Chapter 7: Atempts At Reforms

Reform in Other Countries

Malaysia is not the only nation contemplating reform of its education system. There is a global movement to make education more responsive and accountable. While reforms in the Third World focus on increasing access and availability of basic education, those in the First World are concerned with enhancing the quality and accountability.

As Malaysia has successfully passed the stage of providing basic education for all, it has little to learn from the reform efforts in Kenya or Papua New Guinea. Malaysia should instead look to the First World. I will examine recent reforms in Chile and California. Chile is not in the First World yet, but it is poised to join its ranks. Developmentally it is at the same stage as Malaysia. California on the other hand is fully developed nonetheless it shares many problems with Malaysia, with both having plural societies and large numbers of non-native English-speaking populations.

In 1980 Chile‘s military government launched a radical reform. Prior to that education in Chile, as in most developing nations, was highly centralized and controlled by a powerful ministry of the central government. It was the usual top-down command structure patterned after the old Soviet Union and replicated in many Third World countries. Surprising for a military government, Chile’s rulers decentralized education, giving administrative responsibility of schools to local governments (“municipalization“), and ending the state monopoly. The government actively sought private sector participation and vigorously encouraged competition between public and private schools. It changed the financing of schools to that of capitation, based on the number of students and their achievements.

For the military mindset that has central command, rigid controls, and strict regimentation as articles of faith, this was a radical departure. These changes in education were in tandem with other reforms in the economy and society the military was instituting at the time. Essentially it dismantled the massive state structure of the previous socialist government and pushed Chile towards an open market. The military was advised by a core of competent economists who were graduates of elite American universities, in particular the University of Chicago that had long championed free enterprise and market solutions to socioeconomic problems. These “Chicago Boys,” as they were admiringly referred to, had been tutored by the likes of Milton Friedman.

Prior to the reform Chile, like Malaysia, already had a fairly high standard of educational attainment, with an average of 9.7 years of formal schooling. Apart from universal primary schooling, the participation rate at secondary level was a high 87 percent; and tertiary, 26 percent.

Chile’s military government dismantled the entire system: administration, financing, and accountability. In the process the government broke the powerful stranglehold of the teachers’ union that had grown immensely under the previous socialist administration. Schools were no longer under the control of the central government rather municipalities.

The union had to negotiate not with one central ministry but with hundreds of local bargaining units, thereby effectively emasculating the union’s power. Remarkably, the government did not meddle with the curriculum, pedagogy, or teaching. It left such professional and technical matters to the teachers and educators.

The previous state monopoly on education was dismantled. Some schools are now entirely private, receiving no state funding whatsoever; others are private-public partnership and get public funding through capitation. National examinations are now used not only to assess the students but also to grade the schools. This information on school performance is made readily available to parents, thus empowering them to make meaningful decisions on where to send their children.

Today Chile‘s parents truly have meaningful choices, and they are exercising them. By 1998 over 34 percent of the parents chose subsidized private schools, while about 10 percent chose pure private ones.

During the first decade of reform primary enrolment continued at near universal level, with secondary and tertiary enrolments jumping sharply from 65 and 11 percent respectively in 1980, to 87 and 28 percent by 1997. Impressive! The dropout rate too declined dramatically, from a high of 8.0 percent in1981 to 1.6 percent in 1997 at primary level; and from 8.3 percent in 1981 to 5.8 in 1997 for secondary. Even more impressive!

The reforms initiated by the military were dictated from above, with little consultation from the masses – typical of the military mentality. Remarkably when military rule ended in1989, the succeeding civilian government did not dismantle these reforms; instead it refined and enhanced them.

The central lesson from Chile is decentralization. Authority and responsibility are shifted away from the distant central government to the political entity closest to the people. The central government no longer micromanages the schools; it does not dictate what and how to teach nor prescribe the textbooks. Those are left to individual schools and their professionals. The government maintains influence and control through macro levers in the form of capitation funding, open competition, and general market philosophy of openness and accountability. It also uses these elements to bring about changes in the schools. School performances are now monitored and the results released to the public, thus ensuring accountability.

The second lesson is that government can affect profound changes without resorting to micromanagement and other details of control. There are enough macro levers such as the funding mechanism and assessment feedbacks to prod these schools in the desired direction.

Third, equity does not mean the delivery of the same package of goods and services to all rather the system must be flexible and adaptable to respond to the needs of diverse groups. The role of the government should be properly focused on those most vulnerable or left out. For example, the government introduced school meals for the poorest 10 percent of the student population. In the past, the central government could not effect these changes as it was involved in running thousands of other institutions that could run themselves very well. By husbanding its resources and focusing its efforts, the ministry was able to help more effectively those who were truly in need.

The Chilean reform shifted the focus of government away from directly managing and controlling the schools to providing general guidelines and broad parameters. The actual administration and running of the schools are left to the local level, accountable directly to the parents.

A similar “top-down” reform was also successfully enacted in California, but within the context of a political system the exact opposite of a military dictatorship. Yet the results were just as profound and effective.

California is the most diverse state in the union. A significant proportion of its children come from families where English is not spoken, a situation similar to Malaysia. Educating and integrating these diverse groups are truly formidable tasks. In the past California like other states used bilingual education to bring these children into the mainstream. Children were first taught in their native language while English was being gradually introduced. As their facility in English improved, other subjects would then be taught in English until these students were fully integrated into the mainstream. This philosophy is subscribed to by the American educational establishment, which claims that this is the most effective way to teach and reach these children.

