NewsWhore
09-09-2008, 03:40 PM
Jeffrey Puryear, vice president for Social Policy at the Inter-American Dialogue and Co-Director of the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL) has words of warning about the major deficiencies in Dominican public education. He comments on how the Dominican Republic and Cuba compared in the UNESCO-led Second Regional Comparative and Explanatory Study (SERCE) conducted by the Latin American Laboratory for Assessment of the Quality of Education (LLECE) showing contrasting evaluations of quality in education.
"What can we learn from Cuba and the DR", published 14 August, he comments on the low scores of DR public school students compared to Cuban students. His point is that scores from a recent region-wide student achievement test demonstrate again that an overwhelming number of Latin American children are failing to reach adequate levels in math, language and science.
He writes: "But most striking is that two countries - Cuba and the Dominican Republic - scored much differently than the others. Cuba scored way above the rest of Latin America, while the Dominican Republic scored way below."
The research showed that in third-grade reading, nearly half of Cuban students scored at the highest level, compared with1% in the Dominican Republic. By contrast, nearly a third of students in the Dominican Republic scored below level one, compared with 1% in Cuba.
"What is going on?" he asks. "What policies account for Cuba's high levels of achievement? What major, systemic changes will countries like the Dominican Republic have to make in order to raise student learning to adequate levels? International tests of student achievement like SERCE are crucially important in showing us who is doing well and who is not. They sound the alarm. But in order to improve, we need to take the next step and figure out how over- and under-achievers got that way."
www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=32&pubID=1559 (http://www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=32&pubID=1559)
See report at http://portal.unesco.org/geography/es/... (http://portal.unesco.org/geography/es/ev.php-URL_ID=10018&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html)
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#6)
"What can we learn from Cuba and the DR", published 14 August, he comments on the low scores of DR public school students compared to Cuban students. His point is that scores from a recent region-wide student achievement test demonstrate again that an overwhelming number of Latin American children are failing to reach adequate levels in math, language and science.
He writes: "But most striking is that two countries - Cuba and the Dominican Republic - scored much differently than the others. Cuba scored way above the rest of Latin America, while the Dominican Republic scored way below."
The research showed that in third-grade reading, nearly half of Cuban students scored at the highest level, compared with1% in the Dominican Republic. By contrast, nearly a third of students in the Dominican Republic scored below level one, compared with 1% in Cuba.
"What is going on?" he asks. "What policies account for Cuba's high levels of achievement? What major, systemic changes will countries like the Dominican Republic have to make in order to raise student learning to adequate levels? International tests of student achievement like SERCE are crucially important in showing us who is doing well and who is not. They sound the alarm. But in order to improve, we need to take the next step and figure out how over- and under-achievers got that way."
www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=32&pubID=1559 (http://www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=32&pubID=1559)
See report at http://portal.unesco.org/geography/es/... (http://portal.unesco.org/geography/es/ev.php-URL_ID=10018&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html)
More... (http://www.dr1.com/index.html#6)