March 30, 2007 | Volume 4, Issue 1
Improving Teacher and School Staff Performance in Mexico
Negotiating Student Learning Outcomes with the National Teachers Union
The promotion, training and admission system within the Mexican teachers union is having a negative impact on student learning outcomes. Three policies are proposed to help reform this system.
Introduction
The provision of public education is one of the main income redistribution policies of the Mexican State. However, as in many other countries, it suffers from burdensome government failures. The National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) has succeeded in exerting considerable influence over every aspect concerning the professional life of teachers and school staff. The Union’s clout extends from the public teacher development systems to every aspect of the incentives governing promotion, job location, supplementary training and other facets of their lifelong careers.1
The performance of teachers and school staff in the Mexican public education system results in unsatisfactory levels of learning outcomes and student performance. This is not only a consequence of deficiencies in the professional attributes, practices and skills of the education professionals—such as academic preparation and a culture of working collectively—but also the result of a perverse structure of incentives.
This paper explores the incentive structure facing education workers in Mexico in order to provide an explanation for their poor performance. Policies pursuing equity and enhancing quality by targeting teacher and school staff performance are in direct opposition to the interests and labor conquests of the powerful SNTE. Some recommendations are set forth that place student learning outcomes at the core of the incentive structure, with the recognition that any sustainable change in the status quo requires the consent of the Union. Negotiating with the SNTE is critical in order to improve the implementation prospects of new policies, to maintain political stability, and to avoid the contamination of other policy arenas.2
Background
The structure of incentives faced by teachers and other school staff in Mexico was shaped by a corporatist alliance between the SNTE and the post-revolutionary regime. This articulation of interests was legally institutionalized in the 1930s and survives in essence until now. Education policy was subordinated to the imperative of maintaining political stability, which is defined here as support for the regime and political control over the large body of public servants spread across the entire country.
Like other bureaucratic, peasant and labor organizations, the Mexican State created and fostered the SNTE in order to control the political participation of workers, peasants and public employees.3 The result was a corporatist arrangement that extended across the public and private sectors, maintaining broad political support for the regime in exchange for concessions that were subject to constant negotiation.4
Since the 1930s, multiple mechanisms of control have been embedded in the labor legislation that governs public employees. These mechanisms regulate important aspects of the internal life of unions. One of the most important aspects of this control is the unions’ legal monopoly, which allows only one union per sector in the public bureaucracy.5 In all cases, additional instruments of control were institutionalized through the labor legislation. For example, unions have broad discretion over the election and integration of related government bodies.6 Furthermore, union elites have control over union finances and a great deal of power over key administrative aspects, including the right to assign 50% of all new base openings in the public sector and to oversee the promotion and location of public employees.7
In the public sector, the benefits of this corporate relationship paid a disproportionate dividend to labor elites, who were granted discretion, given economic resources, and integrated as an active element in the political system.8 Labor elites became governors, deputies and senators, as well as other positions in the public bureaucracy. However, they were always subordinated to the President, who was the leader of the ruling party and the axis of the corporate regime. The imperatives of the corporate alliance between the SNTE and the State left the education authorities in a position of weakness, able to promote education policies only when the policies were not in opposition to the Union’s interests. For example, when the federal education system was expanded, the Union benefited by gaining new positions and a wider range of job locations to distribute as rewards.
Because of the SNTE‘s alliance with the regime, education authorities were forced to placate the SNTE as a part of all policy negotiations. This could include increasing the wages of teachers and school staff, expanding the number of positions, or otherwise increasing the Union’s ability to reward its members. At the same time education authorities were forced to maintain critical operational capabilities outside the Union’s control to retain some degree of policy congruence and independence. In situations where there was a tradeoff between costs to the Union and maintaining State autonomy, the President was forced to intervene and broker concessions for SNTE. On some occasions the president ultimately promoted policies that secured discipline within the regime while causing some financial harm to the Union.9 But in all instances, educational reforms were introduced with some degree of consent from the Union, following compromise on both sides.
The nature of this corporate arrangement benefited all public servants, even those in the lowest echelons. Within the education sector, this meant that teachers and other school staff gained tenure when they were hired.10 Furthermore, thanks to the pressure of the SNTE, education professionals were automatically granted tenure after graduating from a public Teacher University or Escuela Normal, which remain under tight Union control. In return new graduates were automatically inducted into the SNTE by law, which granted the union monopoly rights to represent all the federal base workers in the public education and culture sectors.
