In her 2004 book Despite the Odds, Professor Merilee S. Grindle of Harvard University seeks to explain how education reform became an important item on the regional political agenda in the 1990s, how the new policies were crafted in the face of bitter hostility to change, how the reforms gained approval in a contentious political environment, and how the measures were put into practice. An examination of the experiences of Mexico, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, and the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais allows Professor Grindle to draw a number of conclusions about the dynamics of education reform in Latin America in the 1990s that remain relevant for policy-makers today.
