September 2010 Archives

El artículo adjunto comenta el documental reciente sobre el sistema de educación pública fracasado, según el cineasta, en EEUU.  Claro, las complejidades del sistema escolar estadounidense (muy decentralizado, altos flujos de imigrantes con habilidades bajas, segregación racial residencial, fuertes inversiones en actividades extracurriculares-banda, deportes-etc.) hace difícil comparar la productividad del sistema de EEUU con los de países europeos chicos y bastante homogeneos (Finlandia, Suecia, ect.) y asiaticos (Japón, Corea del Sur, etc.) que, en su mayoría tienen modelos mucho más centralizados.

Gregory
http://www.cpce.cl/educar/
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NYTimes
Movie Review
Waiting for Superman
Paramount Pictures

The educational reformer Geoffrey Canada with students in a documentary on public schools.
Students Caught in the School Squeeze
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: September 23, 2010

"One of the saddest days of my life was when my mother told me 'Superman' did not exist," the educational reformer Geoffrey Canada recalls in the opening moments of "Waiting for 'Superman,' " a powerful and alarming documentary about America's failing public school system. "She thought I was crying because it's like Santa Claus is not real. I was crying because no one was coming with enough power to save us."

If Mr. Canada, who was born in the South Bronx and grew up to be one of the country's most charismatic and inspiring educators, is not Superman, he must be a close relative. Those who have read Paul Tough's book, "Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America," will know that the 97-block Harlem Children's Zone, which he founded and runs, is no miracle. The zone is astoundingly successful at getting children through high school and into college. But that success, largely dependent on private money, is a costly product of laborious trial and error.

Mr. Canada and Michelle A. Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington, D.C., public school system since 2007 (she is the seventh superintendent in 10 years), are the principal heroes of the film, directed and narrated by Davis Guggenheim ("An Inconvenient Truth"), who wrote it with Billy Kimball.

Ms. Rhee, who has stridently challenged Washington's educational status quo, has closed ineffective schools and has stood up to the unions that have made it nearly impossible to fire a teacher, no matter how incompetent, once tenure has been granted. But the Washington Teachers' Union refused to vote on a measure under which teachers would give up tenure in exchange for higher salaries based on merit. (Ms. Rhee's status is now in jeopardy after one of her chief supporters, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, lost the Democratic primary election to Vincent C. Gray, the chairman of the City Council. Ms. Rhee and Mr. Gray, who have sparred in recent years, met on Thursday.)

"Waiting for 'Superman' " is filled with disturbing statistics. In Illinois, where one in 57 doctors loses his medical license and one in 97 lawyers loses his law license, only one in 2,500 teachers loses his credentials, because of union rules. The film briefly visits a "rubber room" in New York City where idle teachers accused of misconduct wait months and sometimes years for hearings while drawing full salaries at an annual cost of $65 million.

The resistance to change is personified by Randi Weingarten, the fiery and articulate former head of the United Federation of Teachers, who now runs the American Federation of Teachers. Ms. Weingarten, who is somewhat demonized by the film, is the first to admit that public education is in crisis, but she represents thousands of teachers who depend on tenure.

Caught in the squeeze are students. The film's most emotional moments revolve around five children whose futures depend on winning a lottery to a charter school. Anthony, a Washington fifth grader raised by his grandmother in a bad neighborhood, is among 64 applicants for 24 spots at the Seed School, a public charter school from which 9 out of 10 students go on to college. Francisco, a Bronx first grader, is among 792 applicants for 40 spots at the Harlem Success Academy. Applying to the same school, Bianca, a kindergartner, is one of 767 children competing for 35 spots. Daisy, a fifth grader in East Los Angeles who dreams of being doctor, is among 135 applicants for 10 spots at Kipp LA Prep.

Finally, there is Emily, an eighth grader in Silicon Valley, whose problems with math will place her on a lower academic track if she remains at the same high school in her affluent community. Her best hope is to be accepted at an even better charter school nearby where students aren't placed in such tracks.

In his low-key narration, Mr. Guggenheim acknowledges that charter schools have had mixed success in elevating academic standards and preparing children for college. But in the Harlem Children's Zone, the schools become involved with all aspects of the students' lives from a very young age.