Formally, the labor legislation established a system of vertical promotion called Escalafón. Vacant positions were filled based on a list of union members ranked by weighted scores. Eventually the SNTE managed to include “participation in union affairs” as one of the determinants of the overall score alongside other factors, such as years of service, punctuality and “assessed performance” by hierarchical superiors, which was of negligible importance. Teachers that reached certain levels in the rankings could be promoted to principals or deputy directors, who in turn could ascend to superintendents (supervisores) and finally to sector superintendents (jefe de sector o supervisor general de zona). Each successive echelon in this administrative scale entailed a significant increase in salary.
Job location was determined by seniority and was altered as positions became vacant in main urban centers. Young graduates who were recently hired were assigned to the most remote rural locations. A commission led by the SNTE and the education authorities determined placement changes based on the accumulated years of service and the time spent in each school.
The formal system of incentives relied heavily on seniority, both in terms of years of service and involvement in union affairs. Apart from time, the best way for teachers and school staff to improve their prospects for promotion and job relocation was to actively participate in union affairs. Measures of improved student performance and learning outcomes were left out of the overall system of “punishments and rewards.” Education authorities focused on improving student outcomes only when doing so did not entail a threat to the control of the union over the structure of incentives of teachers and school staff.
Furthermore, in the late 1920s, precursors of the SNTE managed to unionize and infiltrate key management positions—such as principals, superintendents and middle management positions within the Federal Secretary of Education.11 This enabled the SNTE to influence key administrative areas under the responsibility of the education authorities that controlled human resources, the operation of the Escalafí³n and the placement commission. The SNTE could manipulate lists and weighted scores, in essence allowing the Union to legally sanction its discretional decisions over the promotion and job location of teachers and other school staff.
The fate of individual teachers depended on their compliance with the SNTE‘s guidelines. This included active political support in favor of the regime during campaigns and elections.12 Doing otherwise could jeopardize professional prospects of promotion and job location. In case the selective use of rewards and punishments proved unable to control rank members, threats of violence by union elites or the authoritarian regime could be used in order to restrain potential sources of dissidence.13 This coercive side of the regime started to wane as the county gradually transitioned to a more open and democratic political environment.
In 1993, a broad educational reform introduced an ambitious curricular reform, devolved service provision to the State Governments, and attempted to realign the incentive structure facing teachers and other school staff. A horizontal system of promotion was created to emphasize learning outcomes. This new system was superimposed onto the vertical promotion mechanisms inherent in the Escalafón and placement commissions.
This initiative benefited the SNTE by relieving building pressures from the Union’s ranks that demanded increased vertical mobility and improved remuneration prospects. In exchange for the Union’s support for these reforms, the government was in the position to grant a dramatic wage increase of 120% in real terms for teacher and school staff from 1989 to 1993.14 Additionally, the Union’s control of the traditional promotion and adscription system was left unchallenged, as well as its positions within the Secretary of Education and other public institutions.
As part of these reforms, Carrera Magisterial intended to introduce incentives for increasing teacher and school staff performance by voluntary adherence to the program. Horizontal promotion depends on the successive accumulation of points and is limited to fixed periods of time. Ordinary teachers can gradually earn higher wages without moving up into administrative positions, in some instances outperform the earnings of some principals and superintendents despite the initial wage differential. The scores for horizontal promotion are based on the results of standardized tests taken by teachers and their students, individual performance in courses taken at the annual mandatory enrichment sessions, and the level of their highest professional or academic degree.15
Carrera Magisterial sought to temper the perverse incentive structure faced by teachers and others school staff realigning it in terms of student learning outcomes. It managed to introduce the practice of generalized and periodical evaluations long resisted by the SNTE, and it provided incentives to improve the performance of a limited fraction of teachers that have been able to realign their efforts in accordance to the new incentives.16
However, because of the decentralization of the federal education system in 1992, the SNTE has been able to control Carrera Magisterial in several States, thus compromising its efficacy. Local chapters of the Union are able to push for “exceptions” in horizontal promotions for privileged cases. Furthermore, the SNTE‘s resistence succeeded in shaping the evaluation component of _Carrera Magisteria_l into an obscure and incomparable index unable to describe the competence of those taking the test.
