Chilean researcher Alvaro Gonzalez Torrez has read the
posts about Chile and thinks the solutions are too timid. Here are
his suggestions for what is needed to get free of free-market
ideology:

“I’ve been following the series of three blog posts about
Chile, being a Chilean ed researcher myself. I believe Waissbluth’s
contribution to the blog opens a debate of international relevance
by showcasing the Chilean example in the context of a global
advance of neoliberal policies in education (what Pasi Sahlberg
calls ‘GERM’).

I agree with the (dreadful) diagnosis offered by
Mario Waissbluth in terms of the consequences of neoliberal and
market policies in school education: high social segregation and
low attainment in schools, plus a weakened public image of public
education and the teaching profession.

Sharing the diagnosis,however, I do believe Waissbluth’s (and Educación 2020’s) proposals
to revert this situation would fall short to produce the necessary
changes. I don’t think this is the place to get in a detailed
argument, but I would say that Chile’s problems won’t be solved by
employing ‘market tools’ and ‘special funds’ as change levers.

There’s a need for more radical responses to address the radically
grim scenario of Chilean school education. The idea is to break
free from the neoliberal principles underpinning the Chilean school
system (market, choice, privatisation) that have turned education
into a commodity.

To do so, it isn’t enough to think that ‘we can
play the game better’ than the people that came before us, and use
neoliberal strategies to improve education quality (which is, in my
opinion, what people from the Concertación thought in the
90s).”

A group funded by a rightwing think tank calls itself the “Commission on School Reform” and attacks Scottish public schools. The BBC reports the “findings” of the “commission” as objective research, not advocacy.

Sound familiar?

Pasi Sahlberg of Finland (author of Finnish Lessons) refers to the obsession with testing, accountability and choice as the Global Educational Reform Movement or GERM. Finland has thus far managed to avoid catching the GERM and places its bets on teacher professionalism, a strong safety net for children, and child-centered education.

Eduardo Andere of Mexico has studied world systems of education. He here describes how Mexico has fallen for GERM:

Here in Mexico we are going frantic into this frenetic world testing. A new National Constitutional amendment is on its way to create a National testing and assessment agency with unlimited power for assessment and education policy. All federal and state governmental agencies will have to follow the guidelines issued by this new-to-be-agency. And a new teaching professional civil service, will be set up to assess teachers under standardized tests for entering into teaching or rewarding their performance, based mainly on their pupils’ tests results. And the problem here, with a very centralized education and very powerful oriented political system, what one person thinks is what all people do.

If you are bad, we are worse. This is why we have consistently performed at the bottom among all OECD’s PISA contesters; compared to Finland that has consistently played at the top. Finland and Mexico are the two opposites. The study of both make extraordinary lessons for all in a shocking contrasting way! But our policy makers are so influenced by the US federal policy makers and the OECD’s policy transmitters, that there is no way that we from the academia, or the more scientific means of looking at things, can teach them otherwise. They of course are joined by influential and “successful” businesspeople, who think that schools can be run the same way as car or gadget factories.

Students are not gadgets. And teachers are not robots.