Mr. Guggenheim calls dysfunctional schools "dropout factories." For children growing up in poor neighborhoods where parents lack the resources to send them to private schools, the consequences can be dire, not to mention economically wasteful.

Consider the following statistics cited in the film: the annual cost of prison for an inmate is more than double what is spent on an individual public school student. Eight years after Congress passed the No Child Left Behind act, with the goal of 100 percent proficiency in math and reading, most states hovered between 20 and 30 percent proficiency, and 70 percent of eighth graders could not read at grade level. By 2020, only an estimated 50 million Americans will be qualified to fill 123 million highly skilled, highly paid jobs. Among 30 developed countries, the United States ranks 25th in math and 21st in science.

"Waiting for 'Superman' " doesn't explore the deeper changes in American society that have led to this crisis: the widening gap between rich and poor, the loosening of the social contract, the coarsening of the culture and the despair of the underclass. By showing how fiercely dedicated idealists are making a difference, it is a call to arms.

The movie's happy-sad ending observes the moment of decision as the five children wait to learn if they have won the lotteries. It is sad that the direction of a young life depends on the dropping of a numbered ball from plexiglass box.

"Waiting for 'Superman' " is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). It has mild language and incidental smoking.

Waiting for 'Superman' Opens on Friday in New York and Los Angeles. Directed by Davis Guggenheim; written by Mr. Guggenheim and Billy Kimball; director of photography, Erich Roland and Bob Richman; edited by Greg Finton, Jay Cassidy and Kim Roberts; original song "Shine" by John Legend; produced by Lesley Chilcott; released by Para- mount Vantage. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes.

-
Gregory Elacqua
--
Director
Instituto de Políticas Publicas
Facultad de Economía y Empresa
Universidad Diego Portales
Ejército 260
Santiago, Chile
56-2-676-2800
56-09-6-206-5993
gregory.elacqua@udp.cl

----------------
La Revista Sábado
El Mercurio

sábado 25 de septiembre de 2010       
   
La cota cero
 
Los estudiantes de la cota cero son los que están en el peor de los mundos.  

Sol Serrano

Las familias chilenas  están, a nivel mundial,  entre las que más  aportan a la educación de sus hijos. Eso es nuevo. La educación pagada en Chile fue históricamente muy minoritaria y se restringió a los colegios  masculinos y femeninos, creados a partir de 1830. La educación superior y colegial pública fue gratuita, desde la fundación del Instituto Nacional, en 1813, y de la Universidad de Chile, en 1842, al igual que los liceos provinciales y la educación primaria, desde 1860. La gratuidad de la educación secundaria y superior pública  fue un vehículo de movilidad social, aunque también una política regresiva de alto costo, a la que accedía sólo una élite generalmente compuesta de los jóvenes  de mayores recursos.  El esquema fue longevo. En 1950 no más de un  10% de los jóvenes en edad de hacerlo iba al liceo,  y sólo un 4 % a la universidad en 1960. Aunque no todas las universidades eran públicas, la mayoría recibía un importante apoyo estatal.

La educación pública educó al país, qué duda cabe, pero con grandes inequidades. Las razones históricas de por qué fue así son  complejas y no puede atribuirse sin más a un Estado injusto. En parte la explicación estriba en que la estructura económica chilena no requirió por mucho tiempo  mano de obra  calificada.

Sea como fuera, el país está pagando y pagará por buen tiempo esa inequidad. Educar a toda la población es una tarea larga, y son siempre los recién llegados al sistema los que pagan dolorosamente las exclusiones heredadas.

La espectacular ampliación de la educación superior en Chile trae  buenas y malas noticias. La mala es que la inequidad no termina, pues  los que han disfrutado  de la educación privada perpetúan sus ventajas al obtener  los puntajes más altos y entrar a las mejores universidades, mientras la buena es que  hay un enorme sector de jóvenes que ingresaron a un nivel que les había estado vedado a sus ancestros por 200 años. Esta ampliación se hizo con ayuda estatal y especialmente con el aporte de las familias, pues muchos de ellos ingresan a universidades privadas o institutos profesionales que no tienen apoyo estatal.

