This is the third and final post about Education in Chile by Professor Mario Waissbluth, which he wrote for this blog to help us understand a system that took Milton Friedman’s advice and relied heavily on testing and choice.

Chile´s Education (III): A necessary change of course.

In my two previous columns I described the Chilean political, economic and educational model. In short, growth with inequity and segregation, which is showing serious signs of being questioned in its roots… in the streets.

In this context, can the educational model change its course, given the fact that, constitutionally, Congress is almost by definition tied up in two halves, therefore giving to both sides veto power over major changes?

If the November election is won by the same coalition which invented the present model, I am afraid that the change of course will be microscopic, if any. After all, they are the proud parents of this by now grown baby, and their ideological faith in it is blind. Evidence does not matter. If, on the other hand, the center left coalition wins the election (more likely), they have shown sufficient public repentance with their omissions, so that there is more ground for hope… depending on the results of the simultaneous election in Congress, which in the end will define the depth and feasibility of the transformations.

Our Foundation, Educación 2020 (www.educacion2020.cl) published in April a document called “The educational reform that Chile needs”, which in essence presents a middle course, hopefully acceptable to both aisles in Congress. The more radical students call it “yellow”, the “tea-partyists” call it “marxist”. Such is life. Our proposals are based on eight strategic pillars, designed to change course gradually, from what Hargreaves and Shirley have named as “the 2nd way” (in this case ultra-pure, skimmed and distilled, far worse than the US and British models) not towards a “Finnish 4th Way” (politically and culturally impossible) , but towards a middle course, something like a “3.5 Way”.

The eight pillars, each having a set of short, medium and long term proposals, are:

1. A program for the reconstruction and appreciation of the teaching profession, at the pre-school and school level.

2. 350.000 new spaces of high quality preschool openings, free and non-selective, from ages 1 to 5.

3. Rebirth of public education, to transform it into a formidable competitor of private education in every district, regardless of its socioeconomic composition.

4. Rebirth of technical education at the high school level, where close to 45% of kids study in the utmost decay of quality and motivation.

5. Use market tools and special funds to “perforate” market competition and promote collaboration amongst all types of schools, teachers and principals.

6. Gradual but steady moderation of the “command and control” bureaucracy and the teaching to the test abuse.

7. Radical innovation in the teaching models being taught in Schools of Education, to bring them from the XIX to the XXI century.

8. Last but not least, the hardest one from the ideological viewpoint: slow down and reverse segregation as much as possible, by gradual elimination and control of financial segregation (i.e. charging fees to parents in state subsidized schools), gradual elimination of profit in the school system, and serious prohibitions regarding selection, skimming and early expulsion of the less promising students.

This reform would require approximately 1.5% of GDP in additional public expenditure, not from one year to the next, but gradually over 6 years, thus reaching levels closer to OECD standards. Wish us luck.

This is the second is a series of three articles written by Professor Mario Waissbluth of Chile for this blog. In this series, he describes the school system in Chile, which is based on testing and choice.

Chile´s Education (II): The results of the most neoliberal system in the world

Yesterday I described the Chilean economic and educational system. Now I shall explore its good and ugly results.

Unleashing market forces generated steady growth in per capita income since 1985 until now. As compared with Latin America, this index was the same in 1990, but today Chile’s is 50% higher. Similarly, the UNDP’s Human Development Index is far above that of the region, although well below the average OECD value.

Under Pinochet, the number of people below the line of poverty skyrocketed, beyond 40% of the population. However, since 1990 it has come down to 13%, thanks to more redistributive policies. So, why complain? Maybe Milton Friedman was right after all.

Nicanor Parra is our most prestigious living poet. He summed up Mr. Friedman´s error: “There are two loaves of bread. You eat two, I eat none. Average consumption: one loaf per capita”. Our income inequality Gini index is awful (0.52), and the tax structure does not help much in correcting it (0.50). The line dividing the poorest from the richest 50% of the population is a daily income of US$ 8 dollars a day… and from there down to US$ 2 dollars a day for the poorest 10%.

The children in the lower half are, on the average, getting out of high school without understanding what they read. They are admitted with no selection to for-profit low-quality universities or institutes, dropping out without a college degree in about 50% of the cases, and heavily indebted after this. This is the powder keg that exploded in 2011 and the firestorm has not stopped until today.

It should be said that, as in the economy, in education there have been some promising results. Attendance to basic school, high school and tertiary education is similar to the OECD average. PISA results have shown one of the best improvements in the world from 2000 to 2009, although, strangely, the internal testing system does not show any significant improvement in the average or in the inequality of results. Public spending in education is 4% of GDP, as compared with 6% in the OECD countries.

Things look ugly in the teacher´s staffroom. Their average salary is 40% that of engineering, law, business or medical careers. 40% of them drop out from schools before 5 years. Morale is generally low, confrontation with authorities is high, especially in the public sector which has been under attack for 30 years, by action and/or neglect. Teaching to the test, taken to the extreme, is making robots out of children and teachers. The best proof is that the very expensive Chilean private schools show international results well below the OECD average.

As a professor in one of the best and most selective public universities in the country, I can attest that 50% of my students are not capable of drafting an understandable two page essay on anything. They spent 12 years in school, training to answer multiple choice sheets, speedily forgotten to open brain space for next year´s new payload of material… which meant little to them.

The worst part, by far, is the social and academic segregation of Chilean schools, the worst in the world after Macao, according to PISA statistics. Thanks to market competition and generalized skimming practices, 21% of our children attend socio-culturally integrated schools, compared with 35% in Latin America, 46% in OECD countries, and above 50% in Finland or Canada. Educational apartheid.

In the low income academic ghettos it will be almost impossible to improve results, no matter how much money is poured into them. Even worse, Chilean education has enhanced segregationist and individualistic attitudes in all levels of society. This is steadily undermining social cohesion, to the point that it will be difficult to regain social peace, no matter which the next coalition in power is.

Mario Waissbluth (www.mariowaissbluth.com) has a PhD in engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1974). Currently he is a professor at Universidad de Chile and President of Fundación Educación 2020, an advocacy movement for equity and desegregation of the chilean school system (www.educacion2020.cl). His soon to be published book, with Random House (in spanish) is “Change of Course: A new way for Chilean education”.