A more pressing concern is the fact that Carrera Magisterial presents only a weak incentive to deviate from traditional pedagogical practices and bolster an improvement in teacher performance. This is demonstrated by the percentage of teachers that are unable to fulfill the mandatory requirements to apply or are unable to achieve the minimum results to participate in the program. The percentage of education professionals who have not been able to attain a promotion beyond the initial echelon of Carrera Magisterial remain as high as 71% in institutions of secondary educations and at 60% among primary schools. Education authorities concede that the program’s impact on learning outcomes has been limited or null. In words of Dr. Reyes Taméz, Secretary of Education (2000 – 2006), “I agree that [it] is not reaching its goals and that there have been no significant [improvements] in the quality of the education.”19
Policy Recommendations
There is evidence suggesting that the performance of teachers and other school staff constitutes one of the most important factors involved in determining learning outcomes within K – 12 education.20 In terms of math and verbal reasoning skills, several studies point consistently to the importance of altering teaching practices, increasing parental involvement and fostering collaborative school environments.21
In Mexico, improving the contribution of teachers and other school staff to student learning outcomes can only be achieved by realigning the incentive structure shaped by the corporatist regime and by its relation with the SNTE. Any reforms in this area will have to confront some of the Union’s most cherished labor conquests. It is not a coincidence that every major reform introduced in the Mexican K-12 education system has required prior consultation and consent of the SNTE.22 Any realistic policy alternative needs to take into account political feasibility constraints, which in the case of Mexico implies negotiating with the Union.23 This section presents some policy recommendations that attempt to realign the structure of incentives faced by teachers and school staff through a set of reforms to Carrera Magisterial and to the system of Teacher Development.
Reforming Carrera Magisterial (Proposal A)
The realignment of Carrera Magisterial should include:
- Increased transparency in program operations. This will bolster its legitimacy and erode the possibilities to manipulate scores and evaluations. Moreover, the processes leading to promotions and incorporations should be clear and open to public scrutiny.24
- The continuous training program for teachers should be reformed to address specific deficiencies that are identified in evaluations. Furthermore, the policy should be revised to more closely reflect the costs, benefits and relevance of continuous training.25
- Within the promotion indicators, there should be an additional component that provides incentives for fostering a collaborative environment.
- A special provision should be made that devotes special attention to teachers that are unable to meet minimum standards or fulfill the requirements for incorporation and promotion.
In order to successfully implement this proposal, the consensus of key stakeholders is needed. The SNTE, Congress and the Federal and State Governments will all need support the policy. This is critical to secure resources, implement the reforms and avoid political opposition that might end in open conflict. Moreover, the program should maintain its federal-state concurrency.
Reforming Teacher Education (Proposal B)
There is international and domestic evidence stressing the importance of practical experience for teachers as a factor for improved learning outcomes.26 Consequently, this policy proposal focuses on a curricular reform that increases the relevance of the practical experience component in each field of study.27
Other recommendations include:
- Enhancing the importance of collaborative work within the curricula of institutions responsible for teacher development.
- Increase the interaction of teacher development institutions with other universities and tertiary education institutions. Students should be allowed to take several credits in other public universities.
- Finally, the implementation of independent evaluations should continue on a regular basis and the results should be open to public scrutiny.
As in proposal A, the support of important stakeholders is needed to ensure program funding and implementation. In this case, teacher institutions should be included in the stakeholder mapping. The mechanisms used to launch this proposal could comprise a mix of regulatory measures and the availability of federal grants. The latter can be managed by the States and the authorities of the individual Teacher Universities.28
Negotiating with the SNTE
When attempting to introduce broad reforms in the education system, especially those aimed at improving the performance of teachers and school staff, it is important to understand the conditions that shape the support or opposition of the SNTE. It is instructional to identify some of the variables that might explain the Union’s capacity to distort or control proposed reforms in the long run.
