Measuring and Improving Educational Quality in the Americas: Obtaining concrete results through poli

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Measuring and Improving Educational Quality in
the Americas Obtaining concrete results through
political will and technical capacity
Dr. Alice Abreu Director, Office of Education
Science and Technology, OAS II Foro Hemisférico
Calidad de la Educación Brasilia, Brazil, June
13-17 2005
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Measuring and Improving Educational Quality in
the Americas

• THE ROLE OF THE OAS

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What is the OAS?
The political forum for 34 independent member
states of the Americas
What does the OAS do?
Summits of the Americas

• Supports opportunities for political dialogue

Ministerial Meetings
Inter-American Commissions

• Informs political dialogue with technical
  knowledge

• Translates the informed dialogue into concrete
  cooperation strategies

Horizontal Cooperation Mechanisms
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The Political Dialogue

• Political Fora
• Summit Meetings
• Ministerial Meetings in the framework of CIDI
• The Inter-American Committee on Education
• Within the OAS, the General Assembly and
  Permanent Council
• Inter-Agency Meetings
• Dialogue with Civil Society

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EDUCATION MANDATES FROM THE SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS

• Miami, 1994
• Santiago, 1998
• Quebec, 2001
• Monterrey (Special Summit), 2004
• Mar del Plata, 2005

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Establish or strengthen national or sub-national
and, where applicable, sub-regional systems to
evaluate the quality of education, which permit
assessment of the performance of various
educational actors, innovations and factors
associated with achievements in learning.
I Meeting of Ministers of Education, CIDI (OEA)
Brasilia 1998
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2001 III Summit of the Americas, Quebec
PRIE CHILE
USA, MEXICO UNESCO /UIS BID USAID
World Bank
EVALUATION BRAZIL
ACTION PLAN LINE 2
II Meeting of Ministers of Education, CIDI (OEA)
Punta del Este, Uruguay 2001
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Support ongoing regional projects for comparable
indicators and educational assessment resulting
from the Santiago Summit, including cooperation
initiatives based on performance assessment
programs regarding educational processes and
achievement, taking into consideration studies in
pedagogy and assessment practices previously
developed by countries develop comparable
indicators to assess the services provided by
each country to people with special education
needs and promote the exchange of information on
policies, strategies and best practices in the
Americas
III Summit of the Americas, Quebec 2001
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III Summit of the Americas, Quebec
II Meeting of Ministers of Education, CIDI (OEA)
Punta del Este, Uruguay 2001
PRIEs First stage Conclusions Forum of
Evaluation of Education (Brazil)
2003
3 Hemispheric projects PRIE-Evaluation
III Meeting of Ministers of Education, CIDI
(OEA), México 2003
2004
Special Summit of the Americas, Monterrey
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2004
Special Summit of the Americas, Monterrey
We commit to increase access to and dissemination
of information concerning our educational systems
with the objective of improving their
performance. In this regard, we reiterate our
commitment to continue implementation of the
Regional Education Indicators Project, endorsed
during the Third Inter-American Meeting of
Ministers of Education, held in Mexico City. In
particular, each country that has not yet done so
will develop and publicly disseminate by the next
Summit a report based on the education goals of
the Plan of Action of the Second Summit of the
Americas, with the objective of fostering its use
as a decision-making tool to evaluate and improve
results.
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2004Special Summit of the Americas, Monterrey

• In particular, each country that has not yet
  done so will develop and publicly disseminate by
  the next Summit a report based on the education
  goal of the Plan of Action of the Second Summit
  of the Americas, with the objective of fostering
  its use as a decision-making tool to evaluate and
  improve results.
• Questionnaire on Public Reporting of Education
  Data

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IV Summit of the AmericasMar del Plata,
ArgentinaNovember 4-5, 2005

• Theme "Creating Jobs to Confront Poverty and
  Strengthen Democratic Governance"

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The Issues and Challenges of the Policy Dialogue

• How can valid and reliable information about the
  performance of education systems (nationally and
  regionally) be made accessible and useful for
  policymakers?
• What mechanisms exist to build capacity and
  update skills and knowledge for professionals
  working in evaluation?
• How can we best hold ourselves accountable to the
  goals and priorities expressed in Summit
  Declarations and Ministerial Action Plans without
  duplicating efforts?

