Class Activities

An approach to politic differences between American and Colombian Educational Systems

Héctor Torres

When it comes to secondary education, according to the book, we must add to the paradigm that its policies have a common origin and, accordingly, they are supposed to take place in the same fashion in the entire American Continent.  However, it is well-known that governments’ decisions, instead,  have led to huge differences between educational systems.  Above all, the access to special education has become a concern in most Latin American countries, and the United States show a “third group” of schools that shrink their own gap between private and public schools in certain way.  Furthermore, sponsoring causes a significant impact in quality as well and determines a high proportion of the consequent positive results, leading the biggest responsibility on governmental budgets.  Thus, developing countries are commonly down in the quality of education ranks, such as PISA, with small chances of climbing to the top of the list soon. This essay aims to overview this said aspects, within Colombian and American educational systems, giving a glimpse to conspicuous problems hoping these lead us to specific solutions.

First, both educational systems show a significant difference regarding their access to high quality education, with an evident disadvantage for Colombia.   In the U.S exists a third group of schools: charter schools. These schools receive public funding but operate independently, offering alternative education.  In North America there is an evident struggle to access to these type of education. According to National Alliance for Public charter Schools, “from 1999 and 2008 the number of students has increased from 349.000 to 1’400.000.”  (Center for public education, 2013).  These institutions are in great demand mainly due to their high quality and relative low prices.  Lots of families participate in a lottery (which can be traumatic for kids) in order to enroll.  Colombia, on the other hand, seems to rely in their public education system.  Moreover, in this country there are no institutions similar to charters. Unlike the U.S, in Colombia one has to choose the public school or pay enough for getting into private schools, but there’s nothing in the middle. Whereas there is an alternative to poor quality education in the case of the U.S, a larger gap between public and private education  present in Colombia.  This leaves to Colombia a small chance to access special education in comparison with developed countries.

As to the budget, the investment in the education system is quite bigger in the U.S in comparison to Colombia.  While the U.S government spent 107.6 billion (the fifth of Medicare spending) in 2012 fiscal year on federal education, according to  economist Jason Deleslie (The New York Times, 2014) Colombian government invested an average of 4.4% percent of its GDP on education.  The situation appears even worse when we take a look on defense and military force spending.  According to a 2012 report from The Research and Markets Agency, Colombia is the country with the highest investment in defense proportional to its economy among Latin American nations; during that year the spending exceeded USD 10 billion. Along these lines, the gap is clearly increased by this pivotal aspect.

Finally, one of the most evident consequences of those disadvantages in Colombian educational policies is the poor performance in international assessments as PISA.  Unfortunately, Colombia has shown low results and the tendency is not positive.  This year, regarding financial skills, among 44 countries, Colombia dropped to the last position, while USA stayed close to the global average score. (OCDE, 2014).  This phenomenon might be caused by governments policy that tries to solve the problem by including more students in the system, causing in some cases, the sacrifice of quality and the access to pre-school as mandatory; which according to OCDE is “one factor positively correlated to high scores.” (OCDE, 2014)

 At first sight, one can find the situation very dramatic: the lack of special and high-quality education for all, the scarcity on resources for good materials, better teachers; the demotivating scores in international assessments, and, on top of that, the problems affect higher education as well.  However, there is at least an intention to change the national policy. For instance, a very important bill for higher education and universities founding is being discussed since 2012.  Anyhow, it is necessary for developing countries such as Colombia to assume the education issue as a whole, a responsibility that has to be faced by all its citizens and set as a priority.  At best, we will see a Latin American nation in the group of well-educated countries at a suitable time and a smaller gap between the north and south of our continent in the foreseeable future.