Betancur 2008

Bentancur, Nicolás. 2008. "La nueva agenda de las políticas educativas en el Cono Sur (Argentina, Chile y Uruguay 2005-2008)." Revista Debates 2.2: 272-298.

• Introduction
• reforms of the 1990s tended to
• involve centralization of curriculum creation, but decentralization of administration (273)
• schemes of "positive discrimination" in favor of the poor
• introduction of business ideas into education
• expansion of the role of families and businesses in education
• Argentina: decentalization of secondary teachings and teacher training (273-4)
• Chile: introduction/perfection of market regulation of education (275)
• Uruguay: maintained the national state as central head of education
• recently all these countries have begun to talk/change these reforms again, thanks to left of center governmetns (274)
• Argentina
• 2006 law came out of Néstor having a big open discussion with large numbers of people in society (275)
•  2006 law rescinded parts of 1993 law, resulted in
• returning federal state as the guarantor of access to and right of education (276)
• made secondary school obligatory, and created systemwhere provinces can choose to do 6 years each of primary and secodnary, ot 7 and 5 (respectively)
• created a Consejo Federal de Educacion, with consultative councils that include teachers (276-7)
• this reform didn't roll back decentalization totally (277)
• nor did it end the financing of private education
• CTERA like this reform, law included a lot of things that CTERA suggested should be in there, and it got a lot of things it has watned for a while, like (278)
• declaration that education is a right and should be free
• growth of financing of schools to 6% GDP (PBI)
• the right to free teacher training
• the right of colelctive negotiation at the provincial AND national level
• Catholic schools were also a fan of the bill (279), more or less
• Chile
• student protests in 2005 demanded free schooling and transportation to school (280)
• teachers eventually joined protests and there was a national strike
• there was a council to solve these issues, that woudl include students, but at first it was stalled because students became a bit radicalized, and strike grew as more social groups joined the students' cause (280-1)
• once the council finally got together, including social groups, parties, and student representatives, it became clear that everyoen was unhappy, but great divergence in ideas on how to fix the system...some wanted more martket, some wanted less (281)
• Colegio de Profesores, union, was with the students (282) they wanted more centralization, better pay, shorter hours
• on the other end of the spectrum, private schools wanted fewer laws, more flexibility
• teachers groups did make some deamdns on private schools, not that thy be nationalized, but at least that they would be regulated more closely, including their entrance requirements (284)
• government in Chile did not try to replace the private system set up by Pinochet and perfected in the 1990s, but it dis try to smooth out some of the issues with it, make it a bit more equitable (286-287)
• Uruguay
• new law in teh 1990s didn't change tehcentalized, hierarchical nature of education, but was undertaken without any input from social groups, and the unions were against it, so a new law in the 2000s with the new left government was likely (287-8)
• the government convened a large Congress to figure out the new education law, parties were not allowed to be involved, only social actors, though unions were allowed and they tended to hav ea large say in the matter (288-290)
• new law reaffirmed much of old law, and said that funding could not go below 6% GDP (292)
• created autonomy and co-governance of schools by parents, teachers, students, and administrators (293)
• Conclusion: is there a new paradigm of education politics in teh Southern Cone?
• none of these reofrms were massive changes, refoundations (294)
• non of the reforms really chagne public/private relationship in their country (295)
• all reformers seem preoccupied with making the porcess inclusive of social actors
• teachers and students growing in power, technocrats and private sector losing power
• see tables on page 296 for some quick conclusions