La Jornada: Jorge Perez and Ernesto Martinez
For the fifth consecutive year, the National Assessment of Academic Achievement in Schools (ENLACE, LINK) will not be given in over 14,000 schools in Oaxaca because of its rejection by the teachers of Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), [who belong to the dissident National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers]. They consider it "a standardized test", said the director of the State Institute of Public Education of Oaxaca (IEEPO), Antonio Bolaños Iturribarría.
He considered that the non-application of this test affects the education sector which still doesn't have a means to evaluat the performance and progress of students in elementary and middle school, which causes Oaxaca always to be placed last at the national level.
He noted that due to the refusal to administer the ENLACE test, the state fails to receive funds from the federal government amounting to around 27 million pesos [US$2,119,000] provided through the Program for Economic Stimulus, Teacher Recognition and Management of Basic Education, and other additional resources.
According to reports of IEEPO, the ENLACE test was administered in Oaxaca in 2007 and 2008, during the administration headed by Governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, but beginning in 2009 the teachers of the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE) began to reject it.
At present, only 905 rural elementary schools and 253 middle schools, belonging to the National Council for Educational Development, administer the test.
In Michoacan, officials from the Secretariat of Education reported that the test will be administered this week, with the participation of 6,500 teachers. There are a million students in the state's elementary and middle schools. In 2012, barely 91,000 tests were administered, representing 9.1 per cent of the total, while in 2011 some 165,000, i.e., 16.5 percent of the total were tested. Spanish original