far from being the worst offender. Indeed it has made real progress in reducing education gaps between the rich and the poor over the past decade. Expectations appear to be higher in Chile, however, and the government has responded ineptly.

It should also be noted that Chile is one of the few countries in Latin America that charges significant tuition in public universities (although it provides scholarships for the poor and loans for the rest). The students want all education to be free, but most analysts agree that free higher education for all is regressive, benefiting the richest 20% far more than the rest. This is because rich and upper-middle class students can pay for high-quality private primary and secondary schools that enable them to score high enough on the college admission test to get into the (highly selective) public universities – chiefly the University of Chile and the Catholic University. The poor must attend low-quality public primary and secondary schools that fail to prepare them to get into the best universities. Clearly, a major part of the equity problem begins well before entry into higher education, and the real challenge in Chile (and the rest of Latin America) is to provide the poor with high-quality primary and secondary education.

Links to further news and commentary on the protests:

Los doce puntos planteados por la Confech al Presidente Piñera, Chile Crece

Demandas estudiantiles, soberbia y descalificación ideológica, by Eduardo Bitran, El Mostrador

La estafa, by Eugenio Tironi, El Mercurio

Protesters Aim to Teach Chile Lessons, by Matt Moffett and Carolina Pica, The Wall Street Journal

Dinero y educación, by José Joaquín Brunner, El Mercurio

ICT in Education

2011-09-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

New computers in a school in the Northeast region

of Brazil. Image from the Wikimedia Commons.

A new PREAL Education Synopsis synthesizes recommendations from “New Information and Communication Technologies for Education in Latin America: Risks and Opportunities,” by Guillermo Sunkel and Daniela Trucco.

The publication reviews the integration and use of ICT in schools in Latin America and analyzes their contribution to addressing the region’s education challenges.

The full text of the document may be found on the PREAL website, here.

Interesting observations of charter schools in Washington

2011-09-01T12:53:00.000-07:00

Comments on "Rising test scores show what D.C. charter schools can achieve", an editorial published in the Washington Post on August 10.

Michelle Obama attends a Cinco de Mayo celebration

program at the Latin American Montessori Bilingual

Charter School in Washington, D.C. Image from the

Public Domain.

Approximately 40% of students in Washington’s public school system attend charter schools rather than traditional public schools. This editorial from the Washington Post points out that test scores among charter school students have risen substantially over the past five years, from 40% proficiency in math and 43% in reading, to 49.9% in math and 54.7% in reading. Last year, 60% of charter schools posted higher scores than the year before.

Part of the explanation appears to be the government’s insistence on success. Charter schools that fail to improve test scores (approximately one-third of all charter schools established to date) have been shut down. This (strongly) encourages charter schools to find ways to increase learning among their students, including experimenting with new forms of organization, management and pedagogy.

The success of charter schools serving poor students is particularly noteworthy. Some of the best-performing charter schools serve the poorest students in the public system. A KIPP charter school located in the city’s poorest neighborhood outperformed the main public high school in the city’s wealthiest neighborhood.

Summary of Central American News

2011-08-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

Image from the Public Domain.

View a weekly summary of news on education in Central America by clicking on the “Noticias Centroamericanas” tab above. If you would like to receive an email containing the summary each Friday, e-mail Katie Hufnagel.

Impact of Teacher Evaluations

2011-08-16T08:44:00.000-07:00

Image from the Public Domain.

New teacher evaluation programs in Washington, D.C. and New York City are producing noteworthy results.

In the second year of the Washington program, known as IMPACT, approximately 16 percent of the teachers evaluated earned bonuses of up to $25,000. This percentage parallels last years’ results and is similar to estimates by economists of the proportion of teachers that are highly effective. About a third received the highly effective rating for the second year in a row and became eligible for significant increases in their base pay. Under the IMPACT program, teachers must agree to give up tenure in return for the possibility of earning annual bonuses and permanent pay raises. Approximately 5 percent of the teachers were rated ineffective last year or minimally effective for the second year in a row, and were dismissed. The IMPACT program also evaluated the performance of principals for the first time this year.The new system includes a two-part evaluation, consisting of leadership outcomes and student achievement.

In New York City, tougher evaluation criteria this year decreased the number of teachers who received tenure by nearly 30 percent from last year. Under the new procedure, teachers must be rated effective or highly effective to be eligible for tenure after three years. Five years ago, nearly 100 percent of eligible New York City public school teachers received tenure.

Understanding the Finnish Education Model

2011-08-12T14:41:00.000-07:00

Lauttakylä School,a comprehensive school for grades

1-6 inHuittinen, Finland. Image from the Wikimedia

Commons.

Finland’s schools get lots of attention for their high test scores, but how do they do it? Can elements of their model be successfully used elsewhere? PREAL co-director Jeffrey Puryear provides preliminary observations on an analysis of the Finnish education model from the OECD's recent book, Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for the United States.

“The chapter is probably one of the best accounts I have seen of the Finnish model. It is particularly strong on how history and culture shape the education system, which is naturally slippery and hard to address. And it does a good job of summarizing and drawing conclusions. That being said, it also fails to address some important, and possibly crucial, economic and political issues.

The Finnish model of public education includes (among other things) high standards for recruiting teachers, leading to a corps drawn exclusively from the top quarter of the talent pool; rigorous pre-service training that emphasizes subject matter expertise and practical experience; teacher autonomy combined with responsibility (teachers are expected to act like professionals rather than like blue-collar workers); extreme decentralization ("schools are mostly a function of municipal government"); and strong accountability (operating almost exclusively at the individual and school levels, which the authors characterize as "almost entirely professional--no inspectorate or external assessments").

I found especially interesting three aspects:

1)The emphasis on systemic rather than programmatic reform: "The Finnish reforms...created a sector that functioned in a radically different way...it is the shape of this new sector, not continued programmatic initiatives that come from a central government, that accounts for Finland's success." (Is any country in LAC trying to do this?)

2) An emphasis on "preparing people for an economy in which innovation and entrepreneurship will continue to be drivers of progress." (Again, is any country in LAC trying to do this?)

