National development, a worldwide rationale of mass schooling systems, is both economic and social-integrative and supports the human capital paradigm. The social-integrative objective fosters membership in modern systems of state and money exchange that pull people away from traditional ethnic, cultural, regional, or religious allegiances. This paper considers educational supervisors' roles in Guatemala, a developing country in which the linkage between schooling and economic development is still weak, but in which the social-integrative goal is becoming increasingly important. After a lengthy discussion of Guatemala's recent economic and political crises, the paper identifies national security as a motive behind the redirection of education resources from urban Ladinos to rural Indian populations. Because of insufficient resources, primary education was emphasized, while secondary schooling (more closely related to economic development) languished. In fact, failure (through complex examinations) has been used to reduce the number of secondary students; the real failure is a system too small and irrational to accommodate more than a few lower middle class students. In this situation, supervisors' roles have promoted neither efficiency nor fair access. These roles would clash with the reality of extremely limited resources, the norms of accommodating urban middle class Ladinos, and the political agenda of the all-powerful army officers. Supervisors are merely school inspectors with little training and views of Indians as social inferiors. In 1985, a proposal was made to the Ministry of Education to convert supervisor services from inspector to instrumental roles. True reform will not happen until national policy has identified a stronger linkage between the economy and schooling. Included are eight references. (MLH)