La decisión pública de financiar casi exclusivamente la educación superior tradicional, la misma que aspiraba  a ser redistributiva, terminó por producir una distorsión de inequidad, porque muchos de los jóvenes de escasos recursos entraron a universidades privadas. Además, se desincentivó la educación técnico-profesional al no tener esta tampoco financiamiento público relevante.

Sabemos que la mayoría de estos jóvenes son primera generación en la educación superior lo cual, para ellos,  significa una desventaja competitiva importante, la que se inició  en su niñez hogareña  y que la educación no pudo corregir; sabemos que sólo el mejoramiento de todos los niveles podrá corregir esa desigualdad inicial. Pero ello no basta, pues hay muchas generaciones  a medio camino entre  la masificación de la educación y esa calidad que se está, lentamente, construyendo. Ellos son los de la cota cero, los que han invertido muchísimo en educarse, los que no han recibido ayuda estatal, los que pagan el alma en universidades que a veces ni siquiera están acreditadas, los que creen, porque así lo creyeron sus padres, que cualquier universidad es una universidad.

Los estudiantes de la cota cero son los que están en el peor de los mundos. Tienen pocos instrumentos para enfrentar los desafíos académicos de las universidades de calidad y reciben títulos o se matriculan y desertan de universidades de mala calidad, que no van a darles las oportunidades que esperan y merecen. Finalmente, la educación técnico-profesional adquirirá la importancia y prestigio que le corresponde. El mercado terminará por mostrar cuántas más oportunidades abre un buen instituto profesional que una mala universidad. El Estado puede y debe apurar aquello, poniendo mayores incentivos en ese sector.

Es sorprendente que un sistema de educación superior tan diversificado como el nuestro siga teniendo rigideces históricas, categorías antiguas de un modelo en que sólo se educaban unos pocos. Esas rigideces son la verdadera cota mil que tiene estancada a la cota cero: la subvención a las universidades tradicionales y no a las privadas de calidad; el persistente prestigio asociado a carreras de educación superior universitaria, aunque por su mala calidad no garanticen nada, por sobre la técnico-profesional; el ambiguo estatuto de las universidades públicas que, atadas de manos por el sólo hecho de serlo, ansían actuar como privados y ser financiadas como públicas; un sistema de acreditación legitimado en las instituciones de buena calidad, pero que no discrimina con las que no lo alcanzan y termina por no distinguir nada.

Los estudiantes de la cota cero están repartidos en todo el sistema de educación superior, sin suficiente protección. Es a ellos, al margen de donde estén, a los hay que llegar, pues se encuentran a merced de un mercado escaso en transparencia e información y demasiado plagado de ilusiones viejas. Son ellos quienes pagan caro las tensiones entre las inequidades antiguas y las nuevas oportunidades.  De paso, en ellos nos jugamos el futuro.
--------------------------

El Mercurio
 
El bicentenario de la educación

Domingo 26 de septiembre de 2010

Al celebrarse doscientos años de vida independiente, la educación debió ser un foco principal de las conmemoraciones y el análisis. No lo fue, lamentablemente. En efecto, hay mucho que aprender del pasado.
 
José Joaquín Brunner

A lo largo de la mayor parte de nuestra historia republicana, el sistema educacional se construyó y desarrolló bajo una regla de exclusión social. Durante las fiestas del Centenario, por ejemplo, la mayoría de los niños y jóvenes no asistían a la escuela. Los que sí lo hacían apenas cursaban dos o tres años antes de abandonar las aulas. Sólo un pequeño grupo completaba el ciclo secundario. La educación superior casi no existía; en el país, menos de dos mil alumnos cursaban estudios de este nivel mientras aplaudíamos los primeros cien años de la República.

Según denunció don Darío Salas, dos de cada tres jóvenes en edad escolar crecen sin recibir instrucción alguna, vegetan en ocupaciones sin futuro, se agostan en la miseria material y se pudren en la peor de las miserias, la miseria moral.