3) The decision in 1968 to establish "a common, untracked comprehensive school system that would serve students from all walks of life"

I was also struck by the emphasis on going beyond reading, math and science to include "creativity, problem-solving, teamwork and cross-curricular projects" (although there was no mention of how they do this).

And I was intrigued by the slow and steady strategy, based on building broad, multi-party political support for policies over many years.

But I was also left with a number of questions:

1) How do they manage to attract the best and the brightest to teaching? Is it just high standards and the offer of professional autonomy (both of which raise the prestige of teaching)? There is almost no mention of salaries--except that they are in "...the middle range for European countries". How do teachers' salaries compare with those offered by other professions in Finland that require similar levels of education? It may be that salaries are highly competitive in the Finnish labor market (as is the case in Cuba), or salaries may be less competitive but balanced by other aspects of the profession--not only prestige and autonomy, but also hours worked, vacations, fringe benefits and tenure (as is the case in the U.S.). Is there merit pay, or pay that varies by geography, student characteristics, or subject taught?

2) What about teachers' unions? Sahlberg and others say that all Finnish teachers belong to the teachers' union and that teachers are highly professional and effective, implying therefore (but not quite stating) that unions should not be seen as an obstacle to quality education. This chapter says almost nothing about teachers' unions. Anyone (particularly a Latin American) wanting to learn from the Finnish model needs to know: Are teachers' unions national or local? What rights to collective bargaining and to strike exist? Is there a national teachers contract? Is membership obligatory? Are governments required to deduct dues from teachers' salaries and pass them to the unions? There is nothing here about how much power teachers' unions have--or the role they play. These are big issues in many countries, and understanding how they play out in Finland could be very useful. (Thinking more generally, these kinds of documents, prepared by international organizations, almost seem reluctant to discuss the dynamics of public sector unions. An OECD document on Mexico’s education system that I reviewed recently had the same deficiency—in a country that may have the largest and most powerful teachers union in the world.)

3) How is teacher accountability operationalized? The authors characterize accountability as "built from the bottom up" and "almost entirely professional--no inspectorate or external assessments" What does this mean in practice? What happens if a particular school (or schools) has a high number of students who don't meet learning standards? Can teachers be dismissed for poor performance? What kind of power (besides peer pressure) do municipal governments and principals have over teachers? Do they decide which teachers to hire and how much to pay them? Can they dismiss teachers, or deny salary increases, for poor behavior? Who ensures that principals and municipalities do their jobs?

4) What is the role of the ministry? I was struck by how little the ministry of education is mentioned--beyond having established the basic parameters of the system over 40 years ago. Clearly, it does not directly provide education services. To what extent does it provide funding, set standards, oversee operations and intervene when problems arise? How does the minster spend his/her day (aside from celebrating the PISA results)?

5) How did Finland develop the trust that appears to be crucial to the model? According to the authors, the government's decision to trust teachers and to give them higher status (by requiring a university degree) "empowered teachers to practice their profession in ways that deepened the trust afforded them by parents and others in the community." Is this fundamentally a result of culture, and therefore not very transferable to other countries?

6) What are the political implications of decentralizing the education system all the way down to the municipal level, as Finland has done? Doing so puts school management in (or closer to) the hands of those who actually use the system, perhaps making it more likely that their interests will considered and served. By contrast, the traditional Latin American model puts most power at the center, and in the hands either of people who send their children to private schools (ministers, vice ministers) or of people committed to serving the interests of teachers (union leaders). Is this an important difference in the Finnish model?

7) Is there an interesting element of competition and choice in the Finnish model? I was intrigued by one sentence, on p. 128, saying that academic upper secondary schools are funded based on student enrollment and therefore have to worry about competition from the vocational secondary schools. Does that make Finnish schools more responsive to the concerns of parents?

8) Do private schools exist? The authors regularly refer to "a common, untracked comprehensive school system that would serve students from all walks of life", which has a kind of egalitarian, everyone-is-treated-the-same feel to it. But there is no mention of whether private schools have been prohibited, or if permitted, how large a part of the system they are, and to what extent they are used only by affluent families. A system that has outlawed private schools may be very different from one that has not.

In sum, I learned a lot about the Finnish model, but was surprised by its incomplete discussion of incentives and accountability, and failure to discuss teachers’ unions."

Two New PREAL Documents on Teacher Salary Incentives

2011-08-11T07:41:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to share with you PREAL Working Paper No. 55, “Design and Experiences in Teacher Salary Incentives” by Alejandro Morduchowicz, and Education Synopsis No. 37, which provides a summary of the conclusions of the study.

Morduchowicz examines innovations in teacher incentivization that have been implemented throughout the world, with a particular emphasis on Latin America. In addition to the two methods used most commonly in Latin America – job promotions and bonuses – policies include further training, scholarships, increased pension, living stipends, more vacation days and accelerated career progression. The document also analyzes the economic and philosophical implications of teacher incentives, concluding that while incentives are needed, those designing and implementing them must take improving teacher conditions and opportunities into consideration in order to attract and retain the best and the brightest.

The full texts may be found online: Working Paper No. 55, here, and Education Synopsis No. 37, here.

Measuring Up?

2011-08-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to share a recent PREAL publication entitled ¬Measuring Up? The document, co-authored by Alejandro Ganimian and Alexandra Solano, presents a brief analysis of how Latin American and Caribbean countries performed on the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)–an achievement test administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) every three years since 2000 that assesses what 15-year-olds know and can do in reading, math and science.

Among the findings, the document highlights that, despite the improved performance in recent years, all countries in the region still rank in the bottom third in all three subjects. Further, an alarming share of Latin American students fails to reach minimum acceptable levels of learning, and performance gaps between rich and poor students continue at worrisome levels. The analysis also reveals that Latin American and Caribbean countries fare worse than their income levels and investment in education would predict.

You may access the document on the Inter-American Dialogue website in Spanish and in English.

Assessing Sector Performance & Inequality in Education

2011-08-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

The World Bank EdStats Program recently released free software called ADePT that enables users to input pre-existing education information from household surveys to produce graphs and tables in Excel format that can then be used to analyze national education indicators. The Bank also released a book to introduce new users to the software, entitled: “Assessing Sector Performance and Inequality in Education: Streamlined Analysis with ADePT Software.” The publication describes the reasoning behind the creation of the software, teaches readers how to use it, and discusses education inequality using the ADePT program.