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Measuring and Improving Educational Quality in
the Americas

• THE SUBSTANTIVE ISSUES

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Ensuring Educational Quality

• Present Challenges in Ensuring Equity, Quality,
  Efficiency and Relevance
• Disaggregating Data Gender, Rural/Urban,
  Language
• Enrollment vs. Completion
• Achievement scores vs other measures of
  performance
• Repetition, ghost schools, internal vs external
  efficiency
• Making Use of Educational Information Attending
  to both supply and demand
• - Institutional strengthening, capacity building
  and analysis performance standards,
  effectiveness, assessing alternative strategies
• - Education Information for an informed and
  participative citizenry

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Present Challenges in Ensuring Equity, Quality,
Efficiency and Relevance

• The Goals Have Become More Ambitious
• Set by political events at highest level
• There has been significant movement forward, the
  goals are more ambitious now
• The goals are system-level goals
• Worldwide
• From Education for All (1990, Jomtien)
• To Education of Quality for All

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Present Challenges in Ensuring Equity, Quality,
Efficiency and Relevance

• In the Hemisphere
• First Meeting of Ministers
• Goals of 100 primary completion, 75 secondary
  enrollment,
• increasing secondary completion, learning
  opportunities for all
• Second Meeting of Ministers
• Added declaration on peace and tolerance
• Third Meeting of Ministers
• Added much greater emphasis on Quality of
  Education
• Fourth Meeting of Education Ministers, Tobago,
  August 2005
• Explicitly answers the question of Quality
  education for what? Quality Education for a
  Democratic and Productive Citizenry

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Ensuring Equity, Quality, Efficiency and
Relevance for what? What kind of student we
seek to develop ?

• A student who builds knowledge and skills
  relevant to the needs of society and the
  workforce
• A student who develops attitudes that allow
  him/her to prosper in a complex and multicultural
  society and global economy tolerance,
  innovation, independence of thought, flexibility,
  initiative
• And these are our goals for ALL students

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Making Use of Educational Information What can
we do to produce information that helps to ensure
quality?

• Focus on a limited number of key variables
  those that matter, and for which data are
  available or can be gathered
• Make sure the data are valid and objective the
  data must be believable
• Disaggregate the data (are we really
  reaching/measuring all students?)
• Present it in a way that is useful to policy
  makers. Not just the rankings, but what makes
  some perform better than others.
• Disseminate it in a way that is useful to parents
  and the public this will create demand for
  quality education
• Collect and report longitudinally (so we can
  answer the key question is quality improving?)
• Build local capacity

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The role of the OAS in improving Quality
Education in the Hemisphere
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Facilitating Technical Cooperation

• Technical Fora and Mechanisms
• Documentation (institutional memory of the Summit
  process in Education)
• Small seed financing for projects directly
  related to Summit goals and ministerial mandates
  (FEMCIDI)
• Seminars and Workshops
• Virtual forum (for delegates, for civil society)
• Web pages (for CIE, for PRIE and Evaluation
  Forum, for Ministerial Meetings)
• Networks of Experts and Advisors
• Videoconferences

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Priority Areas and related FEMCIDI projects

• Equity with Quality
• Hemispheric Project on the Prevention of School
  Failure
• Secondary Education and Workforce Preparation
• Hemispheric Project on Secondary Education and
  the Certification of Labor and Key Competencies
• Teacher Education and Professional Development
• Hemispheric Project on Teacher Education

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Summit Projects(OAS funding through CIE/OEST)

• Summit Project on Regional Education Indicators
• The Regional Education Indicators (PRIE) is aimed
  at supporting the achievement of Summit of the
  Americas educational goals by developing
  comparable education indicators, strengthening
  national education statistics systems,
  disseminating and promoting the use of
  information in decision-making processes.
• Summit Forum on the Evaluation of Educational
  Quality
• Three main areas to develop hemispheric
  cooperation in education assessment
  Reinforcement of National Assessment Systems
  Technical Assistance Participation in
  International Comparative Studies.

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Other Priority Areas

• Education for Democratic Values and Practices
• Inter-American Program in Education for
  Democracy and Peace
• The use of new technologies as a cross-cutting
  theme

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Facilitating Technical Cooperation

• STRENGTHENING HORIZONTAL COOPERATION TROUGH
  CONARED
• The Knowledge Sharing and Advisory Network

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CONARED
Sharing Knowledge in a horizontal manner
The creation of this unique space within the OAS
is proposed as an alternative to the traditional
vision, to review and jointly construct
experiences and models. Under this model, all
parties offer and receive experiences,
understanding that all countries have something
to share and something to learn from the other
member States.
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CONARED
The Results

• More than 3 years implementing the strategy,
  which is permanently updated and adapted to the
  new demands from the Ministries
• 9 Technical Cooperation Workshops
• 28 countries actively participating
• Creation of a network of permanent advisors
• Construction of a permanent dialogue with all
  actors involved videoconferences, on-line
  forums, on-site workshops
• Financial sustainability thanks to the support
  from the World Bank and the contributions of the
  Technical Secretariat

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Lessons Learned
What have we learned or reaffirmed about
cooperation?

• All countries have valid lessons to share
• Horizontal Cooperation increases the capacity of
  the System to reflect and learn from each other
  experiences
• A genuine political will to share is as important
  as sharing itself
• The importance of inter-agency collaboration and
  coordination

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Office of Education, Science and Technology
(OEST) Executive Secretariat of Integral
Development (SEDI) http//www.oest.oas.org