As noted above, the SNTE has agreed in the past to the introduction of several major reforms to the basic education system. However, the union has also been successful in postponing or vetoing several of such initiatives over time.29 Many of the opposed initiatives have entailed varying degrees of limitation to the SNTE‘s discretion and control and to the potential for increasing its influence over other areas of the public education sector.
As mentioned in the first part of this paper, the education sector was subordinated to the imperative of maintaining political control. From the point of view of the post-revolutionary regime, realigning the perverse incentives faced by the teachers would eliminate key mechanisms of control and political mobilization.30 The reforms that have gained the SNTE‘s consent avoided challenging the existence or potential efficacy of these controls. Additionally, these initiatives frequently addressed the creation of new policies and institutions that did not directly involve their constituents, or that were originally intended to provide education services outside the traditional areas dominated by the SNTE.31 And most importantly, the SNTE agreed to policies that were supported or initiated by the President.
As the Mexican transition to democracy entered its final stage, there were dramatic changes in political environment in which the SNTE operated and in the Union’s relationship with the Presidency. This was especially true as the electoral dominance of the Institutional Revolutionary Party started to wane in the years leading up to 2000 when it lost the presidency. It became a continuous challenge for the SNTE to secure its survival via maintaining such constituency control mechanisms as the incentive structure.
As the Judiciary, Congress, State Governments and other institutions gained effective independence, the labor legislation and other regulatory sources of the SNTE‘s control were under constant threat. This is illustrated by key rulings in the Supreme Court and other federal judicial bodies that declared unconstitutional the legal limitation against designating more than one union per bureaucratic unit or Secretary.32 These rulings came into force after 1996, granting dissidents and disgruntled rank members the possibility of creating their own officially recognized unions.
An additional source of pressure on the Union came from within its base rank membership. As the changes identified above unfolded gradually, there was mounting pressure to limit discretion of the SNTE leadership by making assignment of vertical promotions and job locations transparent. These were dealt with differently on a state-by-state basis, under the cloak provided by 1992’s decentralization of the basic education system.
Public opinion became an important and unexpected source of pressure on the SNTE. As State control of the press was gradually eased, the union was identified as the main source of poor educational performance. This led to two important outcomes: (1) cementing the need for educational reform in the public agenda and (2) characterizing the union an active source of opposition to any change in the status quo.
Confronted from several angles and by several actors, the SNTE‘s reaction was pragmatically varied. To defend its wages, tenure-structure and reluctance to any involvement by the authorities in Union affairs, the SNTE emphasized the threat of mobilization in form of protests and violent radicalization. To reduce pressures from internal ranks, the Union (a) acquiesced to allow greater participation of dissidents in Union governance, (b) co-opted emergent leaders demanding transparency and equitable treatment where possible, and (c) eventually granted varying degrees of transparency in some States of the Escalafón and other mechanisms that determine tenure, promotion and job location.
Under these new circumstances, the SNTE agreed to a major reform in 2002. The Pact for Education Quality entailed the creation of an independent evaluative institution, the National Institute of Education Evaluation (INEE). Originally, Union members in Congress made several attempts to block the initiative in the lower chamber. Despite the complex negotiations, the new President’s political capital enabled the reform to pass.
For decades the Union had vetoed the creation of periodic, standardized evaluations of teachers and students. The SNTE agreed to integrate evaluations in 1993, but the results were not publicly released and were used only for the Carrera Magisterial.33 With the SNTE occupying a seat on the INEE advisory board, a compromise allowed evaluation results to be published given that the identity of individual teachers and schools are protected. Furthermore, the INEE would not be allowed to denounce the Union as the party responsible for poor student learning outcomes.
The creation of the INEE came after increased public and political pressure on the SNTE to improve its image. After assuring that the INEE posed no threat to the union’s control mechanisms, this educational reform provided the SNTE with the opportunity to demonstrate that it was in favor of improving the quality of education.
Recommendations and Conclusion
The corporate alliance between the State and the SNTE left its mark in a set of deeply rooted practices and institutions embedded within the labor legislation; a large number of administrative regulations and education policies; and a powerful Union with 1,400,000 members distributed across the county. The subordination of education policy to the imperatives of stability, control and political support for the post-revolutionary regime configured a set of incentives that favored loyalty to the State and the Union over student learning outcomes.