A PDF version of the book is available for download here and the ADePT software may be downloaded here. In addition, researchers at the World Bank have already published the ADePT results of some 200 sets of household surveys, which are available in Excel format on the EdStats website, here. The data are broken down by country and include the following topics: school participation, school progression, school attainment, education expenditure and labor market outcomes.

New Pro Educación Bulletin

2011-08-01T08:41:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to share with you the most recent Pro Educación bulletin from PREAL’s Business-Education Alliance Program (PAEE for its acronym in Spanish).

In the opinion section, EDUCA President George Santoni Recio discusses the takeaways from a conference held in Colombia for Dominican entrepreneurs on private sector collaboration in education. News items include coverage of a forum on universal primary education in Nicaragua and a meeting with the press in the Dominican Republic to publicize the results of a study on the costs of basic education. The bulletin also describes new international initiatives, including UNESCO’s Alliance for the Education of Girls and Women and the Program to Strengthen Ibero-American Languages in Education of the Organization of Ibero-American States for Education, Science and Culture (OEI for its acronym in Spanish and Portuguese).

The full text may be found online here.

Learning Standards in Chile

2011-07-18T11:20:00.001-07:00

We are pleased to share with you PREAL Document #54, “Learning Standards in Chile: SIMCE Learning Progress Maps and Achievement Levels, 2002-2010,” by Jacqueline Gysling and Lorena Meckes.
The document describes the process by which Chile’s Ministry of Education developed learning standards between 2002 and 2010, and keyed them to the national Measurement of Education Quality System (SIMCE, for its acronym in Spanish). It describes the political context that gave rise to the learning standards initiative, the process followed to devise and generate support for the new standards, and their incorporation into the ministry’s new quality assurance system.
The full text of PREAL Document #54 may be found online here.

Factors that Influence Student Learning

2011-07-12T10:49:00.001-07:00

We are pleased to share with you the most recent edition of PREAL’s Policy Series, No. 37: “Recent Discoveries: Factors that Influence Student Learning.”
The document discusses an article entitled “Factors Associated with Cognitive Achievement of Students in Latin America and the Caribbean,” published by UNESCO’s Latin American and Caribbean Regional Office (OREALC/UNESCO) in Santiago and based on statistics from the Second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (SERCE). The study discusses the influence of several factors in student learning: 1) differences among schools attended; 2) social, economic and cultural background 3) learning environment created by teachers and administrators and 4) material and human resources employed in education. The document compares these results with those from a previous study by José Joaquín Brunner and Gregory Elacqua on “Factors that Affect an Effective Education.”
The full text of Policy Series, No. 37 may be found online here.

Effective Education Reform in Ontario

2011-07-08T11:06:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to share with you the most recent edition of PREAL’s Best Practices Series, No. 36: “Ontario: Effective Reform on a Large Scale and in Diverse Contexts.”

In 2003, the public school system of Ontario, Canada, commenced a series of educational reforms that drastically improved student test scores and secondary school graduation rates. Among the main characteristics of the program are: 1) a reduced number of ambitious goals, 2) a coalition of high-level government officials charged with monitoring the progress of reforms, 3) high standards for improvement, 4) investment in teacher and student development programs and 5) transparency of results and perseverance in maintaining responsibility for them.

The full text of Best Practices Series No. 36 may be found online here.

Do School Vouchers Promote Social Justice?

2011-07-06T06:31:00.001-07:00

We are pleased to share with you PREAL Working Paper No. 53, “Do School Vouchers Promote Social Justice? A Case Study on Washington, DC,” by Patrick J. Wolf.
Wolf analyzes the extent to which the Washington, DC, Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), established in 2004 to provide low-income families with vouchers to be used at private schools, actually promotes social justice. Drawing on the government-mandated evaluation of the OSP (which he conducted), Wolf found that: 1) test scores in reading improved among the relatively more advantaged of the disadvantaged target group of students, but not among the least advantaged of the disadvantaged; 2) the program advances social justice in accordance with the principles of moral philosopher John Rawls; and 3) there is no evidence that the OSP harmed any subset of students. He concludes that the program promotes social justice sufficiently to justify its continuation, with the caveat that voluntary government programs like vouchers or neighborhood public schools generally cannot resolve the enormous problems faced by the most disadvantaged students.
You may access the full text of the article here.

D.C. Teachers Union Challenges IMPACT Teacher Evaluation System

2011-07-05T15:01:00.000-07:00

An interesting recounting of the conflict between the teachers union and the Washington, D.C. government over the possible dismissal of up to 600 teachers for being classified as "ineffective" based on IMPACT -- D.C.'s teacher evaluation system.

D.C., teachers in court flight over evaluations, Washington Post

Puryear on Education Quality at ILALE Congress in the Dominican Republic

2011-07-05T10:42:00.001-07:00

On June 28, 2011, PREAL Co-director Jeffrey Puryear gave the keynote address at the 8th Congress of the Latin American Institute of Educational Leadership (ILALE) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The conference was co-organized by Nova Southeastern University of Miami and ten Dominican institutions, including PREAL counterpart EDUCA. The theme of the conference was "Quality Education: Key to Reducing Social Differences.” Puryear discussed the implications of recent international experience and research for promoting effective teaching in Latin America. Some 300 government officials, education specialists and teachers participated in the conference. Puryear also appeared, along with EDUCA executive director Aida Consuelo Hernández, on the national TV talk show Uno + Uno to discuss education reform. (Image source: El Caribe)
Links:
Slideshow of Puryear's Keynote Address (Googledoc)
Cobertura informativa del evento/Media coverage of the event:
Docentes prefieren el sector público – June 29 – Yanet Beltré, El Caribe
Maestros ineficientes deben ser retirados – June 29 –Carmen Matos, Hoy
Celebran Congreso de Liderazgo Educacional – June 28, Diario Libre

Domonstrations in Chile (en español)

2011-07-01T09:17:00.000-07:00

Artículo y editorial sobre las recientes demostraciones en Chile—que parecen centrar sobre el costo de la educación superior.

