1. Accountability and Public
Education in Latin America
Jeffrey M. Puryear, Co-director (PREAL)
Kingston, Jamaica – October 2008

2. Three Questions
I. What is accountability in
education?
II. How far have we come?
Experience from Latin America
III. What are relatively successful
education systems doing?

3. I. What is accountability in
education?

4. Accountability in Education
 It means setting goals and holding people
responsible for achieving them (students,
parents, teachers, principals, ministries, etc.)
 It establishes clear incentives so that all actors in
a school system perform at an appropriate level.
 It helps to ensure that schools provide the
expected level of education.

5. Three Components
1. Setting 3. Rewarding
2. Measuring
clear and success and
whether goals
ambitious tackling
are being met
goals failure
Latin America has improved in the first two
components, but is lagging behind in the third.

6. 1. Setting clear and ambitious goals
 If we do not specify at what level we want schools to
perform, it is unlikely that they will reach this level.
 One way of setting expectations in a school system is
to adopt standards.
 Standards serve as a common framework that sets
forth our expectations of a school system.

7. 2. Measuring whether goals are being met
 If we do not assess schools’ performance, we have no
way of knowing whether they are achieving their goals.
 One way of assessing whether schools are meeting
their goals is through student achievement tests.
 Test scores allow us to see how far we are from
meeting our goals and how fast are we improving.

8. 3. Rewarding success and tackling failure
 If we do not reward those who achieve goals, and we
let others get away with not meeting them, it is
likely that few will try to reach these goals.
 There are at least four ways to ensure that schools
face consequences for their performance—quality
contracts, community participation, school choice,
and teacher management.
 If we intend to hold schools responsible for their
results, we should make sure they have both the
authority and the capacity to make key decisions.

9. II. How far have we
come? Experience from
Latin America

10. Some countries have begun to specify
1. Setting
clear and
what they expect of their school systems,
ambitious
expectations
and others have promised to do so.
 Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Honduras have made progress
in designing standards—and so have some states in Mexico and
Brazil. Central American countries, Belize, and the Dominican
Republic have committed to developing standards.
 However, no country in Latin America has yet established,
disseminated, and fully implemented comprehensive national
standards in education.
 Most countries that have adopted standards still need to make
them more specific, and align them with the curriculum and
achievement tests.

11. Most countries assess their students, but
2. Measuring
not their teachers, and they lack robust
whether goals
are being met
information systems.
 Almost all countries have student achievement tests, but
many of them do not disseminate the results, disaggregate
scores by student, or tie the results to rewards or sanctions
for schools, teachers, or students.
 Very few countries evaluate teacher performance—only
Colombia, Chile, Peru and El Salvador have begun to do so.
 There are only a few national or regional statistics systems
that are complete, up to date, and reliable.
 Countries are increasingly participating in regional and
international tests.

12. National
Evaluation Lowest Level of Consequences
System Distribution of Results Analysis for Results
Argentina Yes Internal/External Province No
Bolivia Yes Internal/External Department/ School No
Brazil* Municipality/ School/
Yes Internal/External Some tests
Student
Chile* School/ Classroom/
Yes Internal/External Yes
Student
Colombia* Department/ School/
Yes Internal/External Some tests
Student
Costa Rica* Yes Internal/External National/ Student Some tests
Cuba Yes Internal/External Municipality No
Dominican Republic Yes Internal/External Student No
Ecuador Yes Internal/External Region No
El Salvador* Yes Internal/External Department/ Student Some tests
Guatemala Yes External National/ Department No
Honduras Yes Internal Department No
Mexico*
Yes Internal/External Region/ School/ Student Yes
Nicaragua Yes Internal/External Department No
Panama Yes Internal/External Region No
Paraguay Yes Internal/External National/ School No
Peru Yes Internal (External w/delay) National No
Uruguay Yes (Mostly) Internal School No
Venezuela No Internal State No

13. Trends in Latin American
International Progress in Program of Laboratory of
Mathematics and International Reading International Student Quality
Science Study Literacy Study Assessment Assessment
(TIMSS) (PIRLS) (PISA) (LLECE)
Argentina 1995, 2003 2001 2000, 2006, (2009) 1998, 2006
Bolivia 1998
Brazil 2000, 2003, 2006, (2009) 1998, 2006
Chile 1999, 2003 2000, 2006, (2009) 1998, 2006
Colombia 1995, 2007 2001 2006, (2009) 1998, 2006
Costa Rica 1998, 2006
Cuba 1998, 2006
Dom. Rep. (2009) 1998, 2006
Ecuador 2006
El Salvador 2007 1998, 2006
Guatemala 2006
Honduras 2007 1998
Mexico 1995 2000, 2003, 2006, (2009) 1998, 2006
Nicaragua 2006
Panama (2009) 2006
Paraguay 1998, 2006
Peru 2000, (2009) 1998, 2006
Uruguay 2003, 2006, (2009) 2006
Venezuela 1998

14. Most Latin American schools do not face
3. Rewarding
success and
any consequences for under-performing.
tackling
failure
 In almost all public schools in the region, good teachers are not
paid more than bad teachers.
 Teachers who fail to improve student performance are neither
selected for remedial attention, nor sanctioned or removed from
the classroom.
 Students are allowed to graduate from high school without
having to demonstrate their knowledge of core subjects.
 Public and subsidized schools are funded regardless of whether
they improve student achievement.
 Incentives for good performance are nearly non-existent.

