Innovation can be contagious

IDB sends teachers and administrators to study Latin America’s most forward-looking school systems

There are islands of innovation and creativity throughout Latin America’s vast public education systems, but very little human traffic between them. Teachers and education officials in one country are rarely aware of what is working well in another. As a result, many proven strategies for change—strategies that are uniquely suited to the Latin American educational context—are not adapted or replicated on a larger scale.

During meetings on education policy at the last two Summits of the Americas, IDB specialists suggested that such cross-fertilization could be encouraged by sending groups of selected teachers and administrators on study tours of Latin American countries that have developed innovative and sustainable programs to improve learning in public schools. Education officials from several countries urged the Bank to develop a program to that effect. Last year, the IDB contracted with PREAL (Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas) to administer a study tour program. A joint project of the Corporation for Development Research (CINDE) in Santiago, Chile, and the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C., PREAL selects participants for the study tours based on a competitive application process.

During 2001 two different teams of around 20 teachers, administrators and education ministry officials from eight countries in the region visited Chile and Colombia (Chile’s Escuela Albert Einstein, profiled in the issue, was one of the stops on the study tour). In each case, the visitors met with local and national education officials and visited several schools to experience innovative programs firsthand.

This year, additional study tours will go to Guatemala and El Salvador to study school-based autonomy and to Mexico to look at experiences in compensatory education. IDBAmérica will accompany some of these tours to examine how national education reform programs intersect with the day-to-day reality of individual schools.

See PREAL link at right for more information on the study tours.