Accountability Rare in Latin American Schools

Promoting accountability is at the center of current debates on educational policy in Latin America. With the region’s education quality poor by every available measure, research suggests that accountability is a critical tool for improvement. Efforts to promote accountability in education are underway elsewhere—particularly the United States—and have not gone unnoticed among Latin American policymakers. Several initiatives are underway in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico, and Brazil, but the concept is relatively new—and poorly understood.

One problem is that few understand what accountability means. No literal translation of the term exists in Spanish—rendición de cuentas being the closest equivalent. The standard definition—setting goals and holding people (students, parents, teachers, principals, and ministry officials) responsible for achieving them—describes a dynamic that is largely unfamiliar to the region’s public schools. Traditionally, education systems in Latin America have been a public monopoly managed by highly centralized and hierarchical national agencies. Emphasis has been on inputs (money, schools, and enrollments) rather than on outputs (learning). In the end, education providers and students have not been asked to achieve the proper goals or held responsible for attaining them.

Most experts agree that accountability in education requires at least four conditions: standards, information, consequences, and authority. Countries need to establish comprehensive education standards so that the public knows what schools are supposed to do and achieve. They need to produce reliable information so that the clients of education—students, parents, community leaders, and employers—can determine whether standards are being reached. To achieve these standards, there must be appropriate consequences for meeting (or failing to meet) certain benchmarks. Finally, schools, communities, and parents should have the authority necessary to make decisions and implement changes. If not, it makes little sense to sanction them for shortcomings.

Last month, the Partnership for Educational Revitalization (PREAL) and Fundación IDEA, in collaboration with Mexicanos Primero, organized the international seminar "Accountability: An Opportunity for Quality Education" to discuss the state of educational accountability in the region. Held in Mexico City and opened by Mexico’s Secretary of Public Education Josefina Vázquez Mota, the 150 researchers, government officials, and members of civil society concluded that, despite considerable progress, many of the building blocks essential to accountability in education are not yet in place. This conference was yet another wake-up call for improving education.

No country has yet succeeded in establishing, disseminating, and fully implementing national education standards that set high expectations for all students. Even when standards do exist, they have seldom been aligned with curriculum or national tests. A few countries, notably Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, and El Salvador, are taking important steps in this direction and others have indicated their intention to begin the process.

The outlook is more positive in the case of public information. Nearly every country has established national student achievement tests that regularly monitor learning and publish the results for subjects such as reading and mathematics. At least eight countries have participated in global tests and some, including Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Chile, have done so repeatedly. Still, national testing systems remain underdeveloped and poorly funded, and test results are not widely publicized. Very few countries evaluate the skills and performance of teachers (Colombia, Chile and Peru are notable—and recent—exceptions). At the same time, national education statistics and research programs are weak, making it difficult to monitor progress and evaluate new interventions. Too much of the information needed to assess school progress either does not exist or is not easily accessible.

Perhaps most noteworthy is the general absence of consequences in the region’s education systems. Good teachers are not paid more than bad teachers. Bad teachers are neither identified for remedial training nor sanctioned if they fail to improve. Students do not have to demonstrate mastery of subjects to graduate and schools are funded regardless of success or failure. Incentives for better performance are almost non-existent in the region’s schools.

Education authority is a more mixed picture. A number of countries, particularly Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and several states in Brazil have given communities varying degrees of authority over local education. Chile’s voucher system lets parents "vote with their feet" by choosing whether to send their children to a traditional public school or to a publicly financed private school. The government of Bogotá, Colombia, has contracted prestigious private schools to develop high-quality schools for the poor. Still, the scope of schools’ authority is generally limited. Most principals cannot select and manage their staff or make spending decisions. Teachers have limited authority to innovate in the classroom, while parents and communities have little say regarding the administration of local schools. Schools that lack authority to make fundamental changes important for improving performance cannot be held accountable for the results.

Mexico is near the bottom of the list in all four categories. Without public standards for measuring student achievement by grade level or subject, Mexico is hard-pressed to evaluate meaningfully or understand the performance of its students. Despite recently completing its second year of national standardized testing in certain grades—a huge leap forward—the results so far have been difficult to analyze and not widely accessible. Even if Mexico were to have valid, understandable evaluation tools, it lacks the proper incentives to inspire teacher and administrator improvement. Principals have no control over the hiring process at their school, and it is nearly impossible to fire a teacher, even for poor performance. They also lack authority over pedagogical and managerial decisions that could produce improvements in student achievement.

Latin America is a long way from establishing meaningful accountability in its school systems. To move forward, policymakers and specialists must learn from other countries, identify approaches that best match their circumstances, experiment, and evaluate the results. Most importantly, they will need to demonstrate enormous political resolve to confront vested interests that fiercely resist losing power. Accountability is a revolutionary concept in public education, and revolutions are tough to create.

Jeffrey M. Puryear is vice president for social policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, and directs its Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL). He previously served as head of the Ford Foundation's regional office for the Andes and the Southern Cone, and has been a research scholar at New York University and at Stanford University.

Laura Moodey is the Director for Educational Policy at Fundación IDEA, a Mexican think tank. Previously, she was a director in the national office of Teach For America, an elementary school teacher in New York City and an English grammar and conversation teacher in Guanajuato, Mexico.