La educación primaria pudo universalizarse recién en la década de 1960; la educación secundaria, al comenzar el presente siglo. El nivel terciario se mantuvo exclusivo y excluyente -típicamente una formación de y para las élites-, hasta mediados de los años 1980.

A pesar de tan pobres antecedentes, aspiramos a parecernos -en educación y cultura- a los países nórdicos, a Francia o a Alemania. ¡Ay de nosotros!: la Prusia del viejo Federico II era más educada a fines del siglo XVIII que el Chile semimoderno de mediados del siglo XX.

De hecho, el propio Estado, a través de erradas políticas, segmentó tempranamente el sistema público de enseñanza, volviendo inviable una educación común de similar calidad para todos. Distinguió liceos de excelencia -igual como lo hace el actual gobierno- y les adosó unas preparatorias selectivas y de mejor calidad que la escuela común, la que debió limitarse a atender a los niños de familias pobres.

La idea de que la educación desempeñó en Chile alguna vez una poderosa función de integración o cohesión social es un mito de clase ilustrada, la única que hasta los años 60 del pasado siglo se benefició de una educación de mejor nivel. Por su lado, la mayoría de la gente acomodada comenzó temprano a formar a sus hijos en un circuito de educación pagada y segregada del resto del sistema, según observó Amanda Labarca a inicios de los años 1930: "Gran parte del elemento de la alta burguesía dejó de frecuentar los liceos, ora por consideraciones religiosas, por ese afán exclusivista y aristocratizante a que responden los colegios particulares a la moda, ora porque los enemigos del estado docente no han perdido ocasión para exponer al público sus debilidades, defectos y miserias".

En verdad, el estado docente -contrario a la retórica oficialmente aceptada- fue siempre sólo una parte del sistema educacional chileno, el cual desde su origen se constituyó con una fisonomía mixta, segmentando los canales de escolarización según clases sociales y grupos de estatus.

Luego, si hubiésemos observado la historia educacional de la nación desde el promontorio del Bicentenario, quizá habríamos adquirido un sentido más realista de las enormes dificultades que enfrenta hoy este sistema para transformarse en un auténtico canal de movilidad social, dejando atrás su adscripción clasista y la regla educar para dividir.

En cambio, al haber desperdiciado esta oportunidad es probable que continuemos confundidos por los mitos del pasado, pensando que la educación ha sido una fortaleza de la República y no un motivo de sus divisiones, rezagos y dificultades para establecerse plenamente en la modernidad.
-
Gregory Elacqua
--
Director
Instituto de Políticas Publicas
Facultad de Economía y Empresa
Universidad Diego Portales
Ejército 260
Santiago, Chile
56-2-676-2800
56-09-6-206-5993
gregory.elacqua@udp.cl

El estudio experimental más rigoroso hasta la fecha en EEUU (POINT) que examina el efecto de programas de pago por merito de docentes en el rendimiento escolar de sus alumnos demuestra que casi no tienen un efecto. Como señala Helen Ladd, profesor de economía y políticas públicas de la Universidad de Duke, "A lot of the discussion about performance pay is based on a faulty assumption that the reason we don't have higher test scores is that teachers are shirking their responsibilities." Este estudio derriba esta creencia.

Algunos expertos han criticado el estudio porque no explora el impacto del pago por merito en otros resultados. Por ejemplo, Eric Hanushek, economista de Stanford mantiene que "the biggest role of incentives has to do with selection of who enters and who stays in teaching--how incentives change the teaching corps through entrance and exits." Este estudio no dice nada sobre este punto.

Gregory
http://www.cpce.cl/educar/

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Education Week
Published Online: September 21, 2010
Merit Pay Found to Have Little Effect on Achievement
By Stephen Sawchuk

The most rigorous study of performance-based teacher compensation ever conducted in the United States shows that a nationally watched bonus-pay system had no overall impact on student achievement--results released today that are certain to set off a firestorm of debate.

Nearly 300 middle school mathematics teachers in Nashville, Tenn., voluntarily took part in the Project on Incentives in Teaching, a three-year randomized experiment conducted by researchers affiliated with the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University. It was designed to study the hypothesis that a large monetary incentive would cause teachers to seek ways to be more effective and boost student scores as a result.

