Teaching quality is crucial to learning,
especially for kids that come from low income families.
Their parents may be illiterate
and unable to help with homework,
and they may have little access to magazines and books.
From the data that's available, teacher quality seems to be quite low
in the public school system in Mexico, and this is especially true for kids
from the poorest areas.
The governement doesn't offer
many incentives to get good teachers to go to rural and indigenous communities.
Typically, teachers for those areas are chosen
because they speak the native language,
not because they have any teaching ability.
Even given this preference for native language speakers,
It's estimated that one third of indigenous educators are placed in towns
that speak a different indigenous language than their own.
In this video we'll explore some
of the reasons why teaching quality tends to be low on average in Mexico.
The first reason is the fact that the government does little to attract
good students into the field.
For instance, there are typically no full-ride scholarships for top students
to pursue teaching degrees.
Another problem is that the institutions that award teaching degrees are typically
of low prestige and low quality.
The government has failed to enforce any minumum standards on this institutions.
The PRI traditionally treated teaching
positions as a form of political patronage.
That is a way to reward party followers.
That legacy unfortunately lives on, as positions are treated as a commodity
in many parts of Mexico.
For instance, teaching positions are bought and sold or passed on
to relatives, as opposed to being given to the best applicant.
Teacher training tends to be substandard, focusing too much on theory
and not enough on whether the person understands the subject
and can actually teach it.
There are no national standards for testing
whether teachers understand the subject matter well.
But the few data that we do have is not promising.
A recent report notes that "The share of questions that an average Mexican teacher
could answer correctly in a national teacher knowledge exam in 1996-2000
was just 50%."
And even after they are hired, there's rarely on-the-job training.
Nor is there a good mentoring system for new teachers
that would help them improve their skills.
Besides personal satisfaction, there are no real incentives
to be a good teacher in Mexico.
Teachers are awarded tenure after six months on the job.
Which means they will have a job for life
with little concern for teaching quality
or the possibility of being fired.
Salaries are typically not tied to merit or to
class evaluations.
There is no way to get bad teachers
out of the classroom.
School principals do not have the authority to fire teachers
or even to recommend that they be fired.
The biggest reason though is the National Teacher's Union.
This acronym in Spanish is the SNTE.
It was an enormous amount
of power over schooling in Mexico.
More than any other teacher's union in the Latin American region.
Over 60 years ago, the government decreed that there could only be
one teacher's union and that every public school teacher
and most administrators had to join.
The union was so enmeshed with the PRI that it was considered a
"virtual arm of the party".
Union representatives still form an integral part of the state.
They are often appointed to positions in the ministry of education
and according to one analysis, "work against government
efforts to increase accountability, efficiency, and transparency
in the system".
The union also has a fair number of its members in the legislature
which allows it to shape legislation.
So what specific power does the union have?
Well, it has a lot.
It has a monopoly over the supply of teachers.
It has the power to veto decisions made on contracts,
training, hiring, incentives, sanctions and teacher placement.
It is also legally entitled to "commission teachers to take a paid
leave of absence from teaching to do union work."
It's estimated that over 10% of teachers at any point in time
are commissioned in this way.
Union work is defined broadly here to include things like
working on election campaigns.
It's thought that the union places its own interests above those of
the students. And since the union can provide so much electoral support
politicians have traditionally given it "free reign, iron clad job security for
teachers, and third-rate education for students".
So what is the potential for reform?
Well, there are a lot of obstacles
to reforming an educational system.
First, there are powerful interest groups like the teacher's union that benefit
from how things are now and will fight vehemently to keep it that way.
There are also politicians who use the system for patronage who are also
likely to favor the status quo.
On the demand side, there's been little pressure from parents
to increase the quality of public education
and when parents do complain,
there are no real channels for them to make a difference.
The rich and upper middle class
parents send their children to private school typically
so they don't experience how bad the public schools are
and they are also less willing
to increase taxes for public school reform, since they already pay
for private school education.
Things may be changing, though.
Recent surveys show a broad
dissatisfaction with the system and with the teacher's union.
President Peña Nieto has made education reform one of the
cornerstones of his presidency.
Already in 2013 the government has passed a reform bill that seeks to
"create a system of uniform standards for teaching, hiring and promotion
based on merit and will allow for the first census of Mexico's
education system.
This is important because no one knows exactly how many
schools, teachers, or students exist in Mexico.
The plan will move much of the control
of the public education system to the
federal government from the teacher's union.
The government also arrested Elba Esther Gordillo
the head of the National Teacher's Union
in Mexico since 1989 on charges of embezzlement
and organized crime.
Until now, she has been relatively untouchable, although this arrest
may have more to do with her split with the PRI, rather than a new spirit
of anti-corruption on the part of the government.
But in closing, I want to say that Mexico is famous for elegant laws
and rough and tumble practice.
The new bill is a good start, but real education reform will be
a long, hard road and the jury is still very much out.
All of the information in this video
and quotes come from Jeffrey Puryear's,
Lucrecia Santibañez's and
Alexandra Solano's "Education in Mexico"
which is an excellent introduction
to some of the problems that the Mexican educational system has.
The information on the new reforms
in Mexico is by E. Eduardo Castillo's 2013 Huffington Post article.