Chile es uno de los pocos países latinoamericanos que cobra matrícula significativa en la universidad pública. Ha establecido también un sistema de becas y prestamos para los que encuentran difícil pagar la matrícula. La poca análisis de incidencia sobre el gasto público para la educación superior que he visto en América Latina sugiere que tal gasto se beneficia mas que todo al quintil mas rico de la población y no al quintil mas bajo. Pregunta importante entonces es quien se beneficiaría de un aumento del gasto público para la educación superior. Curiosamente, el análisis de incidencia de MIDEPLAN/Chile que tengo a la mano (Distribución del Ingreso e Impacto Distributivo del Gasto Social - 2006), que destaca la progresividad del gasto público en la educación, deja afuera la educación superior.

Sería útil también saber cuales universidades recibirían tal aumento si resultara. Llama atención las declaraciones de los rectores de universidades públicas a favor de un mayor aporte público. Hasta ahora, los fondos públicos chilenos han sido restringidos a la universidad pública—condición que no agrada a la creciente comunidad de universidades privadas—que, segun un reciente columna en El Mercurio, constituyen 80% de la matrícula tertiaria, y (por lo menos) algunas de las cuales atienden a alumnos de escasos recursos.

"Chile: 80,000 docentes y estudiantes denuncian alto costo de educacíon"

"Reforma a gobierno corporativo a universidades publicas"

Are Education Policies in the U.S. on the Right Track?

2011-06-24T05:54:00.000-07:00

The United States is not on the right track in its efforts to significantly improve its education system, according to a new report released by the National Center on Education and the Economy. The study compares U.S. policies to those of successful and improving nations, and lays out an agenda for reform.

The report stresses the importance of strengthening the teaching profession in part by making more rigorous the process of obtaining a teaching degree. It also advocates less frequent standardized testing, citing that no top-performing country has grade-by-grade testing, and linking testing to curricula rather than to accountability. The report points out that teachers’ unions are prevalent in top-performing jurisdictions, but are more “professional” than “industrial” in their behavior. U.S. teachers must make some concessions in such areas as seniority rights and recognizing differences in performance.

“To the extent that the U.S. can copy or adapt, and beg, borrow, and steal, successful practices from other nations, we should do so,” said Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at the report’s release. He added that he is more optimistic than the report that the U.S. is on the right track in adopting core elements of the top performing education systems.

You may read the report “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform” online here.

Presentation on Teach for All Programs in Latin America

2011-06-09T12:48:00.000-07:00

Over the past two years, entrepreneurs in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru have established local adaptations of Teach for America (TFA), a program founded in the United States in 1990. TFA recruits top college graduates to teach in disadvantaged schools for two years in the hope that they will become not only effective teachers but also champions of education reform even after leaving the program.

On April 21, the Harvard Argentine Society organized an event to review the experience of the TFA adaptations in Latin America. Panelists included Richard Murnane, professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Ana Santiago and Mariana Alfonso, Specialists at the Education Unit at the Inter-American Development Bank; and Alejandro Ganimian, co-founder of the TFA adaptation in Argentina.

Read more about the Teach for All network here

Education Progress in Chile

2011-06-09T07:42:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to share with you a column by PREAL Co-Director Jeffrey Puryear, published in the June 3 edition of the Latin America Advisor – a daily publication of the Inter-American Dialogue. Puryear suggests that the recent rise in test scores in Chile is due to efforts over several decades by the country’s leaders to generate a national debate on student learning, and a willingness to experiment with a broad range of innovative policies. While it is not clear which policies have had the greatest impact, and much remains to be done, Chile’s experience demonstrates that political leadership and sustained effort can generate real progress.

Educational Reforms Helping Students Make the Grade in Chile

WASHINGTON-Test scores are up in Chile. Between 2009 and 2010, fourth grade reading scores on the country's national achievement test rose nine points-the largest one-year increase ever recorded. More importantly, most of the gains occurred among the poorest students, rather than among the richest. The gap in reading scores between rich and poor students has declined by nearly 30 percent over the past decade. At the same time, Chile's reading scores for 15-year-olds in the OECD's 2009 PISA exam were the highest among the nine Latin American and Caribbean countries that participated and improved more than any of the 65 participating countries. This is great news for a country where scores on student achievement tests have been flat for decades, and where inequality has been remarkably high.

To be sure, the test scores of Chile's students are still too low. Less than half of fourth-graders score at the advanced levels, and roughly a quarter are two years below grade level. Math scores have hardly improved at all. And in the PISA exam, Chile still scores well below the OECD average.

Still, Chile's recent progress is encouraging, and suggests that the country is doing something right. But what? Chile was one of the first countries in the region to establish modern, nationwide student achievement tests and make the results widely available to parents and local communities. It long ago decentralized education provision to municipal governments and was the first (and only) country to establish a school choice system that enables parents to send their children to schools that are privately operated but publicly funded. Chile also expanded the school day, significantly raised salaries in an effort to persuade more talented students to become teachers, experimented with various forms of merit pay and was a pioneer in persuading the teachers union to agree to annual performance evaluations. It established a "Preferential School Subsidy" that provides schools with extra funding for the students they enroll from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Chile's leaders haven't stopped experimenting. The country is now introducing learning standards and setting up a new education quality assurance system that will monitor school performance and intervene when individual schools fail to meet minimum levels. And public school principals will soon be permitted to dismiss the lowest-performing 5 percent of teachers in their schools. It has also made education a long-term state policy, shielding it from the short-term fluctuations of successive administrations.

Perhaps research will eventually show that one or another of these measures was crucial. But what is clear is that few Latin American countries have worked harder and longer to improve their schools. Whatever the merits of any single measure, putting quality education at the top of the national agenda, scouring the world for good ideas, experimenting with new approaches, evaluating results, adjusting policy appropriately and generating a national discussion about test scores send a powerful message to students, parents and teachers that learning is important-and cause them to increase their effort. In Chile's schools, strong political leadership and old-fashioned perseverance may be paying off.