During the post-revolutionary regime, important reforms were introduced in the education system that threatened the dominance of the SNTE over certain areas of the sector. Only through the President’s political intervention was it possible to gain the Union’s consent for these reforms. In any case, these initiatives were never intended to alter the Union’s main mechanisms of control.
The gradual transition to democracy imposed considerable pressures on the system of incentives inherited by the post-revolutionary regime. As a result, some of the discretion and mechanisms available for the SNTE to control dissidents and secure political support were compromised. In response the union has employed several strategies to maintain its unity and cohesiveness. These strategies include neutralizing dissidents by incorporating them into the union’s governing bodies, threatening to mobilize, and pragmatically reducing or eliminating (a) its manipulation of the Escalafón and the adscription commissions and (b) its discretion over assigning class-hours and new openings.
Under this political environment, the possibility of negotiating important realignments of the incentive structure facing teachers and other school staff is quite plausible. As illustrated by the reform of 2002, obtaining the SNTE‘s consent for any initiatives, including the policy recommendations set forth in this paper, will depend on specific assurances that the Union’s traditional mechanisms of control are left unaltered. Increased pressure for more transparency and equality of treatment in the system for determining promotions, job adscription and assignment of class-hours and openings, as well as concerns for improving learning outcomes will continue to provide a window of opportunity for the pursuit of similar reforms.
Learning outcomes are the result of complex interactions between a large number of variables, including the nature of the services providing education, the socioeconomic status of students and the cultural capital of their households, and the social context in which these interactions take place. The breadth and scope of these relationships and the complexity of their causality forces a comprehensive approach in all efforts to improve student performance. To set the stage for comprehensive reforms, realigning the perverse set of incentives faced by teachers and other school staff should be a top priority for education policy in Mexico.
1 Alberto Arnaut. 1993. Historia de una profesión: maestros de educación primaria en México (1887–1993). Tesis de Maestría en Ciencia Política del Centro de Estudios Internacionales del Colegio de México. México: El Colegio de México.
2 Such as the reform agenda and the conduction of the Health and Social Security Services for Federal employees (ISSTE), the cultural sector and other public institutions such as the National Lottery.
3 Ilán Bizberg. 1990. Estado y Sindicalismo en México. México: El Colegio de México.
4 Kevin Middlebrook. 1995. The paradox of Revolution. Labor the State and Authoritarianism in Mexico. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
However, this renegotiation occurred in the fringes; the core mechanisms of control and the main benefits for the unions and its constituents, as well as their political alliance with the regime were seldom contested.
5 Alberto Arnaut. 1998. La federalización educativa en México. Historia del debate sobre la centralización y la descentralización educativa (1889–1994). México: El Colegio de México—CIDE.
According to the law every worker has a right to be a member of the union but it can not resign to it membership voluntarily. Ley Federal de los Trabajadores al Servicio del Estado, art. 68.
Additionally, until 1992 the SNTE‘s statutes stipulated that teachers and other school staff automatically become members of the regime’s political party, the National Revolutionary Party (PRI).
6 Middlebrook. 1995.
7 Ibid.
8 This provision meant that unions in the federal public sector were responsible for selecting and hiring half of the new base positions in the service. Generally they were required to meet some basic certification standards. In the education sector, a common mechanism of control used by the SNTE was the assignment of class-hours for secondary teachers. In order to increase its membership a large proportion of the class-hours awarded in response to Union proposals were scattered along a considerable number of teachers. Since they are gradually assigned until a cap of 42 class-hours per individual is reached, it remains as one of the most powerful mechanisms of control used to punish and reward individuals for staying in line with the Union’s policies.
9 Maria Lorena Cook. 1996. Organizing Dissent. Unions, The State and the Democratic Teachers Movement in Mexico. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
10 This was the case with the emergence of Carlos Jongitud in 1973 and the source of its downfall in 1989.
11 This included not only K-12 education, but also the case for the upper secondary and higher education services administered directly by the Secretary of Education as well as workers ascribed to the cultural sector.
12 Arnaut. 1998.
13 Cook. 1996.
13 Ibid.
14 Carlos Ornelas. 1996. El sistema educativo mexicano; la transición de fin de siglo, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica—CIDE—NAFINSA.
