Education Seminar Sept 15

September 15, 2008

A list of questions that I don’t have answers to but would like to and some thoughts on them.
Apologies if some things are translated weird in English…I’m not always sure what the right term is.

Overview of todays seminar:
1981 Chilean schools were reformed (this is just after Pinochet stopped being president, but installed the main education law). “modernization” –Educational market
-parents pick which school their children will attend
-municipalitizacion (municipilización)
- Schools compete to get more students because they’ll receive more funding with more students (failing schools lose students and then cease to exist)

1990-2005
active state to counterbalance the bad affects of the market system.
talk about quality of education
need better conditions in schools.

2006
Protests by the pengüinos (students).
Complaint: lots of promises that have never come through, there is much inequality in the schools
Demand: equality.
Movement had full support of the citizenship of Chile
-Sticky spots include that education is better than it ever has been, but students know they have reach would they could and the quality has not reached what it needs to.

¿Es mala la educación chilena? (Is chilean education bad?)

Chilean education in comparison:
In comparison with past Chilean education—better, advanced
In comparison with the rest of Latin America—better
In comparison with OECDs (basically they’re like developed rich countries, it’s something to do with economics that I don’t quite get)—worse
In terms of segregation and equality—BAD

Societal inequality and segmentation -------------->
<---------------- Educational inequality and segmentation
(it´s a cycle...so goal, make education a little better than society and society improves)

The rich in chile have 32 times what the poor have.

Gini (measure of inequality and achievement in life, higher is worse 0-70? for inequality)
inequality achievement (0-800?)
Chile – 58 300
USA – 40 500

In the world Chile was bad in both, US was middle ish in inequality and upper third in achievement. Generally the two things correlated higher achievement less inequality.

Conclusions: In Chile tests showed that the more time spent in school the more inequality there was between the schools. This is unusual because normally the longer you’ve been in school the less your home life and economic status affects your schooling. It’s more likely that they stay the same or better a little.

Three types of schools:
Public – completely free and open to everyone (50% attend here)
Subvencionadas (like voucher schools) – subsidizes by the government but the parents pay too, open to most that can pay sometimes there are tests to enter. (30% here)
Private – fully paid by parents and the school can select it’s students. (less than 10%)

The majority of the lower class attends public schools
The majority of the middle class attends escuelas subvencionadas
The majority of the upper class attends private schools

Conclusion: Class/socio-economic status directly affects test performance/learning.

The number of rich students for every poor student in a private school:
Chile – 19
Latin America – 10
OECDs – 5.4

Consequences of homogenous classes and schools because of class segregacion and in this case achievement segregation:
1. Doesn’t produce a civic democratic education
2. Because all students are at the same level there’s no partnership between students to help each other lean. In a heterogeneous school the better, ahead students would help the behind students.
3. Expectations of teachers/families often become the result, this is a problem in a school where all the students are vulnerable (word meaning some combination of poor, unstable home, uneducated background, etc.) and the teachers and families have very low expectations.
4. No one making decisions really knows what it’s like in the public schools (which are of the worst quality). People with money don’t send their kids to public school. Therefore municipal schools (public schools) don’t have a voice.

Questions of the day (not answered in my thoughts cause it’s late, I did put in the notes I took from the presentator’s answers today)

1. What are the needs of students before a teacher can begin to start “teaching”? Can you fulfill these needs and teach at the same time?

2. What is the connection and relationship between education/ability to learn and self confidence?

3. La responsabilidad de la escuela es educar sus alumnos y no ser padres, ¿pero dónde está la línea entre estas responsabilidades y si de realidad hay una línea, puede cruzarlo?
(The responsibility of a school is to teach its students and is not to be parents, but where is the line between these responsibilities and if there actually is a line, can you cross it?)
- there is a line but it’s dotted and nebulous. Different students need different things, it depends where a teacher is teaching. Argentina and others have done studies on what can be expected of families in terms of support of their student. Poorer families clearly cannot give the same support as rich families and the school and teachers have to compensate for that.

4. Does a teacher have the right to teach what they want to? Should there be a set curriculum? If so how do you create one, and who creates it?

5. ¿Como enseñar a los estudiantes que necesitan mucho ayuda y apoyo juntos con los que no necesitan tanto? ¿Estudiantes ricos y pobres juntos?
(How do you teach the students who need a lot of help and support, together with the students who don’t need as much? Poor students with rich?)

6. Are class and diversity the same? If not should we continue to consider them the same?
-No, however in Chile class and race are essentially the same.

7. Homogeneous classrooms hurt poor and failing students, but do they hurt successful rich students as well? Corollary: Public schools lose because of the private schools, do private schools lose?
(¿qué son las desventajas de escuelas homogéneos cuando es una escuela privada con estudiantes ricas?)
- Because there is no difference in background between these students they don’t lose academic education but they do lose civic education. They don’t have the opportunity to help those that are struggling, this opportunity often makes and helps facilitate highly intelligent people.