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Abstract
Since the 1990s, Chile has participated in all major international large-scale assessment studies (ILSAs) of the IEA and OECD, as well as the regional ones conducted by UNESCO in Latin America, after it had been involved in the very first international Science Study in 1970–1971. This article examines the various ways in which these studies have impacted on educational policies in Chile. It discusses how results were used for leverage purposes in law-making, and how the concepts and frameworks of specific ILSAs were integrated into crucial normative policy instruments, particularly curriculum standards, as well as the national assessment framework and instruments. In identifying main features and means of impact, the article illustrates that the use of data and criteria from international assessments varies in ambits and depth of impact, according to the larger features of the political context in which educational policies are embedded.
Notes
1. Thus, a major historian of the country’s educational development shows how its elites at the end of the nineteenth Century ‘turned’ to Germany as key educational referent:
‘The Sedan defeat (of the French against the Prussian army in 1871) reverberates in a strange form in this country which is going through a period in which prosperity stimulates the wish for a rapid cultural growth. The army and public education turn to Germany’. (Labarca Citation1939, 181)
2. The country joins APEC in 1994, signed free-trade agreements with Canada in 1996, Mexico in 1998, the United States in 2003, and became a member of the OECD in 2010.
3. Chile participated in IEA’s Six Subjects Study (Science, Reading, Literature, French, English, Civics), through the Statistical Research Institute of Universidad de Chile, which officially joined IEA in 1967. The national results were published in 1975 in a context of military-controlled universities and known only to a small group of academic specialists (Cariola et al. Citation2011).
4. Corresponding to the governments of President Frei (1994–2000), President Lagos (2000–2006) and President Bachelet (2006–2010), of the centre-left political alliance ‘Concertación por la Democracia’; President Piñera (2010–2014), of the right-wing political alliance ‘Alianza Democrática’; and President Bachelet (2014–2018), of the left-of-centre political alliance ‘Nueva Mayoría’.
5. Chile set up a national census-based standardised assessment system of learning results in 1988, a decade before the international wave of comparative assessments of schooling results started to gather momentum. Contrary to identified trends in the developing world (Kamens and Benavot Citation2011), ILSAs in Chile came after, not before the setting-up of its national assessment system.
6. Leverage is understood in this context as promotion of policies that are aligned with a political agenda, and not as the attempt to control a system for affecting its results (Tobin et al. Citation2015).
7. We benefitted with information and insights from the present head of the Unidad de Currículum y Evaluación (UCE) of the Ministry of Education, Alejandra Arratia, and her predecessor during President Piñera’s Government, María Loreto Fontaine; the head of the curriculum department of UCE during the first Bachelet Presidency, Jacqueline Gysling; and the head of SIMCE at present, within the recently established Agencia de la Calidad, Juan Bravo. We need to add that author Meckes headed the SIMCE system from 2003 to 2007, and author Cox headed UCE from 1998 to 2006, thus both being part of the decision-making regarding the participation and use of ILSAs.
8. The main newspaper of the country, El Mercurio, articulated this across-the spectrum political and economic elites’ rationale in a lead article when the Government decided to join PISA 2000, ‘a courageous decision’ according to the editorialist, knowing that the results would not be good nor compare well: ‘The knowledge of the quality of Chilean education, measured against international standards, is a decisive step which permits to assess the efficacy of educational reforms, search for ways of improvement and learn from comparative experience’. El Mercurio, 3 September 2001, 3.
9. Two leaders of the Ministerial programme for ICT in the schools of Chile, (Ignacio Jara, Enrique Hinostroza), provided unequivocal testimony regarding the accumulative effect on the programme’s leadership of the country’s participation in three IEA studies assessing computer practices and skills: ‘more than the data, our participation enriched the capacities of Enlaces to analyse and monitor ICT policies and programmes’. (Communication to authors, 8 July 2016).
10. Message of the President No. 456/359 to the President of the Chamber of Deputies, initiating the bill to establish a system for professional promotion and development of teachers in the municipal sector. Santiago, 29th of February 2012.
11. President Bachelet message No. 312-363 to the President of the Chamber of Deputies, initiating the legal project to create a plan for citizenship education in every school. Santiago, 5 May 2015.
12. Cfr. Historia de la Ley 20.485, 2° Trámite, Senado, Informe de Comisión de Educación, Sesión 74, Legislatura 362. Particularly, the testimonies of R. Rodríguez (Acción Educar) and M. Waissbluth (Corporación 2020).
13. See for example the TIMSS 2011 Science report and its trends analysis, where Chile is among the countries that between 1999 and 2011 period have improved most. Likewise, Rivas (Citation2015) analyses the results of PISA for seven Latin American countries deriving lessons from Chile’s consistent progress (and its top position in 2012).
14. Asked about this paradox a high-ranking government official in a meeting with policy-researchers, (attended by one the authors) answered: ‘if we publicised the TERCE results, how could we explain to the public the need for the present reform?’ (Meeting convoked by Minister N. Eyzaguirre, held at Biblioteca Nacional, 18 December 2014).
15. General Law of Education (Law No. 20.370), of August 2009.
16. The Commission invited the leaders of the CIVED study, Judith-Torney Purta and Jo-Ann Amadeo, to present the results of CIVED in general and of the comparative results of the three participating countries in the Americas (USA, Colombia and Chile), in particular. (Torney-Purta and Amadeo Citation2004). They addressed session 5 of the Commission, on 27th of August, 2004.
17. A progress map describes the knowledge, skills, understandings, attitudes and values that students develop, in the order in which they typically develop them (Forster and Masters Citation2010).
18. See the guidelines for teachers published in 2005 for the 2006 test, available at http://www.agenciaeducacion.cl/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/folleto_orientacion_4basico_2006.pdf.
19. See: SIMCE 1999 results on www.simce.cl.
20. ‘The government of Chile values highly the external assessment of its policies and results. The evaluation by OECD will be a key contribution to face the new challenges with success’, wrote Minister of Education S. Bitar in the Preface of the OECD Report (OECD Citation2004, 11).
21. Specifically, TIMSS 1999-level descriptions and released items with their results for different countries in fourth- and eighth-grade tests, CIVED 1998, 1999-level descriptions and items, NAEP 1994–2003 released items with results, WASL 2001–2003 and SIMCE 1999–2003 items.
22. See Reading and Science Learning Standards retrieved from http://www.curriculumenlineamineduc.cl/605/articles-33859_recurso_6.pdf
23. See SIMCE (2003) Orientaciones para la Medición, p. 11. retrieved from http://www.agenciaeducacion.cl/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/folletos_2003_2medio.pdf
24. According to regulations of Law No. 20.529, ‘Sistema nacional de aseguramiento de la calidad de la educación’. Santiago de Chile, August 27th, 2011.
25. TIMSS 1999, International Mathematics Report, Exhibit 6.3, 192.
26. TIMSS 1999, International Science Report, Exhibit 6.3, 204.
27. On the historical and institutional genesis of this situation, see Cox (Citation2016).
28. The programme, part of the MECE-SUP investment in higher education strategy of five successive governments, specified that institutions had ‘… to redefine the profiles of the prospective teachers of primary education, establishing disciplinary specialisations (or mentions)’ See, Ministerio de Educación (Citation2003b).