But it yielded only two small positive findings, limited to 5th graders in the second and third year of the experiment. No effects were seen for students in grades 6-8 in any year of study.

At the same time, however, participating teachers did not report finding the pay program's goals for students out of reach or its impact on school culture damaging, two concerns that have been among those voiced by opponents of performance pay.
Bonus Awards
SOURCE: National Center on Performance Incentives

The implementation of the pay program "did not set off significant negative reactions of the kind that have attended the introduction of merit pay elsewhere," the study's authors write. "But neither did it yield consistent and lasting gains in test scores. It simply did not do much of anything."

The findings arrive in a highly charged teacher-quality policy environment, in which many states and districts, with support from the Obama administration, are overhauling current practices for preparing, evaluating, and compensating teachers.

And they come at a particularly inopportune time for the U.S. Department of Education, which is scheduled to announce a fresh slate of grantees this month under a federal program designed to seed merit-pay programs for teachers and principals.
Union Cooperation

The study, known as POINT for the Project on Incentives in Teaching, was designed by the researchers, with the input of the 76,000-student school district and the support of the local teachers' union affiliate and the Tennessee Education Association. Matthew G. Springer, the director of the Nashville-based center, cited the unions' cooperation as a crucial factor in the study's successful implementation.

The executive director of the Tennessee Education Association said the reputation of the researchers played an important role in the union's decision to sign on. "We thought it was a chance to work with researchers whose processes and reputation we trust, and they were coming at this question with no particular ideology," said Al Mance. "We said, 'OK, this is something we really want to know. We won't have a better opportunity than this.' "

The program was instituted in Nashville between 2006-07 and 2008-09 and covered 296 middle school math teachers in grades 5-8.

Participating teachers, all volunteers, were assigned to either a treatment group eligible to receive significant pay bonuses or a control group earning normal wages. Those in the treatment group were rewarded with bonuses between $5,000 and $15,000 based on whether their students' achievement rose by a specified amount over the course of a year. The gains were calculated using a value-added methodology designed to filter out other aspects that could have influenced the scores.

The teachers were also randomized in clusters, so that there was at least one treatment and one control teacher in every middle school. And the program contained no quotas, so all teachers whose students performed at the specified targets earned the additional pay.

Over the course of the study, attrition reduced the number of participating teachers to only 148, and researchers carefully tracked that pattern over time to make sure it did not change the equivalence of the two groups in such a way as to skew the results. Only one teacher withdrew from the study; most of the attrition occurred because teachers were reassigned or left the district.

On average, students taught by the teachers taking part in the program did not make larger academic gains than those taught by teachers in the normal wage group.The sole exception was in grade 5 in the second and third years of study.

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In those years, the incentive pay was linked to statistically significant increases in student scores--an increase, the report states, equal to between a third and a half year of learning. But the effect did not appear to persist.

"By the end of 6th grade," the study states, "it does not matter whether a student had a treatment teacher in grade 5."

The researchers performed a number of tests to try to make sense of the grade 5 findings, including to see whether there was evidence of a reallocation of time from other subjects to math, or cheating on the exams. But none of them turned up any firm explanation.

"It really is puzzling," said Mr. Springer. "It just raises questions about what's different about 5th grade and what factors played a role. Was it student development? The curriculum? Teaching or classroom structures?"
A Sparse Field

In interviews, scholars who study performance-based pay and teacher incentives and who were familiar with the POINT findings but not involved in the experiment, widely praised its rigorous design.

"It's a really well-designed study, and it's really important because a lot of the debate about performance pay has been evidence-free," said Steven N. Glazerman, a principal researcher at Mathematica Policy Research, a Princeton, N.J.-based evaluation firm.

The existing empirical research literature on incentive pay has been limited in scope, size, and relevance. Much of the experimental research concerns programs in other countries.

What's more, many of the existing performance-pay programs studied in the United States award far smaller bonuses, and scholars have questioned whether those amounts were enough to affect a change in teacher behavior. ("Merit-Pay Model Pushed by Duncan Shows No Achievement Edge," June 9, 2010.)