15. Most Latin American schools do not face
3. Rewarding
success and
any consequences for under-performing.
tackling
failure
QUALITY CONTRACTS
 The City of Bogotá, Colombia, has 25 charter schools. The
government gives these privately-run schools the funding to
provide free schooling to the poor, as long as they keep
performance above average in the national achievement test.
 The Province of San Luis, Argentina, opened 9 charter schools
that targeted poor areas in 1999-2002, but following a series
of protests organized by teachers’ unions, the schools were
converted into traditional public schools.

16. Most Latin American schools do not face
3. Rewarding
success and
any consequences for under-performing.
tackling
failure
COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
 El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras adopted
programs in the 1990s that allowed school councils to make
decisions about schools’ budgets, personnel and maintenance.
These programs led to lower drop-out and repetition rates, and
similar test results as traditional public schools at lower costs.
 Mexico adopted the program Apoyo a la Gestión Escolar (AGE) in
1992, which provides funding to parent councils in rural primary
schools. AGE led to a decline in drop-out and repetition rates,
and to an increase in cooperation between parents and teachers
on school assignments.

17. Most Latin American schools do not face
3. Rewarding
success and
any consequences for under-performing.
tackling
failure
SCHOOL CHOICE
 Chile has the largest voucher program in the region since
1980. It allows all parents, regardless of their socio-economic
status, to receive state funds to send their child to a public or
private school of their choice if they are unhappy with the
current one.
 Colombia had a voucher program between 1992-1997, called
PACES, for poor high school students. The program increased
graduation rates and improved test results. Yet, it became
controversial and was discontinued.

18. Most Latin American schools do not face
3. Rewarding
success and
any consequences for under-performing.
tackling
failure
TEACHER MANAGEMENT
 Chile gives bonuses to schools that get the top scores on the
Sistema Nacional de Desempeño de los Establecimientos
Subvencionados (SNED). Schools that receive these bonuses
then distribute them among their teaching staff.
 Mexico’s Carrera Magisterial program moves teachers up the
pay scale if the results of their evaluations are positive.
 Sao Paulo, Brazil, recently began to reward top-performing
schools that have low teacher absenteeism by giving them
bonuses, which they can distribute among the teaching staff.

19. III. What are relatively
successful education
systems doing?

20. Top-performing school systems have robust
accountability mechanisms in place.
 A McKinsey & Co. study (2007) found that top school
systems have three things in common: (i) they get the best
students to become teachers; (ii) they develop them into
effective instructors; and (iii) they provide immediate help
to students who are falling behind.
 The 2006 PISA report showed that countries receive better
results when they have standardized tests and distribute
results widely. Countries that allow schools to make
decisions regarding their budgets, staff, and maintenance
also receive better grades.

21. In the US, states have their own
1. Setting
clear and
standards and tests, but there are also
ambitious
expectations
national standards that are voluntary.
 Each state sets its own goals and has an assessment system to
measure how much progress it has achieved towards them.
 Standards differ in how rigorous they are, and some states set
higher expectations than others. States can also align their
own standards with the national standards.
 Although states have much discretion regarding education,
the adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 has set
minimum learning standards for certain demographic groups.
If schools meet these requirements, they have access to funds
from the federal government; if they fail to do so, states face
a series of consequences.

22. There is an emerging consensus in the US
2. Measuring
on the use of value-added models to
whether goals
are being met
measure schools’ performance.
 Since the 1990s, several states have experimented with ways
of measuring how much “value” teachers contribute to their
students’ learning process.
 In 2006, the US government set up a fund for states that
wanted to use “value-added” models to evaluate the
performance of their teachers and reward them accordingly.
 Research indicates that value-added models constitute more
accurate evaluations of teacher performance when they
include other performance measures aside from test scores,
when they consider test scores in at least three-year
intervals, when no data is missing, and when they consider
how teacher assignment is related to students’ abilities.

23. The number of charter schools in the US
3. Rewarding
success and
has increased significantly. These schools
tackling
failure
have to meet quality goals.
QUALITY CONTRACTS
 Since 1998, the number of charter schools in the US has
increased significantly—currently, there are 4,300 charter
schools in 40 states and the District of Columbia.
 Networks of charter schools have also emerged. These include:
Green Dot, in Los Angeles, CA; High Tech in San Diego, CA;
Achievement First in New Haven, CT; and Knowledge is Power
in San Francisco, CA.

24. 3. Rewarding
The US has a strong tradition of parent
success and
tackling
and community involvement in education.
failure
COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
 Most decisions in education in the US are made at the
municipal—or even school—level. While the Department of
Education oversees the system’s overall performance and
promotes research, local authorities are the ones that make
decisions about budget, staffing, and pedagogy.
 Parents have a wide range of opportunities to get involved in
their children’s education, including parent-teacher
associations and school boards within each district.

25. 3. Rewarding
In the United States, vouchers allow
success and
tackling
parents to choose their child’s school.
failure
SCHOOL CHOICE
 About 30 states in the US have voucher programs that give
state funds to parents of poor children and/or children with
learning disabilities. This allows families to afford to send their
children to the public or private school of their choice.
 Recent studies found that vouchers are a more efficient way to
educate selected students, and that schools improve by having
to compete with each other.
 However, vouchers remain politicized, and recently have been
met with resistance in some states.

26. Some states in the US are starting to
3. Rewarding
success and
reward teachers and principals who
tackling
failure
perform well with salary bonuses.
TEACHER MANAGEMENT
 50 districts are experimenting with value-added models to
distribute bonuses and reward good performance.
 ProComp, in Denver, CO, and the Teacher Advancement
Program (TAP) are among the most popular merit-pay
programs. Last year, New York City launched a similar
initiative that was financed by private funds.
 The most interesting aspect of these programs is that they
align the interests of children and those of teachers.

27. www.preal.org