The reality was far different. These children often felt left out and marginalized. They did not learn much; their test scores were atrocious and dropout rates horrendous. When these children grew up they became a burden on society. Their lack of basic educational skills rendered them essentially unemployable. Mostly the burden fell heavily on themselves and their families. They were trapped in a permanent underclass by their lack of quality education. As usual, such social frustrations built up slowly, but once they erupted, it was difficult to contain.

In California, parents fed up with the poor performance of their children started a grass-root movement to abolish bilingual education. They were led by leading figures in the immigrant community who had as children successfully opted out of bilingual education to join the mainstream after a brief immersion period of studying English. Employers equally fed up with the poor quality of workers their companies had to contend with, in turn supported these parents.

Their efforts culminated in the passage of Proposition 227 in 1998 that effectively legislated an end to bilingual education in California. Now children with limited English proficiency have to take English immersion class for a maximum of one year, and then they would be placed into regular classes.

The campaign leading to the referendum was highly divisive and rancorous. Opponents of the initiative feared that these children would not be able to cope with the sudden introduction of English and thus would be forced to drop out. Supporters on the other hand were variously labeled as anti-immigrants and racists. They in turn accused the other side of wanting to trap children of immigrants in perpetual mediocrity. All of course professed to have the children’s best interest at heart!

The current equally contentious debate on the use of English to teach science and mathematics in Malaysia eerily reminds me of that earlier nasty California experience.

The results of that forced field experiment are now obvious. Within the first few months, teachers immediately began noticing a remarkable transformation. The children were no longer dropping out; their attendance improved markedly, and they were learning much more rapidly. Improvements were noted in all age groups. Test scores in one school district jumped from the 11th percentile to the 23rd by the first year. A doubling of improvement! By the third year it had jumped to the 32nd. Even more remarkable than improved test scores was the progress on the ground level. The students loved speaking English, they actually enjoyed learning. Their teachers were ecstatic! On the playgrounds these children were even more confident and mixed more freely with native English-speaking children. They now had “one-up” over their classmates who could speak only English. This tremendously enhanced their self-esteem and confidence, which spilled over to their other classroom performances.

Such dramatic results made converts of those who previously favored bilingual education into boosters of English immersion classes.

Did such successes settle the issue once and for all? Far from it! For one, at the same time the proposition was passed California also mandated class size reduction and introduced phonics teaching of English (the sounding of letters and syllables). While previously the average class was in excess of 30 students, today they are less than 20, and English was taught using the whole language method. Presumably all three – small classes, phonics teaching, and immersion classes – helped.

Meanwhile proponents of bilingual education in other states also introduced new innovative models. In Texas, the Houston school district in collaboration with Rice University set up a pioneering school using English and Spanish in tandem throughout the school years, a new twist to the old bilingual program. Thus far Rice School/La Escuela Rice offers only K-8 levels, and already it is wildly successful such that entry is by lottery, and slots for children of Rice faculty members are limited to 12 percent. The unique features of the school are its small class size, and extensive use of electronics, computers, and the Internet.

In addition to these two major initiatives, there were other small reform movements started by businesses, political activists, parents, and educators. Earlier I alluded to Louis Gerstner‘s New Century School funded by a private foundation. It gave grants directly to teachers and schools to pursue their own demonstration projects; these would later be shared with others. Not all their projects were successful.

Among the successes were Park View Elementary school in Mooresville, NC, that experimented with extended-day and year round programs; Ortega Elementary School in Austin, TX, a school with predominantly minority students, with its parenting classes to attract greater parental involvement with the school; and another also in North Carolina of creating schools near where the parents work.

The Annenberg Foundation also generously funded a number of demonstration projects nationwide under its Annenberg Challenge. These enabled teachers and educators to pursue their ideas on how best to improve their public schools. Among the lessons learned, as published in its Lessons and Reflections on Pubic School Reform, are that every child benefits from high expectations and standards, and that the surest way to improve student achievement is to enhance the skills of their teachers. Professional development of teachers is the key to better schools. Additionally schools need strong leadership not only in the classrooms but also at the principal’s office, the governing board, and at the ministry. There must also be mechanism to help teachers and pupils get to know each other better. The best and simplest way of achieving this is to make schools small or to divide existing large schools into smaller independent units. One recommendation that is relevant to Malaysian rural schools is that such schools must form networks for mutual support and to learn from each other. Lastly, schools must remain accountable and this accountability must be demonstrated in measurable and tangible ways.

The political activists were involved with charter schools and vouchers to enable poor children to attend good schools outside their neighborhood. One reform movement started by teachers is the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES). This is the most successful in terms of its ideas being accepted nationwide.

I will refer back to these examples in enumerating my reform proposals. The lesson here is that there are many paths to reform and that the different models when carefully thought out and thoughtfully implemented work equally well. We need to start small with few demonstration projects, iron out the kinks, and once they are proven successful, then and then only expand them. Our children are too precious to risk taking part in massive, half-baked social engineering experiments. There must also be a willingness to assess and improve as we go along. A perfect system does not remain so forever. It needs constant improvement and enhancement to meet ever-changing conditions and experiences. The most important lesson of all is that there is no panacea; nor is there a magic wand that one can simply wave and wish the problems away.

Next: Risks to Reforms

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