But the POINT findings, said some researchers and advocates, appear to put to rest the idea that incentive pay in and of itself is enough to spur better teacher performance.

"A lot of the discussion about performance pay is based on a faulty assumption that the reason we don't have higher test scores is that teachers are shirking their responsibilities," said Helen F. Ladd, a professor of public policy and economics at Duke University in Durham, N.C., about the findings.

Ms. Ladd added, however, that she was "a little surprised" that the findings were not more mixed. She anticipated that teachers might work even harder over the short term to win bonuses. But that supposition was not borne out by the study.

Mr. Mance of the Tennessee Education Association said the study confirms what many teachers and unions have long believed: that teachers are already hardworking. For this study to show positive results, he said, "you'd have to have teachers who were saving their best strategies for an opportunity to get paid for them, and that is an absurd proposition."

Researchers cautioned, however, that the Nashville experiment does not provide answers to many other questions about incentive pay. For instance, it wasn't designed to test the hypotheses that pay incentives might serve as a draw to a different population of teacher-candidates or as an incentive for other candidates to stay in the profession--thus potentially changing the quality of the teacher workforce.

"I personally believe that the biggest role of incentives has to do with selection of who enters and who stays in teaching--how incentives change the teaching corps through entrance and exits," said Eric A. Hanushek, a professor of economics at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. "The study has nothing to say about this."

And because the study looks at an incentive program strictly as pay, it remains unclear how far the findings can be extrapolated to incentives with more features, such as professional development, differentiated roles, or a new teacher-evaluation system.Many well-known incentive-pay models, including Denver's ProComp system and the popular Teacher Advancement Program, sponsored by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based National Institute for Excellence in Teaching, contain such elements. ("Denver Voters Approve Tax Hike to Underwrite Incentive-Based Teacher Pay ," Nov. 11, 2005, and "TAP: More Than Performance Pay," April 1, 2009.)

One finding suggests that the debate over the use of test scores as a measure of student learning and teacher effectiveness remains a top concern for teachers. Surveys of participants for POINT found that a majority generally supported higher pay for teachers whose students made achievement gains. Yet in 2009, about 85 percent said they felt the test-based criteria for determining effectiveness were too narrow.

That lack of buy-in, the study's authors postulated, might have contributed to the finding of no differences in how the control and treatment groups affected instruction.
Inopportune Moment

From a policy perspective, performance pay has experienced a type of renaissance over the past six years, following the introduction in 2004 of the ProComp and in 2006 of the federal Teacher Incentive Fund, or TIF, a program established under the administration of President George W. Bush to seed performance-pay systems.

Since 2008, the Obama administration has embraced TIF and has put its own stamp on performance pay through the Race to the Top competition, which encouraged states to institute new systems for evaluating teachers and for using the results of those evaluations to inform pay decisions.

"While this is a good study, it only looked at the narrow question of whether more pay motivates teachers to try harder," a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education said in an e-mail. "What we are trying to do is change the culture of teaching by giving all educators the feedback they need to get better while rewarding and incentivizing the best to teach in high need schools and hard-to-staff subjects."

The effects of the report on that policy agenda are not clear, but in the short run at least, proponents of merit pay are likely to steer clear of replicating the features of the Nashville program.

"Anyone about to implement a performance-based pay system will want to pay very close attention to this study, to learn from the POINT program's successes, but especially its shortcomings," said Mr. Glazerman of Mathematica. "These groups bear a heavy burden to figure out how their own programs can demonstrate a greater impact than what we've seen so far."

"I think most people today agree that the existing compensation structure for teachers is broken, but we don't know what a better way is," added Mr. Springer of the Vanderbilt center. "This experiment is one step in the right direction in terms of building our knowledge base, but we need to continue to build that base and test other program designs."

Vol. 30, Issue 05

-
Gregory Elacqua
-- 
Director
Instituto de Políticas Publicas
Facultad de Economía y Empresa
Universidad Diego Portales
Ejército 260
Santiago, Chile
56-2-676-2800
56-09-6-206-5993
gregory.elacqua@udp.cl