Improving Latin America’s School Quality: Which Special Interventions Work?

Abstract

From the 1970s though the mid-1990s, Latin American education policies aimed mainly to promote universal access to basic education and to increase literacy. These policies succeeded such that, by 1997, gross enrollment rates reached 113.6 percent of primary school-age children in Latin America, and 62 percent for secondary school. Although there has been evident progress toward universal access, over the past 10 years most ministries of education have also recognized that the quality of basic education requires improvement as well. For example, 15 percent of children repeat the first grade, and 23 percent drop out before the fifth grade. Commentators such as Laurence Wolff, Ernesto Schiefelbein, and Jorge Valenzuela concluded that Latin American countries “do significantly worse in terms of achievement than the developed world and also do worse than many developing countries in Asia.” As the goal of universal access to primary school has become less urgent, the emphasis of policy has shifted to educational quality and equity. Comision Economica para America Latina y el Caribe reports that, in Argentina, the average education of the poorest 25 percent of the populace is 7 years and that of the richest 25 percent is 13 years. And because there are increasing private returns to education, the education gap between rich and poor translates to ever greater income inequality. The combined needs for improved quality and more equity in education have prompted a series of compensatory or positively discriminatory educational policies. Among these are several interventions, including free food distribution (breakfast, lunch, and/or snack programs); free distribution of textbooks; classroom libraries; additional, in-service teacher training; tutors; extra classes for children who have