15 The most basic level is the equivalent of a Bachelors Degree. A higher score is awarded to educators holding a Masters or Ph.D., Evaluations on the impact of the program on student outcome are not publicly available.
16 Patrick McEwan and Lucrecia Santibíñez. 2005. Teacher incentives and student achievement: Evidence from a Mexican reform. Unpublished manuscript. Rand.
17 According to the 2005 Teacher and Parent Survey on Values and Beliefs, 64% of the educators think that the transparency, legitimacy and impact of the program was compromised since it began operating in 1993. Furthermore, 37% of them believe that the evaluations performed on students and teachers are arbitrary and plagued by irregularities (Arnaut; 2005).
18 Instituto Nacional de Evaluación Educativa, La calidad de la educación en México, Informe Anual 2005, México, INEE, 2005.
19 Pablo Latapí. 2006. La SEP por dentro: Las políticas de la Secretaría de Educación Pública comentada por cuatro de sus secretarios (1992–2004). México: Fondo de Cultura Económica. p. 189.
20 Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 2005. School Factors Related to Quality and Equity: Results from PISA 2000. Paris: OECD.
21 Schmelkes Sylvia, 1998 “La educación básica.” Pablo Latapí Sarre ed., Un Siglo de educación en México. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica-CONACULTA, t. II.
Factors often identified with improved teacher performance include: academic preparation, frequency of professional training, pay and other income incentives, group size, leadership, time devoted to students and parents out of class, and ability to work collectively as a school community (Schmelkes; 1998).
22 This was the case with the Plan de Once Años in 1958, the deconcentration process of the Secretary of education in the late seventies and 1980s, the decentralization of the federal system in 1993, the creation of education related services outside the reach of the union (such as CONAFE, INEA, and the Colegio de Bachilleres) curricular reforms in the late seventies and early nineties, and recently the creation of the National Institute for the Evaluation of Education in 2002, among others.
23 David L Weimer and Aidan R Vining. 2005. Policy Analysis; Concepts and Practice, 4 th. ed.. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.
24 A reform to the Constitution forcing federal, state and local levels of government to provide public information will help in securing the transparency of the program. A special provision needs to be included in the Federal Information Law forcing the federal government to provide information concerning the operation of federal programs coordinated with the States or with federal funds. This has allowed the Secretary of Education to evade information requests under the argument that that part of the programs are operated by the State Governments.
25 Approximately 65% of the teachers presenting the actualization tests required for promotion were unable to satisfy minimal achievement standards (INEE, 2005).
26 OECD. 2005; Acevedo Gladys López. Teachers’ Incentives and Professional Development in Schools in Mexico. 2002. Washington D.C: The World Bank,Working Paper.
27 The core competencies are conceptual formation, intellectual abilities, contents and purposes, perception and response to the environment, practical and theoretical formation, didactic competences, identity and professional ethics, and approaches and contents. (SEP, 2006)
28 The evaluations performed by the National Center for the Evaluation of Tertiary Education (CENEVAL)—an independent non for profit organization—to educators enrolled in preschool and primary education in 2003 and 2004, show that in a scale of 100 points prospective teachers obtained an average score of 56 and 64 respectively. In 2005 these indicators remained basically unchanged, improving only by 2 points in preschool (CENEVAL, SEP; 2003, 2004, 2005).
29 Arnaut. 1993; Arnaut. 1998.
Among the most representative vetoes from the SNTE were the initiatives of decentralization of the basic education system until 1993, the introduction of periodical and standardized evaluation to teachers and students until the mid nineties, as well as the public disclosure of their results.
30 Broadly it stretched from the 1920s to the mid 1990s, up to the defeat of the Institutional Revolutionary Party in 2000.
31 Such as the creation of education services administratively deconcentrated from the Secretary of Education in upper secondary services through CONALEP, Colegio de Bachilleres and CECYTE, adult education (INEA), rural education (CONAFE), and upper education through Universidad Tecnológica, Instituto Tecnológico Superior, and Universidad Politécnicas,
32 Challenges of unconstitutionality according to the constitution are applicable only to those promoting them.
33 The Secretary of Education was also unwilling to release to the public information indicating the poor state of learning outcomes in Mexico until the Institutional Revolutionary Party lost the 2000 presidential elections. (Latapí, 2006).