Joel Klein on The Failure of American Schools

2011-05-31T14:54:00.000-07:00

Joel Klein, who recently stepped down after serving as New York City School Chancellor for nine years, draws on his experiences in office to describe an education system that is “run for the adults” and creating “two Americas,” – an elite upper-class and an underclass that is lacking in skills, in a recent article in The Atlantic.

“The system doesn’t want to change because it serves the needs of the adult stakeholders quite well, both politically and financially,” Klein says, and a “major realignment of political forces” is necessary for dramatic improvements.

He highlights three keys to rebuilding the K-12 school system: 1) improved accountability – internal, through effective evaluations and external, through school competition, 2) attract better quality teachers by restructuring pay, and fire ineffective teachers and 3) better use of innovative technology.

Read the full article, “The Failure of American Schools,” here.

New Report on Class Size Reduction

2011-05-24T10:58:00.000-07:00

The arguments for reducing class size are at best mixed, according to a new report published by Brookings Institution. Large reductions in class size (seven to ten fewer students) appear to increase student achievement, particularly among younger and poorer students, but it is unclear whether smaller reductions have any positive impact. Moreover, reducing class size is very expensive, so a key question is whether the additional expenditure is the best use of scarce funds.

The report also points out that increasing class size could save significant amounts of money and might even raise test scores, if the least effective teachers were laid off to achieve the larger class sizes.

You may also read the full report online here

New Education Synopsis on Learning for All

2011-05-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

Countries should build upon the efforts of the past two decades to achieve education for all, but they also need to tackle the present challenge: learning for all.

This is the theme that the World Bank’s Director of Education, Elizabeth M. King, highlighted at the latest World Forum on Education, which took place in London last January. PREAL’s April edition of Education Synopsis highlights some of these ideas from her speech.

Download Education Synopsis No. 35 here

New Edition of PREAL Informa

2011-05-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

The new edition of PREAL Informa, No. 37, describes PREAL’s two new collaboration agreements, one with UNESCO’s Regional Office of Education for Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO) and the other with the Central American Educational and Cultural Coordination of the Central American Integration System (CECC/SICA).

It summarizes activities by various PREAL programs, including additions to the Best Practices in Education Data Bank – highlighting the educational reforms in Hong Kong, a visit to Colombia by Dominican businesspeople to learn about the private sector’s initiatives to improve education in the country, and the renewal of the basic partnership agreements with PREAL’s national partners in Central America. It also includes details on the new Honduras Education Report Card, launched in March by the Education Foundation Ricardo Ernesto Maduro Andreu (FEREMA) and with support from PREAL.

In addition, the report highlights the increase in education monitoring initiatives in Latin America, promoted by civil society organizations and public-private alliances, including four recent cases in Costa Rica, Colombia, Brazil and Mexico.

Download PREAL Informa No. 37 here

PREAL Hosts Event on Challenges to Cuba's Education Success

2011-05-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

On Monday, May 9, PREAL, in collaboration with Florida International University's Cuban Research Institute, hosted an event in Washington entitled "Will Economic Change Threaten Cuba's Education Success?" Amber K. Gove, senior education researcher at RTI International and co-author of the book Cuba's Academic Advantage, discussed the unique traits of the Cuban education system that have resulted in high literacy rates and test scores in the country.

Gove said that the Cuban education system, as compared to other Latin American systems, is highly centralized, the curriculum is uniform and teachers efficiently use class time. She cited the results of a 1997 UNESCO study in which the bottom quartile for Cuban students was the mean score for students elsewhere in Latin America. She qualified, however, that a more recent test has shown a high variance in these scores and it is uncertain what the future will hold for Cuba's education system.

Sergio Bitar, former Minister of Education in Chile and visiting senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, commented on Gove's presentation. He focused on the education practices that have distinguished Cuba from the rest of Latin America, including a near 100 percent primary school enrollment, an emphasis on pre-school education, and early efforts to increase adult literacy.

As Cuba implements new economic reforms, the challenge will be to retain its highly-trained teachers while ensuring the best and brightest continue to choose the profession.

PREAL Hosts Event with Former Ministers of Education of Colombia and Chile

2011-05-10T09:01:00.001-07:00

On Friday, April 29, PREAL Co-director, Jeff Puryear, and President of the Inter-American Dialogue, Michael Shifter, hosted a public event at the Dialogue office in Washington entitled "Confronting Latin America's Education Challenges." The event featured Cecilia Vélez, former Minister of Education in Colombia and current visiting professor at Harvard University, and Sergio Bitar, former Minister of Education of Chile and visiting senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue.

The participants discussed their experiences in the Education Ministry, highlighting the difficulty of balancing immediate political pressures with long-term goals. Bitar said the job requires "a vision and persistence." They also discussed the challenges facing the education systems of Latin American, agreeing on the importance of qualified, well-trained teachers.

Vélez said working to expand early childhood programs is essential to education success. She advocated for better access to these programs by the poorest families, the need to build bridges between high schools and universities and the importance of school-based strategies rather than broad over-arching policies. Bitar highlighted the need for a clear and focused education policy, remarking that "if you have more than three priorities, you have none."

New Edition of ProEducación

2011-05-10T06:32:00.000-07:00

A variety of initiatives that link the Business sector with the education sector are presented in the March/April edition of ProEducación.

In Nicaragua, the group Eduquemos launched the “Everyone Study 2011” campaign, this group, along with Empresarios por la Educación in Guatemala, increased public calls to make education a priority in their respective countries, and business industry professionals from the Dominican Republic visited Colombia to learn firsthand how the private sector is committing to the country’s education challenges. These are some of the news items found in this edition.

The newsletter also presents various publications of interest to the business sector, including “Building Inclusive Societies through Access to Quality Education: The Role of the Private Sector,” by the Americas Society, as well as PREAL’s Business-Education Alliances in Latin America Data Bank.

You may download the document here.

