Sep 5, 2013
japantimes.com
AP
MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s Senate overwhelmingly passed a sweeping reform of the notoriously dysfunctional public school system early Wednesday, handing President Enrique Pena Nieto an important victory in his push to remake some of his country’s worst-run institutions.
The Senate voted 102-22 in favor of a standardized system of test-based hiring and promotion that would give the government the tools to break the teachers unions’ near total control of school staffing.
That control includes the corrupt sale and inheritance of teaching jobs, and it has been widely blamed for much of the poor performance of Mexican schools, which have higher relative costs and worse results than any other in the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The late-night vote clears a path for Pena Nieto to move forward with a series of even more controversial reforms, including a measure that would violate one of modern Mexico’s longest-standing taboos by allowing private investment in the state-run oil company. But there is potential trouble ahead.
Education advocates say a series of concessions to the smaller of the two main teachers unions undermined the reform’s ability to create true change in the national education system.
And despite those concessions, the smaller teachers union continued days of debilitating demonstrations in Mexico City, sending tens of thousands of supporters to shut down the capital’s main boulevard and protest outside key government building Wednesday. Thousands attended smaller protests in cities around the country. The union also pledged to throw its support behind a weekend protest against the oil reform by leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The education reform initially pitted Pena Nieto against the country’s main teachers union — Latin America’s largest union and once one of the most important allies of his Institutional Revolutionary Party. The union fell into line after its head, Elba Esther Gordillo, was arrested on corruption charges in February.
A smaller union known as the National Education Workers’ Coordinating Committee (CNTE) continued protesting and eventually rallied thousands of teachers from poor states, paralyzing large sections of the capital for more than a week. In the end, the CNTE won concessions.
Reform advocates called the law an important first step but said much more remained to be done to change the system.
“It’s not everything we would have hoped for but it’s an historic change,” said David Calderon, director of the education reform advocacy group Mexicans First. “Of course it’s just a change in the rules that still has to be turned into reality.”
Much of Mexico’s educational dysfunction is attributed to the relationship formed more than half a century ago between the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the teachers unions, which gained increasing control of the education system in exchange for throwing their strength behind the government in the voting box and on the streets.
Over the years, the unions developed a virtual lock on teacher hiring and promotion. Almost every new teacher must go through a union to gain a school assignment, a practice that has spawned notorious levels of corruption, including the sale and inheritance of teaching positions Particularly in states with schools controlled by the CNTE, critics say, union influence has transformed schools from educational institutions into mechanisms for extracting funds from the state.
Among the benefits ended by the educational reform are payments of more than $100 million a year by some estimates to thousands of teachers who work full-time as union organizers and rarely, if ever, set foot inside a classroom.
The rest of the reform focuses on reasserting government control by awarding teaching jobs to the highest scorers on a standardized test instead of funneling them through a teachers union, a measure weakened by a series of back-room compromises with the CNTE.
The Senate voted 102-22 in favor of a standardized system of test-based hiring and promotion that would give the government the tools to break the teachers unions’ near total control of school staffing.
That control includes the corrupt sale and inheritance of teaching jobs, and it has been widely blamed for much of the poor performance of Mexican schools, which have higher relative costs and worse results than any other in the 34-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The late-night vote clears a path for Pena Nieto to move forward with a series of even more controversial reforms, including a measure that would violate one of modern Mexico’s longest-standing taboos by allowing private investment in the state-run oil company. But there is potential trouble ahead.
Education advocates say a series of concessions to the smaller of the two main teachers unions undermined the reform’s ability to create true change in the national education system.
And despite those concessions, the smaller teachers union continued days of debilitating demonstrations in Mexico City, sending tens of thousands of supporters to shut down the capital’s main boulevard and protest outside key government building Wednesday. Thousands attended smaller protests in cities around the country. The union also pledged to throw its support behind a weekend protest against the oil reform by leftist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
The education reform initially pitted Pena Nieto against the country’s main teachers union — Latin America’s largest union and once one of the most important allies of his Institutional Revolutionary Party. The union fell into line after its head, Elba Esther Gordillo, was arrested on corruption charges in February.
A smaller union known as the National Education Workers’ Coordinating Committee (CNTE) continued protesting and eventually rallied thousands of teachers from poor states, paralyzing large sections of the capital for more than a week. In the end, the CNTE won concessions.
Reform advocates called the law an important first step but said much more remained to be done to change the system.
“It’s not everything we would have hoped for but it’s an historic change,” said David Calderon, director of the education reform advocacy group Mexicans First. “Of course it’s just a change in the rules that still has to be turned into reality.”
Much of Mexico’s educational dysfunction is attributed to the relationship formed more than half a century ago between the Institutional Revolutionary Party and the teachers unions, which gained increasing control of the education system in exchange for throwing their strength behind the government in the voting box and on the streets.
Over the years, the unions developed a virtual lock on teacher hiring and promotion. Almost every new teacher must go through a union to gain a school assignment, a practice that has spawned notorious levels of corruption, including the sale and inheritance of teaching positions Particularly in states with schools controlled by the CNTE, critics say, union influence has transformed schools from educational institutions into mechanisms for extracting funds from the state.
Among the benefits ended by the educational reform are payments of more than $100 million a year by some estimates to thousands of teachers who work full-time as union organizers and rarely, if ever, set foot inside a classroom.
The rest of the reform focuses on reasserting government control by awarding teaching jobs to the highest scorers on a standardized test instead of funneling them through a teachers union, a measure weakened by a series of back-room compromises with the CNTE.
No comments:
Post a Comment