Across the decades, Mexicans got used to hearing the official discourse, according to which national education progressed from strength to strength with hundreds of new schools built each year in order to serve all school-age children. No one thought to ask about the quality of education that these children were receiving; however, it was known that some finished sixth grade without knowing how to read. Then there were the high school teachers who complained that their students did not know how to multiply or divide. Simple and happily, we all thought that the education the children were receiving in schools across the country was good. It had to be good!
Then one day in 2003 by means of an international assessment administered to a representative sample of Mexican students, we learned that we had put ourselves in last place among about fifty countries equally evaluated. Reality fell on us like a splash of cold water, starting with the leaders. According to Article 3 of the Constitution, education is a responsibility of the government; thus, they were the ones responsible for the problem. Of course, the comparison was unfair for many (because we are a poor and underdeveloped country), as if this were a safe-conduct pass exempting us from having an education system similar to that of other nations with whom our products and services compete in the world market.
Thus, it became clear that our education system was not up to international standards, and if Mexico sought to improve its economy, something had to be done to improve education. The first task, of course, was to establish a measurement scheme, knowing that it is impossible and demagogic to take actions to improve without relying on a way to measure what is expected to be improved. The efforts and proposals to improve education have been mixed, some questionable, others mediocre and still others successful--one of which has been the annual administration of the ENLACE tests, which are different for each grade, beginning in the fourth grade.
Contrary to all that has been asserted, these tests are today a valuable mechanism for evaluating the quality of the education our students are receiving. The purpose is not to use them to evaluate a student or a teacher in a comprehensive manner. The tests represent an incalculable benefit for measuring the quality of some aspects of education that students receive by state, region and nationwide so that, starting from there, actions to be taken can be determined.
In the last week, several reviews of these assessments have been published, not with the idea of demanding that the tests themselves be improved, or that they be used properly or that bad practices in their administration might be sanctioned, but simply to demand their cancellation, without proposing any alternative for improving the education system. Is there anyone who actually believes that the quality of teaching is going to improve without conducting these evaluations? Or is it that we simply don't need better education, because it is already good now?
I agree that there are serious problems regarding implementation of the ENLACE tests and the uses to which they are put, as noted by Luis Hernández Navarro in an article he wrote last week for La Jornada. Hernández Navarro identifies those who think that children are stigmatized for their scores and that teachers can be offered incentives when their students do well, which encourages teachers to be most interested in modifying the results in their favor by the easiest path. I agree with him that this is wrong and that it distorts the ENLACE objectives and results. But I am suggesting that the problem is not with the tests, but with the uses made of them.
Similarly, in many schools and state subsystems, the efforts and guidelines that teachers receive are effectively preparing students to take the ENLACE tests ["teaching to the test"], rather than teaching the curriculum, but here, again, it isn't the fault of the tests, but the myopia of the authorities, who are incapable of understanding that it is their duty to prepare students for future life, according to established educational programs; and that if students are well prepared, their evaluation necessarily will be good. To think about suspending or cancelling the standardized tests, particularly the ENLACE, because of the many dishonest, misguided and malicious practices that have been mentioned, would be equivalent to demanding the suspension or disappearance of elections in order to improve the democratic system, because of all the dishonest practices that we, unfortunately, know to be true.
Similarly, in many schools and state subsystems, the efforts and guidelines that teachers receive are effectively preparing students to take the ENLACE tests ["teaching to the test"], rather than teaching the curriculum, but here, again, it isn't the fault of the tests, but the myopia of the authorities, who are incapable of understanding that it is their duty to prepare students for future life, according to established educational programs; and that if students are well prepared, their evaluation necessarily will be good. To think about suspending or cancelling the standardized tests, particularly the ENLACE, because of the many dishonest, misguided and malicious practices that have been mentioned, would be equivalent to demanding the suspension or disappearance of elections in order to improve the democratic system, because of all the dishonest practices that we, unfortunately, know to be true.
It has also been said that these tests are part of a process with covert purposes, such as favoring the privatization of education, which makes no sense. According to information stored in test archives, in most of the country's cities, the private schools place lower than the public schools, especially in the case of upper secondary [high school] education. It is also said that among the purposes of the test is the removal of teachers based on their students' poor test results, without realizing that those who are first being evaluated are the authorities responsible for education in each state and in each subsystem. So, for example, if we track the 2009-2012 ENLACE results for upper secondary [high school] education, the state of Nuevo León went from third to twelfth place in mathematics by virtue of problems that the state's Governor and his Secretary of Education must explain to parents and the general public. Something similar should also be required of the leaders of Colima, Aguascalientes and Querétaro.
In such cases, it should be clear that it is about bad governments that are not fulfilling their obligations. Surely, they are failing in their supervisory tasks and diverting funds that should go to school maintenance, the purchase of school supplies and to other factors that have an impact on the environment and the enthusiasm of teachers and students. But since nobody is calling these leaders to account, what they are doing is letting the society stigmatize the teachers as responsible for the problem. No doubt many of the criticisms made today to ENLACE have their origin in those same officials. Spanish original