Two PREAL Documents on Teacher Induction

2011-05-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

“We cannot keep ignoring the fact that introducing novice teachers classroom practice is a clearly distinct phase in the process of becoming a good teacher. This phase is not just a leap into the void between pre-service and in-service training, but rather a link between the two, with its own characteristics and needs,” maintains Carlos Marcelo Garcia, author of PREAL working paper No. 52, entitled “Policies of Teacher Induction: From Missing Link to Bridge to Professional Development.” The document was prepared by PREAL’s working group on the teaching profession.

The author discusses the problems of novice teachers, reviews research on how to improve the retention and quality of teachers through teacher orientation programs, and summarizes teacher orientation programs in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Israel, New Zealand, Japan, Shanghai, the United States and fledgling cases in Chile, Uruguay and Colombia.

We also share Education Synopsis No. 34, which summarizes Garcia’s main ideas on teacher induction.

-Download Working Paper No. 52 here (Spanish).

-Download Education Synopsis 34 here (Spanish).

Jeb Bush and National Education Reform

2011-04-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

Jeb Bush, former Florida governor and brother of President Bush, has become a surprisingly prominent voice for education reform. Using his two foundations and array of political connections, his agenda is based on three principles: give every public school a grade from A to F, offer students vouchers to attend private school, and don’t let children advance to fouth grade unless they know how to read.

As governor, Bush made education overhaul in Florida a priority. He voted against limiting class size, and battled teachers unions, calling it “foolhardy” to suggest that teachers unions are “somehow going to be in the vanguard of efforts to raise student achievement.” He has since been working to expand merit pay and phase out tenure for teachers in the state through his Foundation for Florida’s Future.

Bush’s biggest supporters are governors and legislators within his own Republican party; although he has voiced cautious support for President Obama’s education agenda. He appeared recently with Obama at a Miami high school, and at a conference in Washington with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education promotes his agenda nationwide, and receives financial backing from Bill and Melinda Gates, Eli and Edythe Broad, and the Walton foundations.

You may access the article in the Washington Post here.

Read more about Jeb Bush’s education reform efforts in a recent New York Times article.

Read more about Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education online here.

PREAL Working Paper on Teacher Competencies

2011-04-15T11:33:00.000-07:00

If teachers are required to meet high standards of competency, those making that requirement should understand what teaching competency is, how it can be developed, and how it can be evaluated. This is the topic of PREAL working paper No. 51, “Teacher Competencies: Development, Support and Evaluation,” by Charlotte Danielson.

The author discusses the history of teaching competency systems, the benefits and barriers to defining and evaluating them, and the problems in establishing standards for teaching practice. She concludes by offering a set of policy recommendations.

According to Danielson, Latin American countries have the opportunity to take a great leap and surpass more developed countries in establishing standards for teachers, and then in implementing these standards in a coherent educational improvement program. “It will be possible to avoid many of the errors and false starts that other nations face, and move immediately to those practices which have been established to be highly effective.”

You may download Working Paper No. 51 here (Spanish)

How Important is Class Size?

2011-04-12T11:52:00.000-07:00

Although many believe that reducing class size is necessary to raise quality, Eva Moskowitz, founder and CEO of the Success Charter Network in New York City, contends that it is often better to invest funds in tools that aid learning.

“Small class size is neither a guarantor nor a prerequisite of educational excellence,” says Moskowitz. Overspending to reduce class size entails hiring more teachers and increasing class space, and consequently “there isn’t enough left to help these teachers be effective.” Those funds are often better spent on training teachers, recruiting the best principals, and outfitting classrooms with high-tech teaching tools.

The full text of Eva Moskowitz’s article in the Washington Post can be found online here

Two PREAL Publications on Continual Teacher Development

2011-04-07T13:08:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to share PREAL Working Paper No. 50, entitled “Continuous Professional Development and the Teaching Career in Latin America,” by Flavia Terigi, which discusses the politics of professional teacher development, its problems and most promising initiatives.

The document analyzes the relationship between professional teacher development and the teaching career, and proposes concrete elements to create a new professional environment. It also explores the potential of information and communication technologies in promoting continuous teacher development.

The final chapter highlights five additional problems for policies in this area: pre-service training, subject knowledge, sustainable investment for continual training, working conditions and in-service training, and the institutional base of continual teacher training.

We also present PREAL’s Education Synopsis No. 33, which summarizes the key points in Terigi’s document.

Download Working Paper No. 50 here (Spanish)

Download Education Synopsis No. 33 here (Spanish)

PREAL Hosts Conversation on Teacher Policy with Argentine Educators

2011-04-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

On March 31, 2011, PREAL hosted the Vice Minister of Education for the city of Buenos Aires, Diego Fernandez, along with the leaders of seven Argentine teachers unions for a discussion on teacher policy at the Inter-American Dialogue office in Washington. Emiliana Vegas, a senior education economist at the World Bank, presented the World Bank’s new approach to evaluating teacher policy worldwide, the System Assessment and Benchmarking for Education Results (SABER). Sergio Bitar, visiting senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue and former Minister of Education in Chile, provided comments. PREAL Co-director Jeffrey Puryear moderated the ensuing discussion, in which the vice minister and union leaders voiced their opinions, questions and concerns on topics ranging from teacher and student evaluation practices to how to raise the status of the teaching profession

Online dialogue on education

2011-04-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

Two initiatives by Harvard University and the New York Times aim to spark a public discussion on education reform through open, internet-based dialogue.

The Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University has created an open, online dialogue leading up to their annual “Think Tank” conference that took place last week to solicit outside perspectives on “Leveraging Technology to Enhance the Relevancy and Quality of Education.” They have posted 13 “think pieces” online in order to generate discussion on topics ranging from using technology to educate marginalized populations to harnessing the power of computer gaming in teaching.

The New York Times has added “How to Raise the Status of Teachers” to its Room for Debate online feature, which presents nine opinion pieces by education policy professionals and public school educators alike. The debate has generated substantial comment from the public.

To read the New York Times online debate on raising the status of teachers click here

To read more about the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative click here

Report Card on Education in Honduras 2010

2011-03-31T14:01:00.000-07:00

Para leer este post en español, haga clic aquí.

We are pleased to share the 2010 Report Card on Education in Honduras, “Educación: un desafío impostergable”, produced by the Fundación para la Educación Ricardo Ernesto Maduro (FEREMA) in collaboration with PREAL.

