Thursday, January 20, 2011

A damning indictment of education in Mexico and the SNTE teachers union

There might be lies, damned lies, and then statistics, but nevertheless: These figures mean something.
Despite the incentive of a salary hike ranging from 20 to 150 percent of their basic salary, only 32 percent of teachers in primary and secondary education agreed to take an evaluation test of their skills.

According to the ministry of education (SEP), out of 1,156,506 teachers in the country, only 635,051 showed any interest in taking the evaluative test. And of the latter group, only 377,460 actually followed through.

The SNTE, the teacher union led by president-for-life Elba Esther Gordillo, has fought tooth and nail against most any form of evaluative mechanism of Mexico's teachers. Note that the evaluation mentioned was moreover wholly voluntary, yet with a significant monetary bonus: 68 percent still refused to take it.

El Universal also informs us that SNTE didn't respond to a a request for comments. Fair enough: How does one rationalize away these statistics?

No comments:

Post a Comment