This paper characterizes household spending in education using microdata from income and expenditure surveys for twelve Latin American and Caribbean countries and the United States. Bahamas, Chile, and Mexico have the highest household spending in education and Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay have the lowest. Tertiary education is the most important…

The COVID-19 pandemic that since January 2020 has been battering different regions, countries, and continents has not only paralysed much of the world's economic activities, but it has also made an impact on the educational work of schools and families, teachers, and communities. In this brief contribution, we will sketch the effects of the…

English Language Teaching (ELT) in Latin America and elsewhere in public schools and higher education and parts of the private sector has long been failing badly. The coronavirus pandemic should focus minds on changing that situation. Going back to Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) business as usual should not be an option. In this…

This essay compares and contrasts the educational movements of three nations--the United States, Mexico, and the Soviet Union--established according to Eurocentric cultural values. In each country, mass education was undertaken to help produce an assimilative national culture during formative periods characterized by instability. In two of these…

This paper evaluates the impact on dropout rates of a policy change in Mexico that eliminates grade retention for all first to third-grade students, causing a sharp reduction in repetition rates. I use a 12-year panel of schools to exploit such variation and estimate Difference-in-Difference models showing an average decrease in dropout rates of…

The Mexican educational reform is based on transformations towards the conception of a new world, as a result of technological advances and new knowledge communities, where the parameters are established mainly by various international organizations, and where countries implement, evaluate, integrate and describe the necessary conditions for…

In 2020, 1.5 billion students in 188 countries/economies were locked out of their schools. Students everywhere have been faced with schools that are open one day and closed the next, causing massive disruption to their learning. With the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic still raging, the disruption to education has extended into 2021 and many…

In recent decades, formal programmes for Mexican civic education have slowly shifted from an emphasis on national identity and solidarity through assimilation to a multicultural (if not intercultural) emphasis on forms of democratic membership and participation. Yet such advances in educational policy and curricula are limited and sometimes…

In this paper, drawing from data from several experiences and studies in which I have been involved in Mexico, I reflect on the constraints and inertia of classroom cultures, and the barriers to successful, meaningful and transformative technology integration in mathematics classroom. I focus on teachers as key players for this integration,…

The purpose of this brief is to examine the biases associated with the term "immigrant" and the challenges educators may experience when students are engaged in bi-national education. As the current administration's immigration policies are enacted, many students who have been educated in the United States may soon transition into…

In this article I present recent educational reforms implemented in Mexico and their implications for literacy instruction; in particular, I analyze changes to upper secondary education that seemingly want to promote the development of "disciplinary competences" among students enrolled in different educational tracks. The debates among…

Educational policy in Mexico and throughout Latin America is shifting focus from school access to school quality. Improving "quality" is often interpreted as enhancing student learning opportunities, but three issues remain unresolved: (a) what constitutes opportunity to learn (OTL) in classrooms; (b) how to assess classroom OTL (COTL);…

Contributions from and innovation in science and technology over many decades have resulted in dramatic improvements to American lives, including enhanced living standards and life expectancy, better access to information and connectivity across the globe, and increased access to and affordability of consumer goods. The analysis in this report is…

This paper discusses the background, current situation and challenges of educational integration and inclusive education in Mexico and Chile. These countries obtained similar low results on the academic achievement of their students (Mexico last and Chile second last) among OECD countries; and above average scores, among Latin-American countries.…

The countries of Latin America have been no exception to global calls for educational transformation and teacher professionalization at the secondary level. One of the newest of these reforms is Mexico's Reforma de la Educacion Secundaria (RS) (Reform of Secondary Education), launched in 2006. This article examines portrayals by various actors of…