For decades, presidents and ministers of education have proudly announced they were spending more money, building more schools, hiring more teachers, and enrolling more students, to the applause of poor parents delighted to have their children spend more time in school. But education has improved too slowly in Latin America. Part of the reason is that leaders and the public focus exclusively on a single measure of success: enrollment.
What has gotten lost in the region-wide rush to expand enrollment is that getting kids into school is not enough. The goal of education is to promote learning. Sitting in classrooms is a weak proxy for knowing how to read, do math, and apply science. Latin America needs to worry less about schooling and more about learning.
Complete article via Americas Quarterly.