The report card finds that despite recent efforts to compensate for the historic shortfall in coverage, equity and quality of education, the overall performance of the Honduran education system remains unsatisfactory. It notes, however, that the situation of girls has improved, with higher levels of education and higher school attendance, and that there have been efforts to improve the training of teachers and their performance in the classroom. It also observes that increased levels of public spending on education –one of the highest in the region – have not produced encouraging results. It reports that efforts to decentralize the education system have not been accompanied by real autonomy or resources, and recommends expanding the participation of civil society, parents and local authorities in national education planning.

The 2010 Report Card on Education in Honduras is the third of its kind, following editions in 2005 and 2002.

We attach the Report Card in its PDF form here, as well as links to two selected media articles covering the report card which we hope you find of interest.

“Honduras con la peor educación de la región”, El Heraldo, March 30, 2011
“Honduras: Un millón de niños no tienen acceso al sistema educativo”, La Tribuna, March 30, 2011.

Keys to the education reforms in Chicago and Boston

2011-03-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

Two recent PREAL publications highlight how several public education systems in the United States, characterized by underperformance and high poverty, used initiatives like strengthening leadership, training teachers and increasing family and community participation to guide their education reforms.

The Best Practices Series No. 35 presents various reforms implemented in Chicago and Boston public schools, and highlights two common emphases: improvement of school leadership through specific programs for school principals, and creating opportunities to foster teacher excellence.

Policy Series No. 36, based on the book Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago, by the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR), summarizes one of the key aspects of the public school reform in Chicago since the ‘90s--the “essential supports for school improvement framework,” which suggests that progress is required on five fronts: school, parent and community ties; professional capacity of the faculty; a student-centered learning climate; and instructional guidance.

Download Best Practice No. 35 here (Spanish)

Download Policy Series No. 36 here (Spanish)

Learn more about the Consortium of Chicago School Research here

Bill Gates urges teacher effectiveness policies

2011-03-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

A recent article by Bill Gates criticizes the U.S. for doing “very little to measure, develop and reward excellent teaching” and recommends developing fair and reliable measures of teacher effectiveness that are tied to gains in student learning as a low-cost way to boost student achievement.

Gates points out that other professionals – like farmers, engineers, computer programmers and athletes –have advanced in part because they rely on clear indicators of excellence to determine their success. But similar advances have not been made in teaching because the U.S. has not “built a system to measure and promote excellence.” Instead, it has invested in proxy measures thought to raise student achievement, like automatic salary increases based on seniority and advanced degrees, and reducing class sizes, all of which have proven ineffective.

In addition to improving teacher support and evaluation systems, Gates recommends asking the most effective teachers to teach a greater number of students, and paying them more to do so.

Gates’ editorial in the Washington Post may be found online here. You can read more about the Gates Foundation’s work to improve teacher effectiveness in this New York Times article.

Making Schools Work

2011-03-09T12:37:00.000-08:00

A new World Bank book entitled Making Schools Work focuses on the threats to education quality that cannot be explained by lack of resources. It reviews a decade of research on how to improve school performance in developing countries and argues that the weak accountability that schools and teachers have to supervisors, parents and students is a major cause of low quality and inequitable public schools. It then examines impact evaluations carried out around the world and uses the findings to develop practical guidance for policy makers.

The book includes chapters on three key types of reforms: 1) using information to increase accountability, 2) improving school-based management, and 3) teacher incentives (linking pay and/or tenure to performance). It concludes with a discussion of possible complementarities among the reforms, issues in scaling up reform initiatives, and the political economy of reform.

The book is available online here.

WEBCAST: Global Monitoring Report EFA

2011-02-28T09:21:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to share with you the following invitation to the Latin America launch (in Spanish) of the Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2011 – The Hidden Crisis: Armed Conflict and Education, in which PREAL Co-director Marcela Gajardo, who also serves as chairperson of the Advisory Board of the EFA-GMR, will participate. The event will be broadcast online on March 1 from 8:00 – 10:30 AM (EST).

Other presenters will include: Jorge Sequeira, director of the Latin America Regional Office for UNESCO in Santiago, Chile; María Eugenia Paniagua, secretary general of the Central American Education and Culture Commission (CECC/SICA), and Joaquín Lavín, Chile’s minister of education.

For more information on the event (Spanish), click here
To view the live webcast, visit this link

State of Education in Colombia

2011-02-18T08:35:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to share the third edition of “Situación de la educación en Colombia: Preescolar, básica, media y superior” (The State of Education in Colombia: Preschool, Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary) published by Educación Compromiso de Todos. In this edition Alfredo Sarmiento Gómez and his team "…call attention to [how]… the educational system…reproduces inequality and poverty, and how services fall short in guaranteeing [education] for the most vulnerable populations ...."

Using the latest national data from household surveys as well as international benchmarks, the report assesses Colombia’s education performance and identifies gaps and deficiencies. It looks at indicators –such as access, quality, and staying in school–from a Right to Education perspective. The report emphasizes that vulnerable populations are least likely to be well-served by the system.

The PDF version of the report in Spanish can be downloaded here.

For more about the project Educación Compromiso de Todos and its initiatives, please visit: http://www.educacioncompromisodetodos.org/scripts/index.php

IDB launches call for impact assessment proposals of institutional capacity initiatives in Latin America and the Caribbean

2011-02-16T07:02:00.000-08:00

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has launched the Call for Proposals "Measuring Institutional Impact on the Region of the Americas (MIRA)," which seeks to identify candidates for which it will provide funding totaling up to $50,000 for each of eight proposals to carry out impact assessment methodologies in institutional strengthening programs for government agencies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Read more about the initiative on the IDB's website

From Education for All to Learning for All

2011-02-14T13:42:00.000-08:00

“We must transform our call to action from Education for All to Learning for All,” said World Bank Education Director Elizabeth King in a speech last month at the Education World Forum in London. King’s speech provided a preview of the Bank’s forthcoming education strategy, which will guide its work for the next decade.

