Brazil can improve education by copying its own successes

Por: brookings.edu

Many have been shocked by the World Bank’s estimate that it would take Brazil more than 260 years to reach the OECD average proficiency in reading and 75 years in mathematics. But as demonstrated by the discussion last week following the presentation of the World Development Report on Learning in São Paulo, Brazil’s education community is aware that the country lags far behind. It knows that it needs to do a lot, and soon.Author

Brazil is not alone. According to the report, 40 percent of kids in Latin America and the Caribbean do not acquire basic skills in numeracy and literacy during primary school (in Africa this number is 80 percent). The report concludes that the world is facing a “learning crisis”—even though more kids go to school, they are not learning nearly as much as they should.

But is this really a learning crisis? In commenting on the report, Ricardo Paes de Barros, chief economist of the Ayrton Senna Institute and a specialist in education policies in Brazil, challenged this conclusion. He argued instead that Brazil is facing a “copying crisis”: There is plenty of data about the performance of schools across municipalities in Brazil, with huge variations, but it’s clear that the poor performers don’t improve. Transferring experiences from one country to another can be difficult, but learning from the successes of your peers within the same country should be a lot easier. In Brazil, this is not happening.

Perhaps this is because the successes aren’t documented well and hence poorly understood, or because the necessary changes face political resistance and hence require leadership that is in rare supply. Overcoming political resistance is never easy but documenting successes, in Brazil’s case at least, should be. A recent World Bank report on the efficiency of public spending provides a useful entry point and perspective. The report compares the educational outcomes attained by 4,648 municipalities in Brazil in 2013 with the cumulative spending per student over between 2009 and 2013 (Figure 1). This comparison leads to an obvious conclusion: Good educational outcomes in Brazil have little to do with how much a municipality spends and a lot with how the resources are utilized. This is good news for those who wish to copy successful experiences.

BIG DIFFERENCES WITHIN BRAZIL

A closer inspection of Figure 1 reveals a second striking fact: a regional pattern in the efficiency of education spending. The poorest parts of the North and Northeast are still missing basic infrastructure, so additional investment could boost outcomes. In the richer South and Southeast, by contrast, inefficiencies are glaring and resources could be saved without jeopardizing—possibly even improving—education outcomes.

Figure 1: Spending and outcomes in education in Brazil—not a close correlationFigure 1 - spending and outcomes in education in Brazil

Source: World Bank estimates based on SIOPE and Prova Brasil. IDEB is a summary index of the state of compulsory education.

Fuente: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2018/03/06/brazil-can-improve-education-by-copying-its-own-successes/

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Reseña de Libro: Latin American Perspectives en Español y Portugués. Vol. I .

Buscando alternativas políticas y económicas.

Nicolás Arata. Pablo Gentili. [Presentación]

Claudio Katz. Luis Suárez Salazar. Giuseppe Lo Brutto. Carlos Otto Vázquez. Ronaldo Munck. Emiliano López. Francisco Vértiz. Alicia Puyana Mutis. Agostina Costantino. Mao Xianglin. Adrian H. Hearn. Liu Weiguang. Armando Boito Jr.. Alfredo Saad-Filho. Cecília MacDowell Santos. Verónica Silva. Franklin Ramírez Gallegos. Irene Vélez-Torres. Daniel Varela. Nemer E. Narchi. Beatriz Canabal-Cristiani. Astrid B. Stensrud. [Autores de Capítulo]
…………………………………………………………………………

ISBN 978-987-722-238-8
CLACSO.
Buenos Aires.
Septiembre de 2017

Latin American Perspectives (LAP) es una revista académica latinoamericana publicada en América del Norte que, en 2008, llegó a ser la primera institución asociada a CLACSO en los Estados Unidos. Su propósito es divulgar la investigación latinoamericana entre un amplio público de lengua inglesa y, al mismo tiempo, que su contenido se encuentre disponible para los lectores latinoamericanos. Por lo tanto, nos alegra profundizar nuestra relación con CLACSO a través de la publicación de esta primera colección anual en español y portugués de artículos previamente publicados en nuestra revista. Fundada en 1974 como «una revista sobre el capitalismo y el socialismo», LAP cuestionó los supuestos capitalistas e imperialistas que caracterizaban a las ciencias sociales estadunidenses de la época y abrió sus páginas a una variedad de enfoques progresistas, incluyendo al marxismo. Durante más de cuarenta años hemos continuado nuestra misión de «promover el análisis de clase en torno a las realidades socioculturales y estrategias políticas para así transformar las estructuras sociopolíticas de América Latina».
Fuente: http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20170901105600/Latin_American_Perspectives.pdf

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