Quote:
Originally Posted by bob saunders
Has poverty and education gotten progressively worse in the DR? Do you have the facts to back up that, or is it just an opinion?
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Basic education in a crisis
Celso Marranzini, president of the pro elementary education organization, Action for Basic Education (Educa) says the nation's educational system should be declared in a state of crisis, mainly because of its low quality. He said that while more children are going to school, quality has remained low. Marranzini based his comments on findings presented at the Second Comparative Regional Study released recently in Chile by the Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluacion de la Calidad de la Educacion that focuses on the quality of education in Latin America. The study was partly funded by UNESCO. 15 countries were evaluated, including the DR.
The DR was ranked last in learning. In third grade math, for example, the DR ranked last, while the percentages were abysmal. While Cuba was a tops on the list with 54%, learning rate for third grade students in the DR registers a mark of 0.13%, far behind Nicaragua, 1.9% and Peru, 4.77%. In reading, the DR also scored low. The county registered 0.52% reading rates while Cuba had 44% and Costa Rica had 18.22%.
Marranzini calls for changes in the why education is structured in the DR and the insufficient funding it receives. Marranzini says the hours of instruction are too short. Reports have shown public school children receive on average 2-1/2 hours of instruction a day. He explained that while classes should start at 8am, this rarely happens because neither the kids nor the teachers arrive on time. He also added that things like the flag ceremonies add distractions and take away from school time. (01 August 2008)
Deficiencies in the education system
According to a report released during the Global Education Forum, most students in the Dominican educational system aren't getting the basic educational tools needed to succeed, which are important building blocks for their academic progress and is leading to unprepared students at the higher educational levels. The report was prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at the request of the Dominican government and points out that failing conditions of Dominican schools, insufficient investment, the bad image of teachers, difficulties in accessing education, drop out rates, high rates of repetition and lack of teaching resources are roadblocks in the development of a strong educational system. The main areas of concern about the state of the education system were that 70% of rural schools only offer between first and fifth grade education and that 45% of primary schools have to run three teaching shifts per day. The lack of an educational monitoring system and the lack of a learning evaluation program are also hurdles that need to be overcome by the educational system. Ian Whitman, Aims McGuiness, John Coolahan and Simon Schwartzman were part of the group that developed the report, which was presented to the Education, Higher Education and INFOTEP Ministers. The report makes recommendations, 55 in all, including increasing investment in education, reforming the teacher training system to produce better teachers, introducing full primary programs in rural schools and gradually reducing the number of teaching shifts in schools. (07 March 2008)
Poor showing for DR education
Cuba shows up as the best and the Dominican Republic as the worst in a study of third and sixth graders in 16 countries in the region, as well as the state of Nuevo Leon in Mexico. A total of 196,000 students, 8,854 classrooms and 3,065 urban schools were part of the four-year study, which was conducted by the Latin American Laboratory for Quality Evaluation under the aegis of the United Nations Education, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO). Today's A.M. editorial in Diario Libre, written by Adriano Miguel Tejada, himself an educator, states that Dominican education has "never been good, despite the myth about the old schools." Tejada says that schools used to cater for very few people and the teachers were barely high school graduates. The big contrast was with the total ignorance of the general population. In that context, students and teachers were geniuses. Tejada, himself a product of this older system, says that this does not take any merit from those teachers, who did their best and who had a real vocation, but it does give the right perspective. After Trujillo's assassination, education took two mortal blows: politics and large-scale growth. Both led to the creation of private schools without being truly elite. All over the world, the elite sends their children to private schools, either locally or overseas, but here, all the parents who wanted to educate their children within the proper timeframe had to pay for it, and the quality of education suffered, although it appeared that it was better than the public schools, themselves affected by student mobilizations and taken over by "toughs" that scared the middle class away forever. Because of this, according to the editor-professor, despite having a very high percentage of students in private schools, some of these very good, Dominican education never climbed a point, as evidenced by the studies of mathematics that have been carried out since the 1980s, because, in reality, the parents not only pay for education but also for the protection of their children in a safe environment, even though they have to carry their own chairs to school every day like they do in the barrios. (23 June 2008)
DR scores low in education
A regional comparison of test scores in math, science and language demonstrate the DR is below the regional average in all three categories, while Cuba is above the regional averages. The SERCE study, administered by UNESCO, compared the skills of third and sixth grade students in 16 Latin American countries. According to the study only 1% of Dominican students received max scores in reading comprehension, compared to 50% of Cuban students.
For information on the report:
http://portal.unesco.org/geography/en/ev.php-URL_ID=...
Or to download the report: unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0016/001610/161045e.pdf (02 September 2008)
In the end, this tells us that the education here is "abysmal." But don't take my word for it, just look on the streets and the way people drive, talk to each other etc. The lack of educational awareness in everyday life. Anyone who has lived here or worked here can tell you that the education here is scary.
Mr. Lu