The new strategy will emphasize the key role that education plays in economic growth and social advance. It will recommend that countries make systemic reforms in their education systems rather than just investing more money. And it will urge going beyond getting more children into school to making sure they acquire the skills they need for successful citizenship. “Quality needs to be the focus of education investments, with learning gains as the key metric of quality,” King said in her speech.

The full text of King’s speech can be found on the following World Bank blog.

Latest edition of ProEducación

2011-02-09T11:45:00.000-08:00

The latest edition of the ProEducación series, which features an opinion column that highlights keys to improving educational systems worldwide, based on a recent study by international consulting firm McKinsey & Company.

The issue also provides introduction to various documents produced by international, business and civil society organizations, including the final report by the Organization of Ibero-American States entitled “Metas Educativas 2010” (Educational Goals 2021), the report “Brechas: Estado de la educación en México 2010” (Gaps: The State of Mexican Education) by the organization Mexicanos Primero (Mexicans First), a report by the Guatemalan group Empresarios por la Educación (Business for Education) that warns against the country’s low education budget, and the results of the PISA 2009 test, distributed by the OECD.

Also explained are several partnerships involving the business sector aimed to benefit education, including an agreement between Telefónica and the Panamanian Ministry of Education to improve primary education and eradicate child labor, and one between the Fundación Empresarial para el Desarrollo Educativo (Business Foundation for Educational Development) and USAID to raise education quality and school infrastructure in public schools in El Salvador.

To read about this and other education news, download ProEducación here

How to Make Sure Every Student Has a Great Teacher

2011-02-08T07:46:00.001-08:00

Three points by a Boston Globe article:

"The Talent Strategy"
By Michele Cahill and Talia Milgrom-Elcott
February 3, 2011
THE ROOT cause of the nation’s failing educational system is now widely recognized as the lack of well-prepared, high-performing teachers, especially in high-poverty areas. Research shows that having a strong teacher for three to four years in a row can bring disadvantaged students up to the level of affluent students. This is one area where federal policy, state policy, and public opinion coincide: making sure that every student has a great teacher is everyone’s top priority...

Read the complete article here

Targeting Teacher Tenure

2011-02-03T14:04:00.000-08:00

Many politicians in the US are now taking steps to reform or eliminate teacher tenure in public education. These efforts are significant because tenure, a sacred topic for teachers’ unions, has not previously been seriously challenged. Recent efforts have been stimulated in part by President Obama’s repeated calls to measure and reward effective teaching. Republican governors in at least five US states, as well as the mayor of New York City, have called for tenure reform or eradication, which some have tied to the state-level budget crises. Complaints about tenure have focused on the difficulties involved in removing bad or incompetent teachers. The teachers unions have responded that “if the biggest problem, as some of these critics say, is that we have too many incompetent teachers and it needs to be easier to fire them, I would suggest their hiring and evaluation system is broken.”

While no one argues that most teachers are incompetent, even a small percentage of poor performers can harm many students, particularly those from poor families. Stanford economist Eric Hanushek suggests that if the lowest-performing 6-10% of teachers were replaced by just average teachers, “student achievement levels in the United States could move from below average in comparison with other countries to near the top.”

Most notably, debate on the topic has grown increasingly substantive and apolitical; many states seek to base teacher layoffs – as well as salary increases and bonuses – on rigorous evaluations of job performance rather than just on seniority. “There’s a willingness to confront these issues that has never before been in play,” Michelle Rhee notes in the below Time piece, citing well-known Democratic politicians who have also taken on the cause of tenure reform.

Below are links to several articles which cover this growing trend in the US:

· “Fixing Teacher Tenure Without a Pass-Fail Grade” - Andrew J. Rotherham, Time Magazine
· “G.O.P. Governors Take Aim at Teacher Tenure” - Trip Gabriel and Sam Dillon, New York Times
· “Is Teacher Tenure Still Necessary?” -Alan Greenblatt, NPR

Education Synopsis on Education and Digital Technologies

2011-02-02T13:20:00.000-08:00

The latest edition of our Education Synopsis series summarizes Fundación País Digital’s recommendations for incorporating digital technology into education.

Fundación País Digital (www.paisdigital.cl) undertook various initiatives from 2005 to 2009 to integrate digital technologies into Chilean education, and synthesized these experiences in a book published in March 2010 aimed at supporting schools and other educational actors. The project concluded with "Seven Keys for Incorporating Digital Technology in Education," featured in the latest edition of PREAL's Education Synopsis series.

The Education Synopsis is available for download here. (Spanish only)

Teacher Evaluations in Washington

2011-01-21T13:56:00.000-08:00

Interesting Washington Post editorial from today on the importance of taking into account the interests of students when deciding how to evaluate teachers.

D.C.'s teacher evaluations must be fair to students, too

A lobby for students

2011-01-06T14:24:00.000-08:00

Former Chancellor of Washington, DC Public Schools Michelle Rhee has reemerged as a national advocate for children’s voice in education policy reform. In December she launched “Students First,” a lobbying group designed “to build a national movement to defend the interests of children in public education and pursue transformative reform.” The group plans to “demand that legislators, courts, district administrators, and school boards create and enforce policies that put students first.” Rhee and her colleagues hope to raise US 1 billion over the next year in order to fund the mobilization of parents and students’ rights groups and related public information campaigns.

Rhee’s efforts are garnering much attention in the media; supporters praise her efforts as nothing short of a revolution, while detractors suggest that Rhee’s initiative is based too heavily on unproven methods of teacher evaluation. Others have suggested the initiative is as much about Rhee as it is education (one blogger noted the irony of Students First’s website having featuring mostly pictures of Rhee on its homepage). AEI’s Frederick Hess summarizes the effort more simply: “she very explicitly is setting out to be a political answer to the unions.” Rhee herself has commented that “this will not be for the faint of heart.”

Below are a set of articles that offer a range of angles on the launch of the new organization:

· Newsweek: What I’ve learned; We can’t keep politics out of school reform and why I’m launching a national movement to transform education (by Michelle Rhee)

· Christian Science Monitor: Teachers' union target Michelle Rhee to raise $1 billion for education reform

· Huffington Post: Compton Parents Are First To Enact Parent Trigger (by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa)