COUNTRY CASE STUDY-M EXICO:
Study of Teachers for Children Marginalized by Social Origin, Economic Status or
Location
Submitted to the United Nations Children’s Fund
8 July 2013
Prepared by
Thomas F. Luschei
Giselle Navarro
Claremont Graduate University
The research reported here was supported through a Project Cooperation Agreement (PCA)
between Michigan State University and UNICEF. The opinions expressed are those of the
authors and do not represent views of UNICEF. The authors would like to thank representatives
of UNICEF Mexico, who provided invaluable assistance in identifying and contacting
participants, as well as all participants in our interviews. We also acknowledge the very helpful
advice and assistance of Amita Chudgar, Carlos Ornelas, Loris Fagioli and James Pippin.
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
Contents
Executive Summary .......................................................................................................... 4
1
Introduction ................................................................................................................ 7
1.1 Contributions, objective and organization of this report ..................................... 8
2
Education in Mexico ................................................................................................ 10
2.1 Marginalized Children in Mexico ..................................................................... 11
2.1.1 Children with disabilities ............................................................................ 12
2.1.2 Children in poverty ..................................................................................... 13
2.1.3 Children in rural areas................................................................................. 13
2.1.4 Indigenous children..................................................................................... 14
2.2 Teachers of marginalized children .................................................................... 15
2.2.1 Key teacher policies .................................................................................... 16
2.3 State background ............................................................................................... 18
2.3.1 Federal District ........................................................................................... 19
2.3.2 Chiapas........................................................................................................ 19
2.3.3 Yucatán ....................................................................................................... 20
2.3.4 Zacatecas ..................................................................................................... 21
3
Methods and data for three country case studies...................................................... 22
3.1 Obtaining approval from institutional review boards ....................................... 22
3.2 Identifying interview sample and conducting interviews ................................. 23
3.3 Transcribing the interviews, coding and analysing the data ............................. 25
4
Results ...................................................................................................................... 26
4.1 Teacher distribution and cross-state variation................................................... 26
4.1.1 Teachers of marginalized children: General patterns ................................. 26
4.1.2 Teachers in rural areas ................................................................................ 28
4.1.3 Teachers of indigenous children ................................................................. 35
4.1.4 Teachers of children in the urban periphery ............................................... 38
4.1.5 Teachers of other marginalized populations ............................................... 42
4.1.6 Teacher sex ................................................................................................. 43
4.1.7 Cross-state differences ................................................................................ 44
4.2 Determinants of teacher distribution and cross-state variation ......................... 46
4.2.1 Teachers’ preferences and choices ............................................................. 46
4.2.2 Teacher hiring, seniority and the 'chain of change'..................................... 47
4.2.3 Carrera Magisterial ..................................................................................... 50
4.2.4 Salaries and other incentives to teach in difficult Areas ............................. 52
4.2.5 Cross-state differences ................................................................................ 54
4.3 Lessons learned: Key policies, practices and strategies .................................... 55
4.3.1 National educational programmes and reforms .......................................... 56
4.3.2 Indigenous education .................................................................................. 59
4.3.3 CONAFE .................................................................................................... 60
4.3.4 Teacher preparation, professional development and support ..................... 61
4.3.5 Involvement of civil society and NGOs ..................................................... 63
4.3.6 The role of research and evaluation ............................................................ 64
5
Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 65
5.1 Key implications of Mexico case study ............................................................ 65
5.2 Limitations and areas for future research .......................................................... 69
2
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
References ....................................................................................................................... 71
Appendix A: Consent form ............................................................................................. 75
Appendix B: Interview protocols .................................................................................... 77
3
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
Executive Summary
Mexico is home to a large and diverse population of marginalized children who include, among
others, children in rural areas, indigenous children, and children in the urban periphery. On
average, the teachers of these children appear to be less experienced, educated and trained than
teachers of more advantaged children. This inequitable distribution of teachers is evident to
varying degrees across the Federal District and our three study states, Chiapas, Yucatán and
Zacatecas. Through a qualitative case study research process, we describe these patterns and
identify several determinants of this uneven distribution, including teachers’ preferences to work
in urban areas, teacher hiring and transfer policies and practices, and the presence or lack of
incentives to teach in marginalized areas. Although to some degree, policymakers have
attempted to enhance equity in teacher distribution with a range of policies, it appears that these
policies have fallen short. These experiences provide important lessons learned that we describe
in detail in this case study. Of course, we recognize the limitations of this study and suggest that
future research, evaluation and monitoring are needed to determine which policies have been
successful and how others might be altered to better serve Mexico’s marginalized children. Here
we offer several key insights that emerge from our case study in Mexico.
Policies and practices matter
Government policies and practices can make qualified teachers more accessible to marginalized
children. We place these policies and practices in three broad categories: teacher hiring and
placement, teacher transfer and retention, and monetary and non-monetary incentives. While
policies rarely intend to create unequal distribution or hardship for marginalized children, the
ultimate outcome of these policies may be different than intended due to lack of transparency,
monitoring or quality control. We find that teacher hiring practices are closely related to the
presence or absence of inequities in teacher distribution. Teacher transfer policies are also
importantly related to teacher distribution.
In this case study, we learned that in many instances, teachers view their first job as a way
to enter the system, but once there, teachers actively seek to transfer to more preferred locations
with better amenities or those closer to their home and families. To address this trend, the
Government of Mexico could use teacher transfer policies proactively to ensure an equitable
teacher distribution. Similarly, we note that adjustments in salary are the most common and
perhaps the most influential incentives in attracting and retaining qualified teachers. In place of –
or, in some cases, in addition to – monetary incentives, the Mexican Government could also offer
non-monetary incentives for teachers to accept placement in difficult areas or schools. Ideally,
these efforts would offer attractive trade-offs to encourage high-quality teacher candidates to
accept potentially difficult assignments. Thus, while the trend of unequal teacher distribution
appears to be common in Mexico, policies and practice can reverse this pattern. In sum, the
Government of Mexico can act to ensure that marginalized children have consistent access to
qualified and effective teachers, regardless of social origin, economic status or location.
Inadequate and inconsistent teacher education and training
Although all teachers must receive relevant and high-quality training, the many challenges of
teaching marginalized children demand even stronger and more focused preparation and support
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
for teachers working with these populations. Yet our research finds exactly the opposite. Our
case study research finds that the preparation for teachers of marginalized children is often
inadequate or irrelevant to the classroom conditions that these teachers will face. As an
example, teachers of marginalized children often find themselves working in classrooms with
multiple grades and ages of children. Yet their training may not adequately prepare teachers to
work in ‘multi-grade’ schools.
The logical means to address inadequate initial preparation is through focused and highquality professional development, but again we find deficiencies in the availability and quality of
such opportunities for teachers of marginalized children. Frequently, the remote locations of
marginalized environments impede teachers’ participation in training. Other times, professional
development opportunities are simply not available for any teachers. To both improve and
support the teachers of marginalized children, the Government of Mexico must focus and
improve initial preparation and professional development of teachers to address the demands
and conditions of working with marginalized children. It must also make a more general effort to
provide a high level of training for all teachers, because if all teachers are highly qualified, then
the likelihood of marginalized children having access to qualified teachers will increase.
Teachers of marginalized children work in difficult situations
Teachers of marginalized children in Mexico face many adversities in their personal and
professional lives. It is clear that these teachers must contend with living and working conditions
that are far more difficult than those faced by other teachers. In this case study, we repeatedly
heard how teachers posted in remote, hard-to-staff environments cope with lack of resources,
isolation, loneliness, and even fear. These teachers commonly express dissatisfaction with their
work and actively seek opportunities to transfer out of such positions. Together these findings
demonstrate the importance of considering the working conditions of the teachers of
marginalized children. Unless it addresses the conditions under which teachers of marginalized
children work, it is very unlikely that the Government will be able to reverse the inequitable
teacher distribution that we find in our case study. To ensure an equitable distribution of
teachers, the Mexican Government must recognize and address the very challenging
environments that teachers of marginalized children face.
Teachers care about their living and working conditions
The most revealing insight from this research is perhaps the most obvious: teachers are human
beings and they care deeply about their living and working conditions. For example, Mexican
teachers commonly express their desire to be near their families and communities and to have
access to daily amenities. The preferences and choices of individual teachers have a profound
impact on the composition and distribution of the teacher labour force. Just like members of any
other occupation, teachers make choices about where they work based on both monetary and
non-monetary factors. All else equal, teachers are more likely to choose to work in schools and
communities with more pleasant work environments and greater resources. Teachers also
respond to their living and working conditions by making short-, medium- and long-term
decisions, such as whether to be absent on a specific day, transfer to another school, or leave the
profession altogether. If policymakers wish to attract and retain the best and brightest teachers,
they must understand the multitude of factors guiding teachers’ decisions about whether and
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
where to teach. In the case of Mexico, one important avenue for improving the attractiveness of
teaching in rural areas is through investments in transportation, sanitation and other
infrastructure in such areas.
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
1
Introduction
Research consistently shows that teachers are the most important school-related factor
associated with student learning (e.g., Global Campaign for Education [GCE], 2006; OECD,
2005; Rivkin, Hanushek and Kain, 2005). A recent report by GCE and Education International
(EI) asserts that a “severe lack of well-trained, well-supported teachers” is the key reason why
educational quality has remained poor in many developing countries (GCE and EI, 2012, p. 2).
Teachers are also important in educational planning and policymaking because teacher salaries
represent one of the most significant expenditures in most education budgets (OECD, 2005).
Thus, national approaches to teacher policy are important from both educational and economic
standpoints.
As developing nations confront a global teacher shortage, governments have responded in
several ways. Some systems have increased class sizes, thereby serving more students with fewer
teachers. There has also been an increasing reliance on less-trained and less-educated teachers to
fill teaching positions. Several systems have moved to contract-based hiring of teachers, which
leads to lower teacher salaries and reduced job security. Contract-based hiring has been
especially prominent in countries and regions with large, previously underserved student
populations like India and sub-Saharan Africa, where teacher shortages are severe (e.g.,
Duthilleul, 2005; Fyfe, 2007).
The 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report published by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which focuses on reaching the
marginalized, notes that teacher shortages have led to severe negative consequences for
marginalized children (UNESCO, 2010). In particular, marginalized children in many countries
have less access to qualified and experienced teachers than more advantaged students (Akiba,
LeTendre and Scribner, 2007; Jaramillo, 2012; Lankford, Loeb and Wyckoff, 2002; Luschei,
2012a; Luschei and Carnoy, 2010; Luschei, Chudgar and Rew, 2013). This ‘teacher quality gap’
leads to lower educational quality, which contributes to lower enrolment, greater dropouts and
higher repetition rates of marginalized students (Birdsall, Levine and Ibrahim, 2005; Davico,
1990; Hanushek, Lavy and Hitomi, 2008).
For universal primary education to be achieved worldwide, raising the quality of teachers
for marginalized children is critical (Steiner-Khamsi and Simelane, 2010). In the United States,
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
Rivkin, Hanushek and Kain (2005) found that children in poverty could experience learning
gains so impressive after five consecutive years with a good teacher that these children could
close the achievement gap between themselves and wealthier children. Yet research in the United
States suggests that continuous exposure to good teachers is extremely unlikely for
disadvantaged children. In an extensive study of teachers in New York State, Lankford, Loeb
and Wyckoff (2002) found that more qualified teachers are disproportionately concentrated in
the schools and classrooms of economically advantaged and high-achieving students. This
pattern results largely from ‘teacher sorting’, a process in which more qualified teachers with
more opportunities choose to teach in schools with more pleasant working conditions, including
higher-achieving students. Despite growing evidence of teacher sorting in the United States,
there is less evidence regarding the distribution of teachers in developing countries, where the
problem is likely to be more acute.
1.1
Contributions, objective and organization of this report
As part of a larger cross-national study of Teachers of Marginalized Children, this case
study is preceded by (1) an inception report that lays out the study’s objectives, conceptual
framework, methodology and timeline; (2) a comprehensive literature review of evidence related
to teachers of marginalized children in developing countries; and (3) three cross-national
quantitative regional reports on the teachers of marginalized children in Asia, Latin America and
sub-Saharan Africa. This case study is accompanied by similar studies of India and the United
Republic of Tanzania. A final summary report synthesizes the results of the entire series of
studies.
In the quantitative regional reports that preceded this case study, we found compelling,
systematic, cross-national evidence of an unequal distribution of teachers that places
disadvantaged and marginalized children at a clear educational disadvantage. This analysis
found broad patterns in the distribution of teacher characteristics that provide grounds for
widespread concern across Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. These quantitative
results provide a starting point for more targeted investigation of problems and strategies in
individual countries. Although the quantitative analysis provided a sense of broad patterns and
problems, the analytical approach did not allow us to probe specific policies and practices that
led to the patterns we found in the data. For example, although we found that teacher
8
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
qualifications in Mexico (and many other Latin American countries) vary considerably across
urban and rural areas, the analysis does not tell us why.
The objective of this case study is to shed light on underlying practices and policies to
recruit, hire and assign teachers to schools, with a focus on equity in marginalized Mexican
children’s access to qualified teachers. We chose Mexico for this case study due to large urbanrural educational inequalities and variability in teacher hiring and assignment policies across
states. Previous research has identified cross-state differences in marginalized children’s access
to effective teachers (e.g., Luschei, 2012a), but little research has examined the causes of these
differences. The value of this case study is twofold. First, it will inform Mexican policymakers
and educators of key obstacles to equity in marginalized children’s access to qualified teachers.
Second, our results will provide a broader audience with important examples of teacher-related
problems and strategies in a large and diverse country.
Our analytical approach in exploring the teachers of marginalized children is based on a
conceptual framework that considers both the composition of the teacher labour force (who
teaches) and the distribution of the teacher labour force (who teaches whom). Under this
framework, the distribution of teachers across children is the result of a series of decisions made
both by teachers (the supply side) and those who hire them (the demand side). Recruitment,
retention and retirement are the three key activities that shape both teacher composition and
distribution. All of these activities have a demand and supply component. Supply-side decisions
are also influenced by individual factors, such as age, sex, years of experience in the profession,
the performance and background of students, location and working conditions. Demand-side
decisions can be driven by individual preferences (for example, what a specific school principal
decides), but they are also likely to be driven by larger policy decisions at regional, state and
national levels. In order to capture both sides of the supply/demand equation, we interviewed
teachers and government officials, as well as teacher educators and representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
We begin this report by providing background information on basic education,
marginalized children, and salient teacher issues in Mexico. We then discuss the methods we
used to identify study participants, conform to research ethics protocols, collect interview data,
and code and analyse these data. We then present our results, organized around three themes: (1)
9
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
patterns of teacher distribution, (2) determinants of teacher distribution, and (3) lessons learned
regarding key policies, practices and strategies related to the distribution of teachers. We
conclude with a discussion of implications and limitations of the case study work in Mexico and
insights from the three country case studies.
2
Education in Mexico
The Mexican education system has made important progress in preschool and primary
school enrolment. According to UNESCO’s 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report,
from 1999 to 2010, enrolments in pre-primary education (ages 4–5) increased from 3.4 million to
4.6 million, resulting in a net enrolment rate of 84 per cent in 2010 (UNESCO, 2012). However,
data from a recent out-of-school children report, which find that 45 per cent of Mexican children
aged three to five did not attend school in 2010, challenges figures reported by UNESCO
(UNICEF, 2013, p. 26). At the primary level, enrolments increased by more than 200,000 during
the same period, giving the nation a net primary enrolment rate of 98 per cent in 2010. However,
Mexico faces greater problems of access for adolescents. Although enrolments at the secondary
level (ages 12–17) increased from 8.7 million in 1999 to 11.7 million in 2010, approximately
272,000 adolescents were out of school in 2010, according to UNESCO’s 2012 Education for All
Global Monitoring Report. Gross enrolment rates at the lower secondary level (117 per cent) and
upper secondary level (61 per cent) reveal a sharp drop-off in enrolment from lower to secondary
education, as well as a large percentage of enrolled children who are beyond the traditional age
for their grade levels (UNESCO, 2012).
Mexico is on track to achieve all six of the global Education for All (EFA) goals by 2015.
Among 120 countries with sufficient data, Mexico’s EFA Development Index (EDI) of 0.962
places the country 48th, or in the category of ‘high EDI’.1 In terms of achieving Goal 1 (early
childhood care and education), Mexico has substantially increased enrolments in preschool. With
1
The EDI, which measures progress toward achieving the EFA goals, is the arithmetic mean of four measures of
progress towards EFA: primary adjusted net enrolment ratio, the literacy rate for those aged 15 and above, the
average of gender parity indices of primary and secondary gross enrolment ratios and adult literacy, and survival
rate to Grade 5. In 2010, EDIs ranging from 0.997 to 0.951 were considered ‘high’, those ranging from 0.949 were
considered medium, and those ranging from 0.799 and below were considered ‘low’. In 2012, the EDI was
expanded to include an index of early childhood care and education (UNESCO, 2012, pp. 306–309).
10
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
a primary adjusted net enrolment rate of 99.6 per cent, Mexico has also effectively reached Goal
2, universal primary education. Progress towards Goal 3 (youth and adult learning) is more
difficult to measure, but given substantial numbers of out-of-school adolescents, Mexico faces
challenges in this area. Mexico has high levels of adult literacy, indicating that it has effectively
reached Goal 4 (improving levels of adult literacy). Mexico has achieved Goal 5 (gender parity
and equality) in terms of gender parity in enrolment. In fact, while enrolment of boys and girls in
pre-primary and primary schooling is even, at the secondary level, girls hold an advantage in
terms of gross enrolment in both lower and upper secondary education (UNESCO, 2012).
Finally, in terms of improving quality (Goal 6), Mexico has a relatively high survival rate to
Grade 5 of 96 per cent. However, other measures of quality of teaching and learning –
particularly the performance of Mexican children on national and international assessments –
indicate that Mexico faces many challenges.
During the 1990s, Mexico began to implement national achievement tests and participate
in international assessments. Results from national examinations have indicated both low overall
performance and significantly lower performance among indigenous children and children in
rural areas (Martínez Rizo, 2002). The results of international assessments also demonstrate that
the educational performance of Mexican children is low by international standards (INEE, 2003).
For example, in the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tested
15-year-old students in 65 countries, Mexican students scored in the bottom 18 countries in
reading and the bottom 15 in math (OECD, 2010a). One bright spot is Mexico’s performance in
the 2006 Second Regional and Comparative and Explanatory Study (SERCE), which applied
math and reading tests to students in Grades 3 and 6 in 16 countries in Latin America and the
Caribbean. In mathematics, Mexico scored behind Cuba, Uruguay and Costa Rica in Grades 3
and 6. In reading, Mexico scored behind Cuba, Costa Rica and Chile at the Grade 3 level and
behind Cuba, Costa Rica, Chile and Uruguay in Grade 6. The Mexican state of Nuevo León,
which participated in SERCE as a separate entity, performed better than Mexico overall, ranking
second of all participants in Grade 3 math (behind Cuba), third in Grade 6 math, and fourth in
Grades 3 and 6 reading (Aguilar and Flores Vazquez, 2008).
2.1
Marginalized children in Mexico
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
In addition to relatively low overall educational quality, Mexico faces severe problems in
access to and quality of education for its many marginalized children. As one of our interview
participants, a national official with years of experience in Mexican education observed,
marginalized children represent the majority of children in Mexico. As this participant observed,
“if you wanted to isolate one problem in the Mexican education system it would have to be the
exclusion of the majority of children who are disadvantaged economically on account of the
unequal distribution of income.” The problem of inequality manifests itself through Mexico’s
Gini index, a measure of the distribution of income. Mexico’s 2008 Gini of 48.3 placed it among
the top 25 most unequal countries in the world (CIA, 2013). A related problem is a high degree
of rural poverty and large urban/rural gaps in socio-economic and educational conditions. In the
2009 PISA, Mexican students in urban areas outscored students in rural areas by 50 points after
controlling for socio-economic status, the fourth highest urban-rural disparity among countries in
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (OECD,
2010b). In 2003, Mexico was the only country participating in PISA in which attending a school
in a rural community had a negative and statistically significant relationship with math
performance, after adjusting for differences in student background (OECD, 2004).
Socio-economic and regional inequalities place many groups of Mexican children at risk
of marginalization. Our research suggests four key marginalized groups: children with
disabilities, children in poverty, children living in rural areas, and indigenous children (Mexico
IDRM, 2004; Guevara and González, 2004; Santibañez, Vernez and Razquin, 2005; UNESCO,
2010a). Below we briefly describe each of these groups.
2.1.1 Children with disabilities
In 2000, there were 1.8 million people with a disability in Mexico, representing 1.8 per
cent of the population (Mexico IDRM, 2004). These included 44,629 children under the age of 4,
191,340 children aged 5 to 14, and 91,396 adolescents aged 15 to 19. According to one estimate,
children with disabilities accounted for about 0.52 per cent of the 20.5 million children enrolled
in the national education system in 2002 (Mexico IDRM, 2004). The majority of children with
disabilities who participate in educational programmes are those with mental disabilities
(approximately 70 per cent), followed by children with hearing disabilities (13 per cent),
mobility disabilities (12 per cent), and visual disabilities (4.5 per cent).
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
Children with disabilities have been offered public special education services since the
mid-1990s. The two major programmes are the Units of Support Services for Regular Education
(Unidades de Servicios de Apoyo a la Educación Regular, USAER) and Centers of Multiple
Attention (Centros de Atención Multiple, CAM) (Mexico IDRM, 2004; Tuman et al., 2008).
Unfortunately, these resources are limited. According to reports, only 42 per cent of Mexican
municipalities offer CAM or USAER services. Special education services are provided
predominately in wealthier cities with larger populations. Indigenous children and children who
live in poverty and in rural locations are most at risk for not having access to any public special
education services (Mexico IDRM, 2004; Tuman et al., 2008).
2.1.2 Children in poverty
Poor children in Mexico contend with both very limited resources in the home and
inadequate resources in school. These children generally learn less than wealthier children
because they are in lower-quality schools. High rates of poverty are also associated with
participation in child labour, which reduces the likelihood of participating in and succeeding in
school. Poor children in Mexico are much less likely to attend secondary school and go on to
tertiary education than other children. About half of children living in extreme poverty attend
upper secondary school, compared with 80 per cent of the wealthiest children; only 6 per cent
attend tertiary education, in comparison to 35 per cent of the wealthiest children. Children who
come from wealthier backgrounds are also six times more likely to complete upper secondary
education than poor children (UNESCO, 2010a). One key attempt by the Mexican government to
address the issue of child poverty has been its high-profile Oportunidades programme, which has
helped to increase student enrolment in poor communities by offering cash payments to families
in exchange for regular school attendance, nutritional support, and health clinic visits (Orozco
and Hubert, 2005).
2.1.3 Children in rural areas
About 25.2 million Mexicans reside in rural areas (Mexico Census, 2010). Because rural
poverty in Mexico is acute, living in a rural area is often associated with living in poverty.
Educational provision in rural areas is often poor in terms of both quantity and quality, resulting
in lower levels of educational attainment and achievement for rural children (Guevara dan
Gonzalez, 2004). Due to remote locations and sparse populations, a large percentage of
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
classrooms in many rural areas contains students from more than one grade. ‘Multi-grade’
classrooms and schools present many challenges for children and teachers alike, including
classroom management, coordination of curriculum, and multiple roles for teachers. Isolated and
remote locations impede the recruitment of qualified teachers to work in rural schools. In many
cases, these assignments go to the least experienced teachers, who may not have received
training to work in multi-grade settings. Several studies have found that, on average, teachers
working in urban schools are significantly more experienced and qualified than teachers working
in rural areas (Luschei, 2012a; Luschei et al., 2013; Reimers, 2006).
The Mexican Government has developed several strategies to address educational
challenges in rural areas including Oportunidades, the Telesecundaria programme, which targets
children in rural areas by providing secondary education via television, and the Consejo
Nacional de Fomento de la Educación (CONAFE), or the National Council for the Promotion of
Education. CONAFE provides escuelas comunitarias (community schools) in communities that
are considered too small to support formal schools. Young people, often newly graduated from
secondary school, are recruited to live and work in these communities in exchange for support to
continue their studies (CONAFE, 2010). Teachers in CONAFE schools often work in multigrade schools with children of different ages (Guevara and Gonzalez, 2004).
2.1.4 Indigenous children
Mexico has the second largest indigenous population in Latin America, after Peru
(Treviño, 2013). According to the 2010 Mexican census, there are more than 7 million
indigenous people residing in Mexico, or around 7 per cent of the population (Mexico Census,
2010). There are 62 ethno-linguistic groups speaking 68 indigenous languages composed of 364
dialectic variations. The indigenous population in Mexico, which has been marginalized
historically, suffers a high degree of poverty, segregation and geographic isolation, which
together hinder educational access and quality (Treviño, 2013). States with larger indigenous
concentrations have the highest marginalization indices (Pérez-Aguilera and Figueroa-Helland,
2011). Furthermore, indigenous children are at a greater disadvantage due to language barriers
(Mexico Census, 2010). Indigenous children also have less access to written and spoken sources,
restricting their opportunities for employment and social mobility (Smits and Gündüz-Hosgör,
2003; Smits et al., 2008). For example, more than 95 per cent of indigenous schools do not have
14
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
a library or computers in their schools. These disadvantages are evident in test scores, as
indigenous children score among the lowest of groups in Grade 6 math when compared with
children who attend urban, rural and private schools. This problem continues into adulthood, as
55 per cent of indigenous adults either did not attend school or did not complete primary school,
compared with 29 per cent of the population as a whole. Additionally, less than 3 per cent of the
indigenous population has attended a university (Puryear, Santibañez and Solano, 2011).
Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Education, which is responsible for indigenous education,
serves about 8.4 per cent of the student population in pre-primary education, 5.7 per cent in
primary education, and 20.6 per cent of the population in lower secondary televised education.
Indigenous education is intended to provide bilingual and culturally relevant instruction, with
students learning to read and write in their native languages as well as in Spanish. In the 1999–
2000 school year, the federal government distributed 118 million books in 33 indigenous
languages and 55 dialectic variations (Prawda and Flores, 2001). The CONAFE programme also
targets a high number of indigenous children (INEE, 2009). However, a great deal of evidence
indicates that educational opportunities for indigenous children are of far lower quality than
those provided to other children.
2.2
Teachers of marginalized children
In terms of the preparation and overall quality of Mexican teachers, challenges have
included low-quality teacher training, teacher shortages, and a reliance on local, undertrained and
underpaid teachers (Guevara and Gonzalez, 2004). In general, pre-service teacher education in
Mexico is not required to meet high standards. Programmes often place a great deal of emphasis
on theory and little on subject-matter knowledge and practice. Once trained and hired, novice
teachers rarely receive orientation or mentoring (Puryear, Santibañez and Solano, 2011). No
systematic programme of induction has been established to provide new teachers with the
support, assessment, and feedback necessary to become effective. In-service training is widely
available, but appears to have little impact on student learning (Puryear, Santibañez and Solano,
2011). Lack of training is evident in assessed teacher knowledge. The share of questions that an
average Mexican teacher could answer correctly in a national teacher knowledge exam in 1996–
2000 was just 50 per cent (Santibañez et al., 2007).
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
Problems of teacher quality are particularly acute in rural areas, as it is difficult to recruit
Mexican teachers to work in remote rural schools due to isolation, boredom, poor living
facilities, limited school resources, lower prestige, and even safety concerns (Luschei, 2012a). In
order to meet demand, Mexican officials hire high school graduates or teachers without required
licenses. According to Sylvia Schmelkes del Valle (2011), only one in four licensed teachers
works in rural areas.
Teachers of indigenous children are often chosen largely because they speak an
indigenous language, with less priority given to their education, experience or aptitude for
teaching. Yet about one third of indigenous teachers are sent to communities that speak a
different indigenous language than their own (Puryear, Santibañez and Solano, 2011). There
have also been cases in which teacher test requirements have been lowered in indigenous areas in
order to provide sufficient teachers for indigenous children (Saldaña, 2012). Additionally,
recruiting and retaining teachers for indigenous children is difficult because there are no
incentives to compensate for the challenges involved in working in the remote rural areas where
indigenous children often live (Puryear, Santibañez and Solano, 2011).
There is also evidence of inadequate training for teachers to work with students with
disabilities. Due to staffing shortages, some schools received no services from USAER. A
national survey of USAER teams completed in 2006 by the Red Internacional de Investigadores
y Participantes sobre Integración Educativa found that 72 per cent of team members felt that
that the Ministry of Education was not providing sufficient training and services to facilitate
inclusiveness. Resource constraints and staff shortages have also hampered CAMs. There is a
serious teacher shortage for CAMs and little growth in the number of teachers’ colleges offering
training for people who wish to enter special education teaching (Tuman et al., 2008).
2.2.1 Key teacher policies
The Mexican Government has embarked on a number of reforms to improve the preparation and
quality of teachers. The Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (UPN) or National Pedagogical
University was created in 1978 to increase teacher training and preparation opportunities and to
provide bachelor’s degrees for practicing teachers. In 1984, the country’s normal schools also
began to provide bachelor’s degrees for teachers, which are now required (Estados Unidos
Mexicanos, 1984). In 2002, the Promin programme was designed to improve the planning and
16
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
evaluation of normal schools by promoting self-diagnosis to improve future teacher learning
(Tatto et al., 2006).
The Mexican Government has also put in place a number of incentives to decrease
teacher absenteeism and improve school supervision (Guevara and Gonzalez, 2004). The
Oportunidades conditional cash transfer programme also provides additional instructional
materials and bonuses for teachers to encourage them to remain in rural areas (Johnson and
Hernández Rodríguez, 2005). Mexico’s most notable teacher incentive programme is the
voluntary national Carrera Magisterial (Teaching Career) programme, which was initiated in
1992 as part of a broad national educational reform. One of the main goals of Carrera
Magisterial was to increase the quality and professionalization of teachers in Mexico through a
system of ‘horizontal promotion’ in which teachers participate voluntarily and are promoted if
they meet the requirements. Carrera Magisterial also provides incentives for teachers in low
development zones and those working with disadvantaged student populations. Specifically,
these teachers can advance more quickly through the system than other teachers (SEP, 1998).
However, instructors in the CONAFE programme – who work with some of the most
marginalized children in Mexico – are not eligible to participate in Carrera Magisterial.
There is little evidence that Carrera Magisterial has improved the quality of Mexican
teachers or increased equity in children’s access to qualified teachers (Luschei, 2012a). To begin
with, evaluation of teachers has not adequately reflected teachers’ impact on student
performance. Until 2011, most of the weight for advancement was applied to factors such as
seniority, in-service training courses, academic degrees and peer evaluations, which are not
directly related to student achievement. As a result, several analyses of Carrera Magisterial
found either little impact of participation on teachers’ ability to elicit test score gains, or little
correlation between student achievement and the teacher attributes rewarded by the programme
(Luschei, 2012a; McEwan and Santibañez, 2005; Santibañez et al., 2007). Although one of the
original objectives of Carrera Magisterial was to increase equity in disadvantaged children’s
access to qualified teachers, little research has examined the programme’s impact on educational
equity (Luschei, 2013). In 2011, Carrera Magisterial was modified so that student achievement
would count for 50 per cent of a student’s total score (up from 20 per cent). Although this change
may help to incentivize greater teacher effort, the strong emphasis on student test scores could
17
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
also induce teachers to transfer to higher-scoring classrooms and schools. Further evaluation of
Carrera Magisterial will need to assess the degree to which the new point scheme leads to
greater teacher sorting (Luschei, 2012a, 2013).
In 2008, the Mexican Secretariat of Public Education and the Mexican national teachers’
union reached an agreement known as the Alliance for Educational Quality that changed the
teacher hiring process, among other reforms. According to this agreement, all new teacher
candidates must take a national exam, which determines whether they are hired. The results of
the national examination are posted online, allowing participants to see their scores and their
performance relative to other candidates. The objective of this new national system, which
replaced a vast diversity of state systems, was to make the process of hiring teachers and
assigning them to vacancies more transparent and fair (SEP, Alianza, 2011). Although there is
limited evidence regarding the effectiveness of the new system, several of the participants in our
case study mentioned this new reform and its impact on educational equity.
Finally, in December 2012, an educational reform law targeting teacher evaluation and
hiring was backed by Mexican’s newly elected president, Enrique Peña Nieto, and approved by
Congress. This Reforma Educativa, or Education Reform, seeks to make significant reforms to
Mexico’s General Education Law, particularly in terms of the work and evaluation of teachers.
This reform was approved by the national legislature in February 2013, and at the time of this
writing, the process of implementing the new law had begun. Among other things, the reform is
designed to create professional systems for hiring, evaluating and promoting teachers and to do
away with the practice of buying or inheriting teaching positions. According to the Mexican
president, the new law will give the federal government more control over teacher hiring and
firing and diminish the control of the national teachers’ union. Additionally, the reform will
establish a federal census of education data, allowing for greater information on the number of
schools, teachers and students in Mexico. This change addresses a problem that has plagued
educational research in Mexico for years: all government teacher figures are reported as teaching
positions, rather than actual teachers. Because many teachers have more than one position, it has
historically been very difficult to measure the number of teachers in Mexico (Santibañez, 2002).
2.3
State background
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
We chose Mexico’s Federal District and three Mexican states as data collection sites for our case
study. These states provide a great deal of variability in terms of educational performance,
geography, population, and economic and social context, as we describe below.
2.3.1 Federal District
The Federal District (also known as Mexico City) is the capital of Mexico and the country’s
largest city, with a population of 8.9 million in 2011. The Federal District occupies
573 square miles of land, 95.5 per cent of which is urban (INEGI, 2011). It is considered the
economic, educational, cultural, political and financial centre of Mexico. The Federal District
produces the highest gross domestic product (GDP) in the country and is ranked 32 out of 32
federal entities in terms of poverty (marginación), meaning that it has very low poverty
compared with the 31 Mexican states (CONAPO, 2011). Nonetheless, the Federal District has
many pockets of poverty known has ‘marginal zones’. About 42 per cent of the infant and
adolescent population in the Federal District lives in multidimensional poverty (INEGI, 2011).
The Federal District has the highest average educational attainment (10.5 years) and
highest literacy rates of all Mexican states. Children in the Federal District also have relatively
high rates of performance on the national ENLACE exams. In 2012, students in Grades 3 to 6
placed second in Spanish and eleventh in mathematics, out of 32 states (ENLACE, 2012). In
terms of marginalized populations, in addition to the many children living in marginal zones of
the city, there are about 58,000 people in the Federal District who speak an indigenous language
and approximately 380,000 disabled people 3 years and older. Of those with disabilities, 51,319
have no schooling (INEGI, 2011).
2.3.2 Chiapas
Chiapas is Mexico’s southernmost state. There are 4.8 million people living in Chiapas’ 28,297
square miles. Chiapas has one of the largest rural populations (51 per cent) in Mexico and has a
much lower GDP than Mexico City. Chiapas has the second-highest level of poverty of all
Mexican states, after Guerrero (CONAPO, 2011). Chiapas also has the highest percentage (84.4
per cent) of the infant and adolescent population living in multidimensional poverty (INEGI,
2011).
Despite high levels of poverty, the state has performed relatively well on recent national
exams. Chiapas had the greatest improvement on the ENLACE exam from 2006 to 2012. In
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
2012 the state ranked fifth in terms of the performance of students in Grades 3 to 6 in math and
tenth in terms of Spanish performance (ENLACE, 2012). Nonetheless, educational attainment in
Chiapas is very low, with an average of 7.1 years of education (INEGI, 2011).
There are 61,207 disabled people 3 years and older in Chiapas, 30,892 of them who do
not attend or have never attended school (INEGI, 2011). Chiapas has one of the largest
indigenous populations in Mexico. About 27 per cent of the population reports speaking an
indigenous language and about 17.5 per cent reports speaking both an indigenous language and
Spanish (INEGI, 2011). While there is substantial need for teachers speaking indigenous
languages in Chiapas, there is evidence that such teachers are significantly less qualified than
teachers who do not speak indigenous languages (Santibañez, 2010).
2.3.3 Yucatán
Yucatán is located in south-eastern Mexico. The state has 106 municipalities and its capital city
is Mérida. Yucatan’s population of 1.96 million inhabits 15,294 square miles of land (INEGI,
2011). Sixteen per cent of the population lives in rural areas. The state has relatively high
poverty, ranking 11 out of 31 Mexican states and the Federal District (CONAPO, 2011). Fiftyseven per cent of the infant and adolescent population lives in multidimensional poverty in
Yucatán (INEGI, 2011).
Children in Yucatán do not perform well on national ENLACE exams. In 2012, students
in Grades 3 to 6 in Yucatán ranked 25th in math and 21st in language (ENLACE, 2012).
Average educational attainment is 8.2 years, over a year higher than Chiapas but considerably
below Mexico City. There are 100,395 disabled people 3 years and older in Yucatán, 25,660 of
whom have not attended school (INEGI, 2011).
Similar to Chiapas, Yucatán, which was a major centre of the Maya civilization, has a
large indigenous population. In fact, the state has one of the largest indigenous populations in
Mexico. Nearly 30 per cent of the population reports speaking an indigenous language and 26.7
per cent reports speaking an indigenous language and Spanish (INEGI, 2011). The predominant
indigenous language in Yucatán is Maya, which is often used in the state’s indigenous schools.
Evidence suggests that teachers’ proficiency in the Mayan language varies (Cole and Mijangos,
2008).
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
2.3.4 Zacatecas
Zacatecas is located in north-central Mexico and is divided into 58 municipalities. Its capital city
is Zacatecas. The state’s population of 1.5 million inhabits 29,166 square miles, of which 41 per
cent is rural (INEGI, 2011). Zacatecas has one of the lowest GDPs in the country and ranks 13th
in terms of poverty (CONAPO, 2011). Sixty per-cent of the population of Zacatecas lives in
poverty (INEGI, 2011).
While poverty is high, students in Zacatecas perform relatively well on national exams.
In 2012, students in Grades 3 through 6 scored third in math and eighth in language (ENLACE,
2012). Average educational attainment in Zacatecas is quite low, at 7.9 years, placing it between
Chiapas and Yucatán (INEGI, 2011). Of 78,905 disabled people in Zacatecas, 19,729 have not
attended school. In contrast to Chiapas and Yucatán, less than 1 per cent of the population of
Zacatecas reports speaking an indigenous language (INEGI, 2011).
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
3
Methods and data for three country case studies
In this section we describe in detail the steps we took to gather and analyse our data in three
countries, India, Mexico and the United Republic of Tanzania. In each of the three case study
countries, we identified two to four regions with a fair amount of regional diversity to help us
capture variation in teacher recruitment, retention, and retirement policies and practices. These
regions were identified both by reviewing the existing literature and in consultation with contacts
within each country.
In Mexico, the states of Chiapas and Yucatán in the east and south, Zacatecas in the
north, and the Federal District in central Mexico emerged as study locations that offered distinct
and diverse insights into the processes we are interested in. Interview data from these states were
collected over a two-week period in April 2013. The lead author of this case study conducted all
interviews. Most of the interviews were conducted in Spanish, but a few were conducted in
English due to the participants’ excellent facility with the English language.
3.1
Obtaining approval from institutional review boards
This case study is part of a large cross-national research project of teachers of marginalized
children. The project leaders reside at two different academic institutions, Claremont Graduate
University and Michigan State University. The first step in beginning this project was to obtain
approval from institutional review boards each institution. Of the various analyses we planned,
only the interview-based activities that form the foundation of this case study involved
interaction with human subjects. In consultation with institutional procedures and requirements,
we developed consent forms for case study participants, available in Appendix A. We also
developed an interview protocol tailored to the various roles of participants (Appendix B). For
Mexico and the United Republic of Tanzania, we translated protocols into Spanish and Swahili,
respectively; in the Indian case, the interviewer made spot translations where necessary to
explain questions. Finally, we devised a system to ensure that participants’ confidentiality would
be maintained, unless their unique public service positions readily identified them. These
included delinking participant names from the data files and using identification numbers or
pseudonyms in the transcription and reporting of data. We maintained the data and link files in
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
password-protected locations at all times. With these checks in place, we obtained approval from
both institutions to proceed with the research.
3.2
Identifying interview sample and conducting interviews
In order to identify the interview sample, the lead author consulted researchers with
knowledge of the Mexican education system and representatives of the UNICEF country office
in Mexico City. After discussions between the lead author and UNICEF Mexico regarding the
objectives of the study, we decided on the locations of Mexico’s Federal District and three states,
Chiapas, Yucatán and Zacatecas. As we describe above, these states provide a great deal of
diversity in terms of educational and socio-economic conditions, population and geography.
After discussions related to the types of participants needed for the study, UNICEF Mexico City
took the lead in identifying participants and setting up an interview schedule. The identification
of participants was guided by the desire to capture variability in contexts and practices, as well as
the desire to explore the situation of key marginalized populations, particularly indigenous
children and children in rural areas.
Our sample selection strategy resulted in 32 interviews of national, state, district and
school officials. The sample also contained teachers, representatives of NGOs, teacher educators,
and one representative of the Mexican teachers’ union (see Table 1). The sample provides an
adequate representation of state and school levels, but little representation of district officials.
Interviews were not distributed evenly across the four study sites, with Chiapas accounting for
about 40 per cent of the interviews. Nonetheless, we were able to conduct eight interviews in
Mexico City, seven interviews in Yucatán and four interviews in Zacatecas. Our decision to
focus so much attention on Chiapas stems largely from our interest in exploring the situation of
teachers of poor children, indigenous children, and children living in rural areas.
23
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
Table 1: Description of the interview sample for Mexico country case study
Number of
Number of
interviews
participants
National level
2
3
State level
9
15
4
District level
1
12
1
School level (including
11
25
4
4
5
2
Participant designation
Interview location
Ch
DF
Yu
Commented [NL1]: Suggest spelling out
Za
2
1
TOTAL
2
3
1
9
1
4
2
1
11
1
1
4
1
1
4
principal and teachers)
University/teacher
preparation
NGOs
4
1
8
1
Teachers’ union
1
1
1
TOTAL
32
69
13
1
1
8
7
4
32
1
To maintain the confidentiality of the union representative, the location of the interview is not
included here.
Interviews were conducted by presenting participants with the consent form, obtaining
their written and oral consent to participate, and, with their permission, tape-recording the
interview. Most interviews lasted between 45 minutes to one hour, as anticipated. The lead
author conducted most interviews on his own, but in several cases he was accompanied by
representatives of UNICEF Mexico or NGOs that partner with UNICEF. Several of the
interviews were conducted as focus groups, with numbers of participants ranging from 2 to 12.
As a result, the total number of interview participants (69) is substantially greater than the
number of interviews. In a few cases, the composition of focus groups was quite fluid, with
participants entering and joining depending on their schedules and obligations. Nearly all of the
interviews were conducted in Spanish, but in two cases the participants demonstrated great skill
in English, which prompted the lead researcher to ask questions in English. In nearly all cases,
participants expressed a strong willingness to participate. In no case did any participant refuse to
participate or to answer any question, although the consent forms clearly expressed participants’
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
rights to refuse participation at any point in the interview. In the assessment of the lead author,
participants spoke candidly about their experiences and opinions.
3.3
Transcribing the interviews, coding and analysing the data
Interviews were transcribed in Spanish by a native Spanish speaker. To maintain participants’
confidentiality, transcriptions did not contain names of participants. Instead, the transcriptions
were linked to recordings through codes and pseudonyms. The transcripts prepared in this
manner generated several hundred pages of interview data.
To begin outlining the key themes and codes from the interview data, the project leaders
referred to the original conceptual framework of our broader study of teachers of marginalized
children. In addition, we discussed the themes that emerged from our presence in the field, our
observations, and our conversations with the informants. This approach gave us an additional
way to identify both expected codes and emergent codes from our conversations and
observations. At all stages of data coding and sense-making we made concerted efforts to
identify themes that both overlapped across the three country case studies and those that were
distinct for data in each specific country.
The prior codes that we anticipated involved questions about resource allocation; patterns
of teacher distribution; and teacher recruitment, retention and retirement practices. The emphasis
on each of these topics varied depending on the context and the interview respondent. In
addition, we were attentive to any patterns pertaining to teacher demographics in explaining the
teacher labour markets we studied, as this theme emerged strongly in our quantitative work.
Some newer themes that emerged from the data included the localness of teacher labour markets,
the crucial role of teachers’ own preferences, the difficult conditions faced by new teachers in the
field, and often the role of political patronage in teacher allocation decisions. In the next sections,
we discuss the key themes that emerged from the data.
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
4
Results
The case study research conducted in Mexico revealed several patterns to support evidence
discussed above that the teachers of marginalized children in Mexico have consistently less
experience, education and training than teachers of other children. New teachers are commonly
hired and assigned to the most remote rural locations, leaving schools in such areas with the least
experienced teachers. As these teachers gain experience, they often request transfers to schools
in more desirable locations, leading to a constant churn of teachers in the most marginalized
areas. Although these patterns are fairly consistent across Mexican states, we did find some
examples of cross-state variation. In the sections that follow, we describe: (1) patterns of teacher
distribution and cross-state variation in these patterns; (2) potential explanations for these
patterns; and (3) key lessons learned from our research, including important policies, practices
and strategies related to the distribution of teachers.
4.1
Teacher distribution and cross-state variation
In Section 2, we discuss several marginalized groups in Mexico, including children with
disabilities, poor children, children living in rural areas, and indigenous children. These groups
often overlap, as indigenous children frequently live in poverty in rural areas. Below we discuss
the general situation of teachers of marginalized children in Mexico, followed by a more focused
discussion of teachers of children in rural areas, teachers of indigenous children, teachers of poor
children living in the urban periphery, and teachers of other marginalized populations.
4.1.1 Teachers of marginalized children: General patterns
As we described in Section 2, one of our interview participants observed that marginalized
children represent the majority of children in Mexico. Many other interview participants echoed
this sentiment. It is clear from our interviews, as well as background literature, that millions of
Mexican children confront daily challenges of poverty, hunger, discrimination, or lack of
adequate educational resources. In many remote rural areas, teachers described to us the abject
poverty that their students faced, coupled with parents with little formal education. And while
marginalization in Mexico is disproportionately concentrated in rural areas, we also interviewed
teachers in Mexico’s Federal District who described the daily challenges of hunger and
26
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
precarious family conditions that their students confronted. A high-quality free education could
help children to overcome many of these challenges, but unfortunately, our interviews reveal that
marginalized children in Mexico rarely have the same level of access to educational resources –
including qualified teachers – as other children.
In responding to a question regarding whether marginalized children have the same level
of access to qualified teachers as other children, a respondent with years of experience in
educational research and policy in Mexico observed, “there is no way and the evidence is
everywhere.” For example, referring to qualitative research exploring the perspectives of
marginalized children, this participant observed:
The narratives that children offer, what they discuss and what they think about
their teachers and their relationships with them, are very revealing. Not only are
[the teachers] not trained, but they don’t want to be there … indigenous children
and rural children, children with disabilities and with difficulties speaking in
Spanish because their native tongue is another one, the jokes, the prejudice, the
intolerance of teachers, is portrayed there. So no they are not served by good
teachers.
As this respondent suggests, a key element of a teacher’s work is the relationship that he or she
establishes with students. In the classrooms of marginalized children, such relationships can be
very difficult, which suggests both a social or cultural mismatch between marginalized children
and their teachers and poor preparation of teachers to work with marginalized children. These
factors combined may lead teachers to adopt authoritarian and even harmful attitudes towards
their students. Another participant in our study raised the possibility that teachers who work with
marginalized children have lower levels of teaching skill, which leads them to adopt
authoritarian attitudes towards their students to compensate for their inability to teach or manage
their classrooms.
Of course, it is difficult to measure or assess relationships between students and teachers
and to compare the nature of these relationships across marginalized and more advantaged
children. Yet in assessing more measurable attributes of teachers such as levels of education,
training, education, and knowledge, there is substantial evidence that teachers of marginalized
children in Mexico are at a disadvantage relative to other teachers. Our quantitative analysis of
data from eight Latin American countries revealed marked differences in teacher qualifications
across urban and rural locations in Mexico and several other countries. Our interviews support
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
this finding, as many participants described a consistent process of sending new teachers to rural
locations with the greatest educational needs. As a participant in a focus group of teachers in the
state of Yucatán observed, “the most unprepared teachers are sent to the highest need areas, but it
should be exactly the opposite.” A teacher educator in Chiapas noted the irony of this situation,
stating that although in many situations the most experienced professionals receive the most
complex responsibilities, in education, “we give the most difficult positions to the least
experienced.”
A state education official in Chiapas observed that due to the sorting of teachers by
seniority, whereby teachers gain experience and move to urban centres, the most marginalized
children have access to the least experienced teachers. Moreover, this official observed, there is
little supervision of teachers in these areas, which can lead to teacher absenteeism and poor
performance:
There is a lack of supervision, especially academic support, in schools that are in
marginalized contexts, in vulnerable contexts, working with vulnerable populations, there
is an impoverishment of institutional action of supervision. Schools that are in situations
of better communication are visited more often and receive more support, where they
have the possibility of receiving orientation of all types from administrative help to
pedagogical support.
In sum, many teachers of marginalized children receive little initial preparation to work with
these children and, once in service, receive little supervision or support to do their work
effectively. The result is poor teaching and learning conditions for the children who need
effective teachers the most. As a researcher studying the situation of children in Chiapas
observed, the quality of teachers “is a huge problem in Chiapas and in other parts of southern
Mexico.” The researcher explained that this problem has “a long history in the Mexican
education system” because “the most qualified go and work in the urban areas. All the teachers
look for better places to eat, stay, to work. And they of course look for the best schools, the
better equipped schools.” As a result, “the more marginalized parts of Mexico always have a
problem that there are not any qualified teachers.”
4.1.2 Teachers in rural areas
Our interviews consistently revealed the desire for teachers to work in more urban areas and to
work close to their families and homes. In other words, geography plays a strong role in
determining who teaches where: in general, teachers with the most options (those who have the
28
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
most seniority) choose to teach in more urban areas, leaving positions in remote rural areas for
new, inexperienced teachers. Most new teachers have very little choice over where they work, so
they must often choose between jobs in remote rural areas or no jobs at all. When new teachers
arrive at their positions, they often encounter very difficult living and teaching conditions. One
state education official in Chiapas recounted the story of a young teacher who travelled to her
first teaching position in a remote rural area accompanied by her mother, a former teacher who
agreed to help and support her through her first year of teaching. The conditions were so difficult
that her mother left the following day. Other teachers recounted their fears of wildlife, disease or
violence.
Given sparse populations and limited resources in rural communities, a large percentage
of schools in rural areas of Mexico contain children of various ages and grades in a single
classroom. These multi-grade classrooms present a number of challenges for teachers, including
the need to provide multiple sets of curriculum simultaneously, addressing a multitude of
developmental levels and abilities, and added administrative responsibilities. For example, the
lone teacher of a rural multi-grade school in Chiapas recounted having to serve as both teacher
and principal, which required her to fill out of many forms and attend to the needs of the
community. As a consultant for a national education NGO explained, “This teacher who is in a
multi-grade school is a teacher but she also has to clean the school, receive training, she has to go
turn in paper work, maintain the school, and that all takes time away from teaching. So multigrade schools are missing a lot and also have a lot of absenteeism.”
Despite the many difficulties associated with working in multi-grade schools, many of
the teachers we spoke to reported that they had received little training in multi-grade teaching
methodologies, leaving them to improvise and develop their own strategies. As the education
consultant quoted above observed, “the normal schools and the universities generally educate
you to teach just one grade.” Such training may also be directed towards subject matter or other
information, but it is “never directed towards multi-grade education.”
In Chiapas, which has a large majority of multi-grade schools, one multi-grade teacher
told us that she had received no initial training to work in a multi-grade classroom. When asked
about her initial preparation to work in a multi-grade setting, she explained:
No, no, none. Of course they give us small workshops that help us to improve our
teaching of multi-grade classes but I rely more on personal creativity. There are some
29
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
materials that help us, but if we talk about training, it’s more about one’s creativity, what
seems better, if this works. Tomorrow you don’t repeat it if it doesn’t work. And you go
building experience, next year I know how I will start…
This teacher also explained that due to the isolation of her school she had few opportunities to
collaborate with other teachers to devise teaching strategies. Although she observed that
technical advisers occasionally provided her with support, “that coordination between multigrade teachers is not done, it’s not done.”
Another multi-grade teacher in the same region of rural Chiapas observed that the
Secretariat of Education provide some courses, “but the time is not sufficient. At times they just
give us one day.” Asked if he had the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues, he observed
that in a larger community, collaboration was more likely. “I’ve seen teachers do this, all the
multi-grade teachers meet and they plan for the year. But here no, here we just get one example
and with that example one often has doubts.” When asked how he learned to teach a class with
three grades, he replied, “I’m just battling.”
The situation for these teachers is particularly acute because their schools are located in a
very remote part of Chiapas, where there are few training opportunities and, as the teachers
observed, few opportunities to collaborate with colleagues. A participant in a focus group of
supervisors and technical advisers in rural Chiapas observed that while there was some multigrade training available, there was no transportation available to participate in these
opportunities, which presented a major obstacle for teachers working in remote schools.
In contrast to the teachers we talked to in Chiapas, two former multi-grade teachers in
Zacatecas reported that although they had not received training to teach in multi-grade settings
and they had few resources for this work, they had developed their own network of teachers to
collaborate in developing strategies. These teachers also reported that they had worked with a
book on multi-grade teaching prepared by the CONAFE. In their opinion, this book offered an
integrated and helpful approach. Yet when asked about a recent report of a successful multigrade model developed in Zacatecas, the teachers were not aware of this model.
The remoteness of many rural communities in Mexico also means that many
communities do not have large enough populations to establish formal schools under the
Mexican Secretariat of Education. In response to this problem, in 1971 the Mexican Government
established CONAFE as a branch of the national Secretariat of Education, with the objective of
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
providing educational services to communities without schools. To qualify for CONAFE
services, a community must have at least 5 and no more than 29 students. These students are
taught by instructores comunitarios, or community instructors, who are between 15 and 29 years
old and often have no more than a secondary-level education. After receiving initial training of
six to seven weeks, these instructors move to communities where they live with families or in
schools during the week. These instructors must commit to serving a minimum of one year of
service, after which they can qualify for scholarships to continue their studies. Although the
instructors do not receive a salary (they receive a small stipend for travel between their homes
and their school communities), they receive room and board from the communities that they
serve. In 2013, more than 40,000 CONAFE instructors worked with more than 320,000 children
in basic education in Mexico, and another 32,000 ‘education promoters’ served almost 460,000
children under the age of 4 (SEP, 2013).
Our interview respondents, including many current and former CONAFE instructors,
expressed a great deal of ambivalence about the programme. On one hand, several participants
noted that CONAFE has reached many children who had never received educational
opportunities before. As a state-level CONAFE official observed, “CONAFE is where no one
else is.” A state education official in Chiapas explained, “to be fair, it has reached children from
small communities, who without this offer of CONAFE, would be marginalized from the school
system.” This official also observed that pedagogically, there are “isolated cases of very good
experiences in terms of achieving significant work for the children with the support of families
and these instructors.” Moreover, many of the CONAFE instructors we interviewed described
the strong positive relationships that they had formed with their students and their families. Other
positive aspects of CONAFE appear to be the support infrastructure for the instructors, as well as
directed (but short) initial training. On the other hand, we also heard evidence of negative aspects
of CONAFE, including insufficient preparation of instructors, a high level of instructor attrition,
and the difficult conditions that instructors must contend with.
Several interview respondents reported that working with CONAFE had been a lifechanging experience for them, as they had the opportunity to experience a new living situation,
develop strong relationships with the community, and have a positive impact on children and
families with great educational needs. As one former CONAFE instructor in Chiapas observed,
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“in my experience, the community not only allows us to be the instructor, but also to be part of
the family, of the community, to live very close to their daily activities and worries, and to share
their joy.” A former CONAFE instructor from Yucatán noted her initial worries, which were
overcome by support from the community:
At the beginning you’re scared because you’re used to being with your family and
the first few months you think a lot about it at night, about what your family is
doing, what would I be doing if I were home? But then you see the children and
they are with you and they don’t just see you as a teacher but they see you as one
of them and you feel like you are part of their family. Because the families adopt
you and they see you not just as a teacher but also as a daughter, companion,
friend, and they invite you to eat and you talk with them and you don’t feel so
alone and you have a second family.
Of course, relationships between instructors and communities are not always positive, as noted
by another former CONAFE instructor, who observed that, due to negative experiences with
CONAFE, “there are times when the community does not open up much because they are tired
of how their children are mistreated.” Additionally, a teacher educator in Yucatán noted that
while CONAFE places much emphasis on the positive experiences of instructors, there is less
attention paid to the communities’ perceptions and experiences with the programme.
The quotations above illustrate the difficult conditions that CONAFE instructors often
face as they leave their families for the first time, often as teenagers. Instructors reported feeling
fear, isolation, boredom and deprivation of services ranging from electricity to cell phone
service. To support these instructors both personally and pedagogically, CONAFE maintains a
support infrastructure of trainers, assistants and state-level coordinators. The work of trainers and
assistants ranges from assisting instructors with pedagogical challenges to mediating conflicts
between instructors and community members. For example, one trainer described working with a
community to ensure that they provided food to the instructor. According to CONAFE personnel
we interviewed, these support personnel give priority in terms of time and effort to teachers
facing the greatest pedagogical and personal challenges. For example, trainers at the primary
level are generally assigned fewer communities to work with, which allows them more time in
each community. This arrangement is due to the difficult pedagogical conditions and needs of
the primary instructors, especially the challenge of working with up to six primary grades in one
classroom.
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In addition to support from trainers and supervisors, CONAFE instructors receive a six to
seven-week initial preparation that covers basic teaching methodologies. Given the difficult
educational and living conditions that CONAFE instructors must face when they begin their
service, in addition to the many complexities of teaching children, many interview respondents
observed that this initial preparation is insufficient. A CONAFE official in Yucatán explained
that in addition to basic teaching methodologies, the initial training prepares the instructors to be
“autodidacts, because in seven weeks we can’t teach them everything from all the grades.” A
representative of an NGO in Yucatán, who had worked for years with CONAFE, observed that
although their initial preparation was limited, over time the instructors developed many
instructional tools that made them effective teachers over the long run, if they stayed in the
profession.
A principal characteristic of many CONAFE schools is multiple grades per classroom,
with three per classroom at the preschool level, six at the primary level, and three at the
secondary level. This makes the work quite complex and, as an indigenous education official
observed, “even more so if the school is in an indigenous condition.” At the primary level, this
complexity can grow if there are not enough students to establish a primary school. As a
CONAFE trainer in Yucatán observed, in such cases the primary class could be merged with a
preschool class, meaning that the instructor worked simultaneously with preschool and primaryaged children. A former primary-level CONAFE instructor in Yucatán recounted that when her
community complained about the preschool teacher, the preschool teacher was let go and her
five students were combined with 16 primary students in Grades 1 through 6. Although the
trainer assured this instructor that she would help him with his class, she never came. Although
the parents requested a new teacher, the new teacher never came, demonstrating that “the parents
can ask for new teachers or ask to replace a teacher, but they are not always paid attention to.”
At the secondary level, an additional complexity is the use of many texts in English.
When asked why students needed to study English, the official responded, “We study English
just like any other secondary school. CONAFE manages the same programmes as the Mexican
education system because we have official recognition from the government, so we need to be in
agreement with the education system, as well as all of the reforms that have occurred.” In other
words, CONAFE instructors, with seven weeks of preparation and working in remote multi33
Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
grade classrooms, often with indigenous children, must teach the same curriculum as Mexican
teachers with bachelor’s degrees working in urban centres with one grade per classroom.
Not surprisingly, many observers have argued that CONAFE instructors simply do not
have adequate preparation or skills to effectively teach the high-needs populations that CONAFE
targets. Several teacher educators and former CONAFE instructors argued that instructors do not
receive adequate preparation in either multi-grade methodologies or bilingual education. One
CONAFE official explained that instructors had manuals that described how to divide and work
with multiple grades and ages and explained, “the multilevel model of CONAFE is not so much
a question of content that we revise bibliographies, but more of practice.” The approach,
according to this official, is of dividing students according to their age, knowledge, grade and
working individually with groups, while other students work independently. However, according
to a former CONAFE instructor in Yucatán, instructors often do not know what level they will
teach until the last minute, so their preparation is not specific to their own grades or levels. As
result, they arrive unprepared for the specific conditions that they will face. Additionally, this
former instructor observed that although CONAFE did have a multi-grade model, the model was
developed in another state (Chihuahua), so it did not work well in Yucatán. Another observer,
who had worked with the CONAFE programme for years, observed that CONAFE instructors
had little preparation to work with students with special learning needs or disabilities.
Given the difficult conditions that CONAFE instructors must face, it is not surprising that
the program has problems with attrition. A CONAFE official in Yucatán reported that about 20
per cent of instructors in the state do not complete their one-year commitment. Most of those
who leave do so in September, at the beginning of the school year when they first realize the
conditions under which they are expected to live and teach, or in January, after they have spent
time at home with their families during winter holidays. This attrition poses challenges for the
communities that lose their teachers. According to the official in Yucatán, departing instructors
are replaced with candidates who did not pass the selection process in the first round, suggesting
that they may be even less prepared to teach in difficult circumstances. The challenge of attrition
also manifests itself over the long term, as CONAFE instructors decide whether to devote their
careers to education. While the programme provides scholarships for instructors to continue their
studies after completing their teaching service, it is not clear whether the program has served as a
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pipeline for instructors to go on to become classroom teachers. In one interview with CONAFE
personnel, only one of four participants expressed a desire to continue in the field of education
after completing her degree.
Finally, critics of CONAFE have argued that rather than addressing the problem of
marginalization, CONAFE actually generates more marginalization by relegating communities
facing the most difficult conditions to a separate system. As a teacher educator in Yucatán
argued, CONAFE has not risen above its compensatory character, despite the fact that it has been
in operation for more than 40 years. Moreover, argues this teacher educator, the programme
places a large responsibility on the shoulders of parents and places young people at great risk in
return for little reward, especially in areas where drug trafficking and related violence have
grown. In the opinion of this teacher educator, CONAFE instructors need to make commitments
of a minimum of three years to their communities, along with much better training and greater
security. More generally, the structure of the programme needs to be considered, so that the very
best teachers are channelled to the most marginalized communities.
4.1.3 Teachers of indigenous children
Mexico’s indigenous children receive educational services from a directorate of the
Undersecretary of Basic Education, the General Direction of Indigenous Education (DGEI).
Although one of the purposes of this directorate is to provide bilingual education and culturally
relevant instruction to indigenous children, many of our respondents observed that for a number
of reasons, the quality and preparation of teachers of indigenous children is inferior to that of
teachers in the general education system. Several respondents noted that due to the requirement
to speak an indigenous language, some indigenous teachers are hired and assigned to posts
without a bachelor’s degree, which is required to teach in public schools. Moreover, a teacher
educator in Yucatán argued that because teachers do not always speak the language well, or
speak a different indigenous language from their students, the language requirement of the
indigenous education system has not been fulfilled, resulting in ‘bilingual discrimination’
towards indigenous children. Moreover, explains this teacher educator, simply speaking the
language does not equate to pedagogical skill, so even in cases where teachers have a good
command of the indigenous language, this may not translate to good teaching. Further, according
to this teacher educator, although teacher preparation programmes in Yucatán offer bilingual and
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intercultural training programmes, this training is not sufficient to support and learn from the
Maya culture, which according to this observer’s analysis, is the majority culture in Yucatán.
We also heard another side of the argument regarding bilingual teachers. An indigenous
education official observed that although teachers who speak indigenous languages do not
always have the same level of preparation as teachers in the general education system, it was
more important that they speak the language of the children, due to the importance of the
language to the community. As this official observed, “yes, they could send teachers who know
how to teach, but if they don’t speak the language this will damage the community and the
education of the children.” This official observed that it is “worth the risk” to hire bilingual
teachers, even if they did not have the same level of pedagogical preparation. Yet several
interview participants reported that some of these teachers do not know the language well. As a
state official in the indigenous education division observed, this may occur in about 5 per cent of
the cases of teachers hired, who may have indigenous parents but do not speak, read or write the
language well. An indigenous teacher in Chiapas reported that although the first language of her
parents was Chol, she did not learn the language well. Instead, she recounted mastering the
language as a teacher of Chol-speaking children, reading and writing the language with her
students.
Another linguistic challenge occurs when teachers speak an indigenous language that is
different from the language spoken by their students. This problem is particularly acute in
Chiapas, which has many different language groups. Mixing of languages can even occur within
a single school or classroom. For example, in one indigenous school on the outskirts of the
capital Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the principal (who also taught Grades 5 and 6) reported that students
spoke at least five different indigenous languages – Chol, Maya, Tseltal, Tzotzil and Zoque.
Three of the school’s four teachers spoke Tzotzil, while one spoke Zoque. According to the
principal, this created challenges, but the teachers did the best to “rescue and preserve” the
mother tongues of the children. A Grade 1 teacher in the same school, who spoke Zoque, also
discussed the importance of valuing indigenous languages, and observed the importance of
speaking to his students in their first language, as they “open up and they give me answers and
activities, and I see the importance of valuing their language, and this continues being
reinforced.”
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A state official in Mexico’s indigenous system observed that in selecting teachers for
their initial placements, their knowledge of an indigenous language is a major consideration. In
fact, applicants must undergo a written and oral evaluation of their language skills. They are then
hired and placed in schools with the objective of matching the language of the teacher with that
of the community. However, this official noted, although language is considered in placing
teachers in their initial assignments, language does not play an important role in teacher
transfers. In this case, teachers with the greatest seniority have more options in choosing schools.
As a result, a teacher may be placed with students who speak the same indigenous language, but
later request a transfer to a school where the students speak a different language. As the official
explains, “it doesn't matter if the teacher speaks Chol, Tzotzil, whatever, what matters is that he
has a lot of seniority, so he can move to the city … that is the major difficulty of placing teachers
who speak an indigenous language.” In cases where the teacher does not speak the language of
the community, the official explains that his office encourages teachers to dedicate themselves to
learning the new language.
Because they often live in remote rural areas, indigenous children also face many of the
problems of rural children discussed above, especially the difficulty of attracting qualified
teachers to these areas. As a consultant on indigenous education issues observed, because
indigenous schools are difficult to reach, “those are the schools where no one wants to be. Even
an indigenous teacher who lives in Palenque [Chiapas], they may send him to Tila, which is five
hours away, so even though he may speak the same language of his students, he will try to get
transferred to a school closer to where he lives.” The desire of teachers to work in cities appeared
over and over in our interviews in Chiapas and Yucatán, even among teachers who originally
come from more remote rural areas. As one indigenous education official observed, “no one
wants to be in the jungle.”
Even when teachers speak the same language as their students, the proper methodology
for teaching bilingually is not always clear. Interview participants described developing their
own methodologies, which were often centred in Spanish, with explanations in the indigenous
languages when necessary. For example, an indigenous primary teacher in Chiapas explained,
“the math textbook is in Spanish, so we take it and we begin to explain in Spanish, but if the
children are silent that’s when we start to bring in the mother tongue and the students start to say,
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‘oh, now I understand,’ because in Spanish there are some words they don’t understand.” Several
Maya-speaking teachers in Yucatán observed that in addition to lacking bilingual methodology,
many teachers also neglect the Maya culture in their teaching and do not value indigenous
knowledge.
The teaching and language challenges faced by teachers in Mexico’s indigenous schools
carry over to CONAFE schools, which serve a large number of indigenous children. As one
former CONAFE instructor in Yucatán noted, the instructors in that state do not always speak
Maya, even if they are assigned to work in schools with Maya-speaking students. Several of the
former CONAFE instructors we interviewed reported that they had not received sufficient
training to teach bilingually. As one of these instructors observed, “they tell you in theory that
you need to teach bilingually, but they don’t tell you how to do it.” Another former instructor
agreed: “sometimes, the application is just to give your explanation in Maya and then translate it
into Spanish, or vice-versa. That’s bilingual education.” But according to this former instructor,
bilingual education should be much more profound, in which each language “has its space” and
“it is more than using the indigenous language, but also indigenous knowledge.” In reality,
observes this instructor, “the majority of bilingual teachers I know, it’s just speaking the
language and translating the text, and they consider themselves bilingual teachers. But I don’t
think that counts as bilingual or intercultural education.” Additionally, although this problem
occurs in most indigenous settings, one former CONAFE instructor observed, “It’s worse in
CONAFE,” in part because instructors may not speak Maya, or they are simply not prepared to
work in such settings. As this participant observed, “even if there is training and if there are
materials, the best method cannot work in the wrong hands.”
4.1.4 Teachers of children in the urban periphery
In addition to marginalization suffered by indigenous children and children in remote
rural settings, children in Mexico’s urban locations, especially in the periphery of large urban
centres like the Federal District, face many social and educational challenges. These may include
poverty, homelessness, crime, violence, or difficult home environments. A principal in a primary
school on the periphery of the Federal District described the challenges faced by the children in
her school, which included “dysfunctional homes, homes where there’s no father, homes where
the mother works exhausting hours, homes where there is no mother. We have many children
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who are taken care of by their grandmothers, grandmothers who are tired.” The principal also
described conditions of violence, including homes where fathers are restricted from visiting their
children due to histories of violence and abuse. In sum, the children face “very difficult
conditions.”
Working with children facing such challenges can be very difficult for teachers. A
primary teacher in the same school as the principal discussed above observed that the mothers of
her students were “working single mothers with no more than primary education,” which makes
communication and collaboration with the home very difficult.
The director of a secondary school in the Federal District’s urban periphery observed that
there was a negative “stigma” connected with the surrounding neighbourhood, which often made
teachers reluctant to work there. Two teachers in this school described problems they
encountered with student discipline, including defiance, apathy, and lack of support from
families.
Despite the difficult conditions faced by teachers in the urban periphery, our interviews in
the Federal District suggest that it may not be as challenging to ensure qualified teachers in
schools in the urban periphery, relative to the difficulties of attracting and retaining teachers in
remote rural settings. Past research on the distribution of teachers in Mexico also suggests that
teacher sorting, or an inequitable distribution of teachers across schools, is less pronounced in
Mexico City than in two Mexican states (Santibañez, 2002: Luschei, 2006, 2012a). There could
be several explanations for a more equitable distribution of teachers in large urban centres,
compared with differences across urban and rural locations. First, we note above the persistent
desire of teachers to work both near their homes and close to urban areas. Working in an urban
area – even in a very large one like Mexico City – allows teachers to accomplish at least one of
those objectives. Jobs in the Federal District allow teachers access to amenities available in
urban locations. Also, most teachers who apply to work in the Federal District are likely to either
live there or to desire to work there. Even teachers whose schools are across the city from where
they live have the option of commuting from home to work on a daily basis. For example,
teachers we interviewed in the Federal District reported that it took them as long as 1.5 hours
each way to reach their jobs every day.
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
The second reason that teacher distribution may be more equitable in the Federal District
is the relatively high performance and capacity of the system and students. The Federal District
consistently performs at the top of national assessments and, as one of our respondents noted, has
always had more educational resources than the Mexican states. This respondent, who worked
for years in the Federal District’s education system, observed: “we had very good results during
this time and it was expected because of the relative advantages of urban life and the quality of
life indicators and the concentration of human capital and resources. Mexico City always ranked
first in everything.” At the same time, the official noted that in more recent years, the Federal
District’s relative advantage has been lost, “probably not as a result of deterioration but rather of
stagnation, whereas in other states you see signs of advancement.”
More resources and higher student performance make for better working conditions, even
in the urban periphery. Higher levels of resources in the Federal District may also result in a
stronger level of administrative capacity. An educational official in this system described to us
the importance of administrative knowledge and capacity in the management of teacher-related
issues in the Federal District. According to this official, building administrative capacity has
been a central goal of the Secretariat for several years. As an example, the official described
several efforts by the Secretariat to make teacher assignments more coherent and equitable,
because “what we have learned is that quality doesn’t just come from pedagogy, but also from
good administration. So if you have a good teacher but he does not have good working
conditions, it will be difficult for him to have the same level of performance.” To begin with, the
national Alianza agreement approved in 2008 required all prospective teachers to take a national
examination prior to being hired and assigned to schools. As a result, education officials have
more information upon which to base hiring and assignment decisions. Second, the Secretariat
has tried to place teachers closer to where they live, so that they do not spend many hours
commuting every day. As the official noted, “if a teacher spends 2.5 to 3 hours travelling to his
school, he arrives tired without energy to work. We are accepting that this is not an easy job, we
are trying to place teachers closer to their homes, or if they work in more than one school, we try
to put these schools closer together. That’s a perfect combination, we are in that process, but it is
not an easy process.”
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
The official points out that the situation in the Federal District is not always one in which
the “best teachers are in the best schools.” Instead, a desire to be close to their homes guides
teachers’ preferences and decisions. At the same time, many teachers do not want to work in
marginalized zones because they are often at the furthest reaches of the city. In these zones, “that
is where really good teachers are needed but not all teachers live in the periphery of the city. So
that is where we have conflict.” In these cases, teacher training and support become particularly
important. To address this need, the Secretariat has created a programme called Entre Pares, or
Between Peers, that matches high-performing schools with low-performing schools so that the
administrators can share and observe challenges and best practices. As the official observes, “it’s
not just a well-prepared teacher, it’s a collective that can demonstrate the characteristics of the
school to other schools.”
Despite evidence of a more equitable distribution of teachers in the Federal District,
teachers there nonetheless expressed the common desire to be close to their homes and families.
One primary teacher in the city’s urban periphery described how urbanization transformed the
school and community where she had worked for more than 20 years. This school was located in
a “very marginalized” and remote part of the city, but initially she did not have problems getting
there from home. Over time, she noted, “that zone began to fill with people and became like
another city within the city. There started to be more traffic, and there came a time that it took
me two hours to get home and I arrived home late, so it was becoming more complicated, taking
alternative routes, or crossing highways, so that’s when I decided to change.” After five years
applying to change schools through the cadena de cambio system, she finally received an
assignment in her current school, in the same neighbourhood where she has lived for many years.
The principal of the same primary school also described the high level of teacher mobility
in her school that had occurred as the result of a recent shift to full-day classes, as opposed to
half-day shifts that the school had operated previously. According to the principal, this change,
which led to the departure of teachers who could only work half days, resulted in the
replacement of three fourths of the teaching staff, including herself, who became the principal at
this time. In sum, just as in rural areas, teachers in the Federal District appear to move frequently
to improve their living and working conditions. However, there is not as much evidence that this
mobility disproportionately affects marginalized children, as it seems to in rural areas.
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4.1.5 Teachers of other marginalized populations
Although we have focused our discussion on the teachers of children living in rural areas,
teachers of indigenous children, and teachers of children living in the urban periphery, we
acknowledge that marginalization affects many other children with multiple disadvantages.
Other groups of marginalized children that we identified include disabled children, sick children,
working children, children living in the streets, overage children, migrant and immigrant
children, ‘transnational’ children whose families have migrated back from the United States after
some time abroad, and out-of-school children. We did not collect sufficient evidence to provide
an adequate discussion of the teachers of each of these groups of children. Out-of-school
children in particular are difficult to discuss in this context, as their absence from formal
schooling precludes discussion of their current teachers and former teachers.
A growing phenomenon in the state of Chiapas is that of immigrant children who, with
their families, often use the state as a transitional point on a northward migration from Central
America to the United States. As an education official in that state explained, “a teacher could
have Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, Guatemalan students, so much so that a school director told me
that his school should be called the ‘United Nations’. Because Chiapas is the door to search for
the American Dream. But many of them stay here.” Schools in Chiapas also contain many
‘transnational students’ – those whose families have returned after spending time in the United
States. The official we spoke with estimates that in the state of Chiapas, there are approximately
3,000 such children. Often these children do not speak Spanish and are seen as outsiders by
students and teachers. The official explains, “this situation is difficult for teachers because the
teacher does not speak English and at times the teacher, because he cannot communicate with the
student, puts the student aside and the other children do too because if the student says he is from
the United States there is a certain negative attitude from the children, especially if the student
does not speak Spanish.”
The official we interviewed reported that through the work of his organization, which
tries to sensitize teachers to the conditions of migrant and transnational children, teachers have
started to recognize the rights of transnational and immigrant students, and more generally, the
rights of all children to education and other basic human rights. Additionally, the government of
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the state of Chiapas has undertaken steps to ease the process for immigrant children to enrol in
schools, as they often do not have birth certificates or other official documentation.
In general, we found that the teachers of children confronted with different types of
marginalization tend to be less qualified than other teachers. A representative of a Chiapas
representative of a national organization dedicated to the educational needs of vulnerable
children observed that many teachers of these children are not maestros de base, or fully certified
teachers. For example, many of them came from the national CONAFE programme discussed
above. Moreover, many of these teachers do not have a good understanding of the conditions
faced by their students.
4.1.6 Teacher sex
A final consideration related to the teachers of marginalized children is that of teacher
sex. Our cross-country quantitative analysis found a disproportionate concentration of male
teachers working in rural areas and with more marginalized children. These patterns, especially
urban-rural differences in teacher sex, are also present in our quantitative analysis of Mexico.
Our interviews in Mexico also revealed evidence of disproportionate concentrations of male
teachers in remote rural areas. For example, all 12 of the participants of a focus group of school
supervisors and technical advisers that we conducted in rural Chiapas were male. A female
primary teacher in Chiapas described previous challenges of obtaining work as a primary
teacher, when positions for women were limited primarily to preschool. Similarly, two female
teachers in Zacatecas described a teachers’ college that, until recently, did not admit women.
These teachers also observed that there continued to be sex-based discrimination in assigning
administrative positions to teachers, as school directors, supervisors, and technical advisers are
much more likely to be male. At the same time, these teachers described changing conditions
that have resulted in greater parity between the sexes in teaching positions. According to these
teachers, rural schools in the past were disproportionately staffed by male teachers; this has
changed to where the proportion of male teachers is closer to 50 per cent. This change results in
part from the difficult economy: according to two female teachers in Zacatecas, whereas female
teachers in the past may have resisted assignments in rural schools, now these teachers “will go
wherever there is work.”
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Disproportionate concentrations of male teachers in rural areas, where they exist, may
result from cultural norms, the preferences of both male and female teachers, or reluctance on the
part of education officials to place female teachers in difficult and remote settings (Luschei,
2012b). Whatever the reasons for an over-representation of male teachers in rural areas, the
consequences may be severe, especially for girls in rural areas. If, as some evidence suggests,
girls learn more from female teachers than from male teachers, a lack of female teachers may put
them at a disadvantage in terms of their educational opportunities. Moreover, girls in rural areas
who do not have female teachers are less likely to have strong positive female role models to
encourage and convince them that they can be successful as professional women.
4.1.7 Cross-state differences
Our interviews in Mexico lend support for the existence of a consistent pattern whereby
marginalized children – especially children in rural areas and indigenous children – find
themselves in the classrooms of teachers who are on average less experienced than other
teachers. The schools these children attend also experience a great deal of teacher mobility, as
new teachers assigned to them seek opportunities to transfer to more desirable locations as soon
as they are able. Within the broad patterns we find in the data, we also find some differences
across states. We believe this cross-state variability in teacher distribution results primarily from
differences in population and geography. In Chiapas and Yucatán, large states with high degrees
of poverty (especially Chiapas), vast remote rural areas and large indigenous populations, key
marginalized groups include poor children, children in rural areas and indigenous children. Each
of these groups – which often overlap – appears to have less qualified teachers than more
advantaged children. In particular, the need to place teachers speaking indigenous languages in
the classrooms of indigenous children can lead to cases where teachers do not adequately speak
the indigenous language or do not have all required qualifications to teach in government
schools. The language requirement presents additional problems in Chiapas, where many
indigenous languages are spoken and we heard many cases of language mismatches between
teacher and students.
By contrast, Zacatecas has a very small indigenous population and is relatively less poor,
at least in comparison to Chiapas. Yet the state has vast expanses of remote arid territory and the
children and teachers who live in these areas contend with substantial isolation from information
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and services. As a representative of an NGO in Zacatecas observed, “Zacatecas gets lost in the
averages” because although the state is not among Mexico’s poorest, the state-wide average
hides the extreme poverty and isolation of remote rural areas. Interview respondents in Zacatecas
also noted the increasing negative influence of violence stemming from drug trafficking.
Combined with the emigration of many of the state’s men to the United States for work, we
observe many challenges for families, children and schools in the state. Together, these factors
lead to a general desire for teachers to work in urban areas, placing children in rural areas at a
disadvantage. At the same time, negative conditions in urban schools also pose many challenges.
Moreover, a difficult economy may lead to teachers to take any job that is available, as a young
teacher in the state observed. Consequently, we may not see as large of an urban-rural difference
in teacher qualifications as we do in Chiapas and Yucatán, although we cannot verify this
hypothesis with any recent data.
In contrast to the three states we examined, the Federal District is more self-contained
and much more urban. Additionally, teachers living in one part of the city have at least the
possibility of commuting to a school on the other side of the city. The Federal District’s urban
status also results in a much lower prevalence of multi-grade teaching, which is a key
consideration in Chiapas, Yucatán, and Zacatecas, given their large rural areas. As result,
teachers in the Federal District are much less likely to find themselves in classrooms with
students of many different ages and grades, with little training to meet this challenge. The
Federal District’s urban status also greatly reduces the prevalence of the CONAFE programme,
which places young, inexperienced teachers with little training in the classrooms of the most
marginalized children. As a result of these differences – combined with the apparent advantage
of the Federal District in terms of resources and administrative capacity that we discuss above –
we hypothesize that the distribution of teachers is more equitable in the Federal District, relative
to Chiapas, Yucatán and Zacatecas. Again, we cannot confirm this hypothesis with analysis of
recent data, but we do note that earlier studies have found relatively less teacher sorting in the
Federal District, compared with the states of Aguascalientes and Sonora (Santibañez, 2002;
Luschei, 2006, 2012a).
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4.2
Determinants of teacher distribution and cross-state variation
Our previous discussion makes clear that the teachers of marginalized children have on average,
access to less qualified teachers than other children. We also allude to some potential causes of
this pattern. Here we more systematically examine factors that may lead to an inequitable
distribution of teachers and potential sources of cross-state differences. Where applicable, we
also discuss potential levers of policy or practice that could address inequities in teacher
distribution. In the following sections we discuss teachers’ preferences and choices, the system
of teacher hiring and transfer, Mexico’s national Carrera Magisterial teacher incentive
programme, other incentives to teach in marginalized areas, and potential determinants of crossstate differences in the distribution of teachers.
4.2.1 Teachers’ preferences and choices
To understand why teachers who work with marginalized children are different from
other teachers, we must first recognize that teachers are human beings and care deeply about
their living and working conditions. Just like members of any other occupation, teachers make
choices about where they work based on both monetary and non-monetary factors. For example,
teachers participating in our interviews commonly expressed a desire to be close to home. This
desire may be greatest among the youngest teachers, who are often more likely to be assigned to
remote locations. Participants in the national CONAFE programme, which sends instructors as
young as 16 years old to work in small remote communities, expressed to us their initial fears
and loneliness upon arriving at the communities where they were expected to live and teach for
the following year. Not surprisingly, this programme experiences substantial attrition: one statelevel official of the CONAFE programme estimated that approximately 20 per cent of instructors
in his state do not fulfil their year commitments.
In addition to being close to home, teachers also expressed a desire to be in urban areas,
with greater access to daily amenities like running water, electricity, transportation, Internet and
telephone signals. Not surprisingly, teachers with more options will choose to teach in schools
and communities that offer these amenities. Yet in the case of Mexico, those with more options
tend to be teachers with the greatest amount of seniority, as we discuss below. Although new
teachers are not required to teach in remote locations, these are often the only positions available
to them, given their low seniority. As many participants in our case study explained, novice
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teachers in Mexico must often choose between a job in a remote rural area and no job at all.
Consequently, new teachers often resign themselves to ‘paying their dues’ in a remote school
while accumulating enough seniority to transfer to a school in a more desirable location.
4.2.2 Teacher hiring, seniority and the ‘chain of change’
When prospective Mexican teachers finish their preparation, they generally apply for jobs
to work in the state where they received their teacher preparation. State-level officials, including
teachers’ union representatives in many cases, identify open positions and place teachers in these
positions. In most cases, available positions are more likely to be found in schools that have lost
teachers due to transfers to other schools. As a result, positions that are available to new teachers
are much more likely to be located in schools with difficult circumstances, like multi-grade
schools in remote rural areas. Given the nature and objectives of the CONAFE program, nearly
all instructor positions are in such schools. The result of this system of initial hiring and
assignment of teachers to schools is that teachers in schools with the most difficult conditions are
those with the fewest options, especially inexperienced teachers.
In our interviews we heard numerous accounts of teachers who explained that for their
first jobs, they simply went “wherever they sent me.” Many of these teachers made clear that
they could only cope with the difficult conditions of their initial assignments for so long. A
researcher in Chiapas observed of such teachers, “we need to think that they are human beings.
You know they have families, and maybe they can compromise for what, two, three years or four
years or five years in a very isolated rural area but they’re going to have to be with their families
and they will want a very different environment for their children.” As many of these teachers
explained, they understand that by accumulating seniority over time they can eventually move to
schools and communities with more pleasant conditions.
According to the Mexican system of teacher transfer, known as the cadena de cambio, or
‘chain of change’, teachers working in rural and remote areas accumulate seniority and points
over time and often use these points to transfer to more desirable urban locations. As two
teachers in Zacatecas explained, the more desirable locations require more points. In this system,
the number of points required to transfer to a school serves as a proxy measure for the
desirability of working and living in the surrounding area. The degree and consequences of
teacher turnover are severe, as noted by an education researcher in Mexico City:
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Teacher turnover is a very strong problem and especially in marginalized communities
because teachers want to be in an urban school, a pretty school. We have found that in
the most marginalized schools they send the new teachers who are not very qualified
and then they want to leave, so I have visited schools where a class has six teachers in
a year or they had six teachers and now they don’t have anyone. Because the problem
in rural communities is that if the teacher doesn’t come, there’s no class.
According to this researcher, parents complain that this turnover hurts their children because
“those teachers know they are leaving, so they never make an effort to know the community, to
know the children or their parents and then they leave, so the children don’t trust their teachers.”
This turnover also negatively affects teacher training programmes because if a teacher receives
training and then leaves, or if teachers create professional learning communities, it is very
difficult to maintain this professional development because half the teachers change each year.
The researcher concludes that as a result, “it is very difficult to implement policies that are
supposed to help these communities and teachers.”
Teachers’ preferences to live in cities can even trump their wishes to be near their
families or communities. This scenario poses many challenges for education officials seeking to
match teachers to students. One example is Mexico’s indigenous education system, which aims
to place teachers speaking an indigenous language with students speaking the same language. As
a state-level official of Mexico’s indigenous education system observed, although teachers are
initially placed according to language, the cadena de cambio results in language mismatches
because many teachers move to be in or near cities.
The other side of the seniority equation is that while younger and less experienced
teachers have the least options over where they teach, very senior teachers have the most options.
This scenario results directly from seniority agreements jointly negotiated and agreed upon by
the Mexican government and the national teachers’ union. As a state-level representative of the
Mexican teachers’ union explained to us, the arrangement of more senior teachers working in
more desirable locations stems directly from agreements made between the union and the
government, and serves as an incentive to stay in the teaching profession and accumulate
seniority. At the same time, the union official noted, the union also provides support to
inexperienced teachers working in difficult areas.
As a result of Mexico’s system of teacher hiring and transfers, marginalized children
experience both novice teachers and a constant churning of teachers through their schools and
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classrooms. The system of initial assignment and transfer also constrains school directors
seeking to bring talented teachers to their schools. As several school directors we interviewed
noted, they have very little control over who is assigned to teach in their schools or when. A
primary school director in the Federal District observed: “my function as a school director is to
accept teachers. I can perhaps provide information about their performance when we feel that the
situation is critical, but in terms of receiving teachers, we receive them.”
Our interviews revealed that the influence of school directors over personnel decisions is
generally limited to two key actions: (1) encouraging struggling teachers to seek training and
support and (2) assigning teachers to grades, subjects, and classrooms. In the second case, the
primary school director in the Federal District explained to us the importance of selecting
excellent teachers to work with the early grades, as “this first cycle first, second, third grade for
me are basic because they provide the foundation that children will use for the rest of their
education.” So “of course, the teachers in first and second grade have to be chosen with a great
deal of care.” The director of a multi-grade primary school on the periphery of the capital of
Chiapas explained that he assigned the best teachers to the first and sixth grades, as first graders
learn essential skills and sixth graders are preparing for the transition to lower secondary school,
or in some cases the work force. The director of a technical secondary school in the Federal
District explained that, due to the technical nature of most classes, he assigned teachers to
classrooms based on their technical training and knowledge.
In addition to the challenges faced by teachers and principals, some interview participants
indicated that teacher assignments were often influenced by corruption or political patronage. As
a teacher educator in Zacatecas observed, the use of teacher assignments as a political reward
reduces the likelihood of hiring the most qualified teachers. Teachers in Zacatecas reported that
teacher assignments are often based on political commitments and many teachers who are not
qualified nonetheless receive assignments. To address these problems, as well as to make teacher
assignment more uniform and coherent, Mexico has recently instituted a national examination
for all incoming teachers. According to the new system, which was signed into law in 2008, all
prospective teachers must take the same exam and be hired and assigned based on their test
scores. Although the new system is relatively new, a few of the participants in our case study
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observed that it may have helped to both ensure a minimal level of competence for incoming
teachers and improve transparency in teacher assignment processes.
Teachers’ preferences to be close to home, in urban areas, and in schools with more
desirable working conditions interact with the system of teacher hiring and transfer to create a
system in which marginalized children in remote rural areas – who themselves are among the
most marginalized – find themselves in the classrooms of inexperienced teachers, often with
little preparation to work under such conditions, combined with a high degree of teacher
turnover. Given the strong influence of seniority on teacher assignments and transfers, it would
seem that one of the few policy mechanisms available to counteract the patterns we see are
incentives to teach in difficult schools or less developed areas. Below we discuss several such
efforts, beginning with Mexico’s national teacher incentive system, Carrera Magisterial.
4.2.3 Carrera Magisterial
Most teachers will not volunteer to work in communities with difficult living teaching
and living conditions. Surprisingly, our interviews in Mexico suggest that this may even be the
case for teachers who were born and raised in these communities. To address these preferences,
the Mexican Government has designed a number of incentives for teachers to work in less
developed areas. Most importantly, Mexico’s voluntary Carrera Magisterial programme, which
was initiated in 1992 to offer a system of ‘horizontal promotion’ whereby teachers receive
promotions and bonuses while remaining in the classroom, also provides incentives for teachers
to work in less developed areas. For example, Carrera Magisterial teachers who work in less
low-development zones can advance more rapidly through the system than teachers in wealthier
areas (Santibañez et al., 2007).
To date, there is little evidence indicating that Carrera Magisterial has served to raise
teacher quality or teacher effort. In fact, a comprehensive evaluation of the programme suggests
that teachers who have advanced through the system may actually exercise less effort than other
teachers, because their salary increases are permanent regardless of their performance
(Santibañez et al., 2007). More importantly for this study, there is very little evidence regarding
the impact of Carrera Magisterial on the distribution of teachers. Although a study by Luschei
(2013) found some decreases in teacher quality gaps in the Mexican states of Aguascalientes and
Sonora after the implementation of Carrera Magisterial, several participants in our Mexican
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case study suggested that the program may actually reduce equity in marginalized children’s
access to qualified teachers. This is because the program rewards participation in training
activities, which are more likely to be available in urban areas. As a result, the programme may
provide an incentive to move away from remote areas.
A former Secretary of Education in one of our study states argued that rather than a
“teaching career,” Carrera Magisterial creates a “bureaucratic career,” as it serves as an “escape
valve,” encouraging many teachers to leave the classroom for administrative positions, the
reverse of the programme’s original intention. This former official levelled several other
criticisms at the programme, including the charge that it encourages “credentialism,” or the
accumulation of credentials and certificates, but not effective teaching. Moreover, given the
many requirements to participate in the system, the official argues that participation distracts
teachers from their work and encourages absenteeism from the classroom. In sum, he observed,
Carrera Magisterial has a “high profile but low results.”
Interestingly, most of the teacher participants in our case study reported that they did not
participate in Carrera Magisterial. Interview participants gave us a number of reasons for not
participating. A primary school principal in the Federal District reported that the programme
required too much paperwork. Several teachers and directors told us that the incentives were not
large enough to make participation worth the effort. A secondary school director in the Federal
District reported that recent changes in the Carrera Magisterial system had made the process too
cumbersome. A teacher in an indigenous school in Chiapas reported that he could not participate
because he was a pasante, meaning that he had not completed his university degree. Several
teachers in Chiapas, Yucatán and Zacatecas reported that they were unable to score high enough
in Carrera Magisterial to advance in the system. A teacher in Zacatecas complained that the
exam questions were irrelevant to her work as a teacher; for example, she reported that the exam
had many questions related to educational laws and policies, which she had not studied. A union
representative reported that the programme was not popular in his state because many teachers
could not pass the exam; moreover, many of them saw the programme as too political.
All of the school directors and teachers who participated in our interviews worked in
what could be considered marginalized environments. The overwhelming lack of Carrera
Magisterial participation among these participants may indicate that the programme
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predominantly serves teachers of more advantaged students. This is not entirely surprising, given
that the programme rewards both teacher attributes like education, experience and test scores,
and students’ scores on exams. Marginalized children are much less likely to have high test
scores than other children, and their teachers also appear to be less likely to have high scores in
Carrera Magisterial. As a result, Carrera Magisterial may serve as both a reflection and a cause
of an inequitable distribution of teachers across less and more marginalized children.
4.2.4 Salaries and other incentives to teach in difficult areas
Many participants in our case study decried difficult conditions and low pay for Mexican
teachers. Teachers participating in a focus group in Yucatán argued that a teacher in Mexico
cannot have dignified life due to low salaries. A representative of the Mexican teachers’ union
complained that due to low salaries, teachers must often work multiple jobs: “the teacher here is
a teacher from 8 to 2, he sells tacos from 4 to 6 in the afternoon, he is a taxi driver from 8 in the
evening until 1 in the morning, then he repeats the same thing the next day.” As the union
official noted, the Mexican teachers “has to look for some way to cover the expenses of his
children, house, family, he has to feed them.”
One way to address both the salary-related complaints of teachers is through the use of
incentives to teach under difficult conditions, including remote and rural schools. If effective,
such incentives will also help to attract teachers to schools with large populations of
marginalized children. As we discuss above, we found some evidence in our interviews that
incentives offered by Carrera Magisterial may have the opposite effect of encouraging teachers
to move to urban areas with more training opportunities. Yet we did uncover some evidence
regarding the impact of other incentives designed to attract and retain teachers in difficult
locations.
We learned of several different types of incentive programmes for teachers of
marginalized children. First, Mexico’s Secretariat of Education has used various incentives
programmes over the years designed to compensate teachers for difficult assignments.
Respondents varied considerably in terms of their assessments of the effectiveness of these
incentives. A teachers’ union representative observed that the incentives change every six years
with a new administration and they have not been vigorously monitored or evaluated. A state
education official in Chiapas discussed a federal incentive programme in the state that had not
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succeeded due to a lack of monitoring and support: “The programme has ended but it had a high
level of failure, because there was no monitoring, there was no evaluation, there was no
following up with the teachers so that they could be effective.” As this official observed, “It’s
important to have incentives in place, but also academic and administrative monitoring.” More
important than the incentives themselves, he observed, is academic support for teachers, such as
opportunities for training and collaboration with colleagues.
While participants we interviewed in Chiapas and Yucatán generally felt that federal
incentive programmes did not offer enough to compensate for remote assignments, a few
participants in Zacatecas noted that incentives had prompted them and others they knew to
change schools or to remain in rural locations. For example, a teacher educator in Zacatecas
explained that many more young teachers in the state were working in the city as a result of more
experienced teachers staying in rural areas to take advantage of incentives provided to work
there. Yet this teacher educator also argued that many veteran teachers like to work in poor rural
communities because parents demand less of them, suggesting a contradiction to the objective of
the incentives. Two young teachers in Zacatecas also described how they had applied for
incentives and recruited other teachers to apply. According to these teachers, they receive an
extra 1,200 pesos, or about $100 a month. In return they must work an additional two hours each
day with children who are struggling academically. However, because these teachers’ school was
located close to the city, they had to make the case to state education officials that their teaching
situation merited the application of the incentive. This suggests that there is some latitude in
determining who qualifies for incentives.
A more recent form of incentive has resulted from a movement to replace half days with
full days in many Mexican schools. Teachers who are willing to work additional hours in fullday schools qualify for an increase in pay. Such a system – especially if it is targeted towards
schools in marginalized areas – has the potential to both draw and retain teachers to schools in
difficult conditions and provide more instructional time for students in these schools. At the
same time, the implementation of full-day classes can result in a great deal of short-term mobility
within schools, as teachers unable to work full days leave and new teachers influenced by the
opportunity to receive compensation for working full days arrive. A primary school director in
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the Federal District recalled that when her school changed to a full-day schedule several years
earlier, this change resulted in the replacement of three fourths of the school’s teaching staff.
Despite the problems of incentives that are not well designed or supervised, or that result
in negative unintended consequences, many participants in our interviews noted the potential of
properly designed incentives to address the difficult conditions faced by teachers of marginalized
children. A national education official observed both the importance and difficulties of designing
incentives to encourage teachers to work with marginalized children:
I have always been very skeptical about individual monetary incentives but it is
inevitable. They should be small, no more than 10% of salary, but what they
really need is a salary increase and that is not realistic. You need an individual
incentive but also a school-based incentive. And the symbolic incentives that are
also very powerful. But I don’t know how credible they are at this point because
this country has tried everything. Like making advertisements, showcasing
teachers, showcasing schools. I don’t know at this point. But yes you do need
incentives.
This official underscores the key point in the development of incentives for teachers:
they must be well designed and take into consideration the great complexity of working
in schools. The official also highlighted the need for experimentation, to evaluate
multiple approaches across different settings. In the following section, we explore how
differences in policies and practices across three states and the Federal District may
relate to cross-state differences in the distribution of teachers.
4.2.5 Cross-state differences
As we discussed in Section 4, we observed a number of differences in teacher distribution
across our four study regions. Many of these differences stem from differences in geography and
population. For example, given its urban nature and relatively small size, the Federal District is
likely to have a more even distribution of teachers than the states of Chiapas, Yucatán and
Zacatecas. Our interviews in the Federal District also revealed the importance of governance and
policy. In this area, we observe differences across states that could influence the distribution of
teachers. To begin with, the system in the Federal District operates as a branch of the national
Secretariat of Education and enjoys a high degree of administrative capacity and innovation.
Each of the three states we studied has a dual system of educational governance that is comprised
of a state system and a federalized system. This arrangement, which is the legacy of previous
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arrangements that existed before Mexico’s educational decentralization, means that there are
different approaches to teacher hiring, assignment, and transfers across systems within states. In
Chiapas and Yucatán, the indigenous education system also plays an important role in how
teachers are hired and assigned to schools.
Differences in teacher hiring and transfer systems are likely to result in cross-state
differences in the distribution of teachers. For example, in a comparison of teacher distribution in
the states of Aguascalientes and Sonora, Luschei (2012a) found that despite Sonora’s much
larger size and the existence of higher-poverty municipalities, the distribution of teachers
participating in Carrera Magisterial was actually more equitable in Sonora. These results may
stem from differences in teacher hiring systems across the two systems – Sonora has a state
system and federalized system, while Aguascalientes has a single federalized system – or they
may result from greater incentives to teach in less developed areas in Sonora, due to the
existence of higher-poverty municipalities. Unfortunately, in both Luschei’s (2012a) research
and in our case study, it is impossible to attribute differences in teacher distribution to any policy
or condition. Much more research is needed to understand the policy mechanisms that may help
to make the distribution of teachers across schools and students more equal. Nonetheless, this
work has allowed us to draw some lessons about key policies, practices and strategies. We
discuss these in the section that follows.
4.3
Lessons learned: Key policies, practices and strategies
Despite the many inequities in the access of marginalized Mexican children to qualified
teachers, we found a number of policies, practices and strategies designed to increase teacher
quality for these children. We do not have sufficient evidence to claim that these attempts have
helped to close teacher quality gaps between the least and most advantaged children, but they are
important enough to discuss here as cases and possible best practices. These include recent
education reforms in Mexico; Mexico’s indigenous education system; the CONAFE programme;
the role of teacher preparation, professional development and support; involvement of civil
society in key teacher-related issues; and the role of research and evaluation.
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4.3.1 National educational programmes and reforms
At the time the interviews for this case study were conducted, Mexico was undergoing a
major educational reform with wide-ranging implications for teachers’ work careers, which we
describe in more detail in Section 2. While many interview participants expressed reactions to
the new reforms, these changes were too preliminary to truly assess. For example, teachers
consistently expressed a concern that they would be evaluated based on the test scores of their
students. Yet at the time we collected data, it was not clear whether and how teacher evaluation
would occur under the new reform. Another common theme emerging from our interviews was
the widespread perception that the new reform, combined with legal action against the leader of
the national teachers’ union, would begin to weaken the union’s considerable influence on
educational policy and practice.
Other national reforms affecting teachers had been in place long enough for participants
to observe and assess the consequences. First, many respondents discussed the influence of the
Carrera Magisterial teacher incentive programme, which was implemented in 1992, on
educational quality and equity. Although Carrera Magisterial was designed in part to increase
equity in children’s access to qualified teachers, several participants in our case study observed
that because the system encourages greater in-service training, it actually provides an incentive
for teachers to move to locations in urban areas where such training opportunities are more
available. Moreover, most of our teacher respondents reported that they did not participate in
Carrera Magisterial for one reason or another. Lack of participation by teachers of marginalized
children, combined with incentives to work in areas with more training opportunities, may serve
to exacerbate an already inequitable distribution of teachers. Furthermore, a recent reform to the
Carrera Magisterial point system that increased the importance of student test scores from 20
per cent to 50 per cent of teachers’ evaluations may induce teachers to move to schools or
classrooms with higher-scoring teachers (Luschei, 2013). In a 2011 analysis of Carrera
Magisterial, the organization Mexicanos Primero observed that the success or failure of any
incentive programme will be based on “the details, criteria, and the procedural rules that will be
used to operate the programme” (Mexicanos Primero, 2011, p. 162). The impact of the new
Carrera Magisterial details and rules must be followed closely to assess their impact on
educational equity.
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Another national educational reform with important consequences for teachers is the
2008 Alliance for Educational Quality agreement, which has led to a significant reform in how
teachers are hired and assigned to schools. Most importantly, the agreement replaced a system
that varied widely across states with a national examination required of all prospective teachers.
According to interview respondents, candidates’ scores on the exams serve both to qualify them
for open positions, and in some cases, to give priority in assignments to high-scoring candidates.
This system could have both positive and negative consequences for marginalized children’s
access to qualified teachers. On the positive side, interview participants noted that the new
system has made teacher hiring and assignment more transparent. As one state-level education
official observed, prior to the national examination some teachers were able to receive
assignments without participating in the formal process. According to this official, although it is
still early to evaluate the new process, it appears that “small steps are being made towards a
culture of transparency.” Additionally, because teacher applicants must have completed their
initial training and degrees to participate in the exam, some respondents observed that the new
system reduces the likelihood that teachers will be hired without required degrees. This change
may be particularly important for the indigenous education system, which, according to several
of our interview participants, hires teachers who have not completed required degrees.
We also heard of some potentially negative consequences of the new reform. To begin
with, several participants reported their impression that teacher applicants with high scores on
the national examination have greater choice or preference over their teaching assignments. If
this is the case, then it is likely that higher-scoring teachers will choose schools with more
favourable working conditions and schools that are closer to urban centres, leaving marginalized
children with lower-scoring teachers. Additionally, a former secretary of education in one of our
study states observed that the Alianza agreement had changed the system so drastically that it
had created an over-supply of teachers. In an analysis of the new national examination, the
organization Mexicanos Primero (2009) also cautioned that to achieve its intended purpose the
exam and accompanying system of assigning teachers requires the “strengthening of the
participation of civil society, as much in as the vigilance of the design and application of the
exams as in the verification of the assignment of positions,” which will help to increase the
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possibility that the system does not “become a simple institutionalized process of simulation and
corruption that legitimizes discretion in the assignment of teaching positions” (p. 132).
In addition to teacher-oriented reforms, we heard of several national programmes that
may have the potential to address the needs of marginalized children. To begin with, several
participants discussed the experience of a national programme known as Programa Mejora del
Logro Educativo, or PMLE, that directed resources towards the 10,000 lowest performing
schools in Mexico. A national official described the PMLE strategy as promising due to its use
of master teachers to mentor teachers in low-performing schools. A state-level official from
Chiapas, who had worked with the PMLE programme in that state, explained that the program
had provided training to teachers working in low-performing schools. A key objective of the
training was to help teachers become more student-centred and to employ peer tutoring in their
instruction. According to the official, “it was a very slow but effective process. And where there
was support for the teacher and students the methodology was successful. Where there was no
support, it was not successful.” Asked how this approach was different from other training or
professional development that teachers had received, the official responded: “Unlike most
courses offered for training that have to do with the theoretical bases, this training was directed
to towards the curriculum that the teacher must apply. It was not based on pedagogical theory but
on practice.”
Another programme directed at schools is the Schools of Quality Program (PEC) that has
existed in Mexico for more than 10 years. Among other features, the programme aims to grant
greater autonomy to schools and families, encourage strategic planning and greater community
participation, and provide more resources to schools to improve educational quality. A related
programme that has been implemented in three Mexican states is PEC-FIDE, or Schools of
Quality-Strengthening in Direct Action to Schools (PEC-FIDE), which aims to reach very lowperforming schools with the highest levels of marginalization. According to a researcher who has
evaluated the PEC-FIDE programme, it has helped to close achievement gaps between higherand lower-performing schools, largely through stronger training of teachers, who have the
opportunity to conduct assessments and choose the training that they feel is most important and
appropriate for their conditions. The programme has also created stronger positive relationships
between teachers and parents, who have formed teams to improve their schools.
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Finally, several respondents described the positive support of Mexico’s national Units of
Service and Support to Regular Education (USAER) programme, which attends to the needs of
children in regular schools with special learning needs or disabilities. USAER sends teachers to
schools to work individually with these students and with their teachers. As a primary school
principal in the Federal District explained, two USAER instructors work in her school, both
directly with students and with their teachers, to observe them and provide support and advice.
According to this director, “in this school the work of USAER is absolutely fundamental. I don’t
know what I would do without them.”
4.3.2 Indigenous education
Despite the many challenges and criticisms of Mexico’s indigenous education system,
this system does, in theory, address the unique needs of Mexico’s indigenous children, probably
the country’s most marginalized group. The key criterion for teachers to work in this system is to
speak an indigenous language, in order to facilitate the bilingual and bicultural instruction that
this system aims to provide. Yet many interview participants observed that teachers in the
indigenous education system either do not speak the language well, or they speak a language that
is different from that of their students. According to our interviews, such language mismatches
can be caused by teachers transferring from a community where they speak the language to one
where they do not.
We also heard from interview participants that teachers in the indigenous system often do
not have the same level of qualifications as teachers in the general education system. This
finding is echoed by several recent research reports (Puryear et al., 2010; Treviño, 2013;
UNICEF, 2012). It seems clear that the key to improving education for indigenous children is by
improving the quality of their teachers. A 2012 UNICEF report observes that one of the keys to
improving education for indigenous children is to address barriers to educational supply,
including “the presence of precarious and low-quality infrastructure and teachers” (p. 41). In a
study of indigenous student achievement in six Mexican states, Treviño (2013) found that
indigenous children attending rural schools in the regular school system outperformed children
attending indigenous schools in Spanish and mathematics assessments. According to the author,
much of this difference has to with the presence of less qualified teachers (in terms of both preservice and in-service training) in indigenous schools, combined with a greater negative impact
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of poor teacher quality in indigenous schools. As a result, “enhancing teacher quality appears to
offer the greatest potential for improving indigenous student performance” (p. 103). In particular,
teacher attendance, which the author found to be low in indigenous schools, should be enforced,
and teachers in indigenous schools should be required to hold a university-level degree.
4.3.3 CONAFE
Given its emphasis on reaching remote communities that would otherwise not have
access to any educational services, Mexico’s national CONAFE programme is one of country’s
most important programmes to consider in discussing the teachers of marginalized children. The
program’s strategy of recruiting young men and women to work and live in remote marginalized
communities elicited a great deal of ambivalence from our interview participants. On one hand,
many observers pointed out that without CONAFE, the communities that the program serves
would have no access to formal education. Many current and former CONAFE instructors also
noted the strong relationships that instructors can form with their host communities, as well as
the academic growth that they saw in their students over the course of a year. On the other hand,
participants noted many challenges and problems facing CONAFE, including inadequate
preparation of instructors, precarious living and working conditions, and very low compensation
for instructors. Together, these factors lead to a high degree of instructor attrition. In addition to
the problems facing instructors, the strongest critiques of CONAFE were directed towards the
results of these conditions on the children in CONAFE classrooms. Several respondents noted
that these children had access to much less prepared instructors relative to children in regular
schools. Moreover, these children are often in multi-grade classrooms and speak indigenous
languages, two challenging situations that their instructors may not have sufficient preparation to
address.
In addition to critiques of the programme, several respondents provided
recommendations for improving CONAFE. A teacher educator in Yucatán suggested that the
program require three-year commitments from instructors, in return for greater compensation and
security. The NGO Mexicanos Primero (Mexicans First), which conducts research and
evaluation related to education policy and practice, recommended the ‘renewal’ of CONAFE in
part through a change to the profile of the CONAFE instructor. In particular, the recruitment of
new teaching talent is essential to improve the programme.
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4.3.4 Teacher preparation, professional development and support
A representative of an NGO who has worked in Mexican education for many years
observed, “The more I work with teachers, the less I understand why we have such problems in
education.” This respondent explained that Mexican teachers are committed to their work and
consistently seek opportunities for professional improvement. An education official in Mexico
City made a similar observation: “Mexican teachers have never refused training. Results from
the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) provide us evidence of this. Mexican
teachers are intellectuals and they could be a big part of the solution to our educational
problems.” These statements reflect a theme that we heard consistently in our interviews, that
Mexican teachers – especially those working with marginalized children – demand and gladly
receive training to help them improve their teaching practice.
At the same time, we also noted a history of inadequate preparation of teachers working
with marginalized children. The national official quoted above observed that this does not have
to be the case, that “historically, marginalized children, rural children, children who work, and
children who are disabled are early on out of school and while they are in school they have been
served by non-professional teachers. Some of them are fantastic figures of enormous value but
they have not yet been professionals.” As result, there is a great deal of potential to upgrade and
professionalize those who work with marginalized children.
A researcher in Chiapas observed several important trends related to the education and
training of Mexican teachers. First, he echoed the belief that Mexican teachers want more
training and preparation. Second, he observed that the new generation of teachers is better
trained and prepared than previous generations. Additionally, the teachers’ colleges and
universities are offering more courses that are relevant to teachers working in rural and
indigenous schools. As an example, a teacher educator in Chiapas explained that his university,
the Chiapas branch of the National Pedagogical University, had begun programmes in multigrade teaching and intercultural education addressed to the needs of teachers in rural and
indigenous schools. Similarly, a teacher educator in Yucatán observed that this generation of
professors at the UPN are ‘pioneers’ due to the work they have conducted in developing
programmes for teachers working in indigenous schools. In contrast to this positive assessment,
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however, a teacher educator in Zacatecas observed that due to an over-supply of teachers and a
lack of jobs for new teachers, the UPN had become an “unemployment factory.”
In addition to improvements in teacher training in teacher colleges and universities, we
also identified promising national programmes with strong training components for practicing
teachers, such as the PMLE and PEC-FIDE programmes that we describe above. Yet we also
heard a good deal of criticism regarding the current system of school supervisors and technical
advisers, who are charged with providing support and training of classroom teachers. A former
secretary of education in one of our study states observed that role of supervisors is often more
political than pedagogical, and supervisors often do not go to the schools that they are charged
with supervising. Two primary teachers from Zacatecas reported that while supervisors check to
make sure they are present and doing their work, they do not provide any sort of teaching advice
or support. In fact, these teachers were not able to clearly articulate the role or purpose of school
supervisors. An NGO representative working with CONAFE in Yucatán observed, “one of the
great problems in education is the lack of support. Our teachers do not receive support. The
supervisor comes and asks them for documents and student attendance lists, they ask for more
administrative things.” Yet despite fairly consistent critiques of school supervisors, a national
education official expressed the strong potential of re-orienting the work of school supervisors
and technical advisers to be more pedagogical and to work with teachers on assessing and
addressing instructional problems.
One of the key needs we identified among the educators we interviewed was an effective
and innovative approach to teach children in multi-grade classrooms. In many cases, teachers we
interviewed seemed to improvise, devising their own ad hoc strategies. Ironically, many of the
respondents were aware of the successful Colombian multi-grade school model Escuela Nueva,
but we found few cases where this programme had been tried or implemented. In the few cases
where it had been tried, respondents reported generally positive results. Yet a representative of
an NGO in Yucatán observed that the community-based Escuela Nueva programme would be
difficult to implement in Mexico due to the hierarchical and centralized nature of the education
system. Nonetheless, the few cases where the Escuela Nueva model has been tried can serve as a
model for wider study and adoption of the model, whose many components could address the
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challenges faced by the teachers of marginalized children, such as small multi-grade schools,
lack of resources, and inadequate initial preparation of teachers.
4.3.5 Involvement of Civil Society and NGOs
In many cases described above, we have noted important government programmes with
strong potential to improve educational conditions for marginalized children. Yet we also
recognize the important work of NGOs in supporting, supplementing, monitoring, or evaluating
this work. Our interaction with these NGOs stems directly from our affiliation with UNICEF, so
we can by no means claim to have studied a representative or random sample of educational
NGOs. Yet our assessment of the work conducted by these NGOs leads us to believe that civil
society can play an important role in assessing and improving the work of teachers of
marginalized children in Mexico.
The work of NGOs that we observed ranges from training of teachers who work with
marginalized children to evaluating government education programmes, to conducting
educational research and advocating for policy change. For example, we learned of an NGO in
Zacatecas, ODISEA, that had worked with the state Secretariat of Education to train and support
teachers working in 20 low-performing schools, 10 in urban settings and 10 in remote rural
settings. The same NGO also led several projects to direct government resources towards the
children most in need of them. For example, the organization ran a program to identify out-ofschool children and reintegrate them into formal schooling. The same NGO used state-level data
to identify children who qualified for the Mexican government’s Oportunidades conditional cash
transfer programme and worked with these children’s families to ensure they received this muchneeded support. Finally, the organization also uses government data to develop “municipal traffic
lights” that are published in local newspapers to provide information about the situation of
children, including social services and marginalization.
In Yucatán we observed another NGO, IEPACC, that has provided training and support
for teachers working in indigenous schools, specifically in the high-need area of preschool
indigenous education within the CONAFE system. Through a systematic evaluation of this issue,
the organization identified an important lack of resources to provide support and monitoring of
teachers. As a representative of this organization observed, in 2010 there were only 25 CONAFE
supervisors and 2 pedagogical advisers for 283 community schools in Yucatán. As a result, the
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organization has worked with the CONAFE programme and its supervisors to strengthen support
for preschool teachers working with indigenous children. The organization has also worked with
UNICEF CONAFE on a project known as ‘Escuela Amiga’, or ‘Friend School’, that aims to
improve the quality of education through a holistic, child-centred approach. Most recently, this
project in Yucatán has focused on both improving the skills of CONAFE instructors and
mitigating risks faced by CONAFE communities, such as hurricanes and fires.
Finally, in the Federal District, we spoke with representatives of an NGO that conducts
research and evaluation of national educational policies and practices. In terms of teachers of
marginalized children, the organization employs four principal strategies: the evaluation and
development of public policy related to teachers, community and social recognition for effective
schools and teachers, attempts to influence civil demand for high-quality education and teaching,
and legal action related to teachers and teaching. In terms of its work on public policy, the
organization has used data generated by the Mexican Government to conduct analyses related to
equity in educational access and quality. As an example of social recognition, the organization
has established a national prize to recognize outstanding teachers. Additionally, the organization
has established a bank of best practices to provide lessons learned and ideas for organizational
improvement.
4.3.6 The role of research and evaluation
Despite the important work done by NGOs in using government data to evaluate
programmes and improve policy, the Mexican Government could conduct much of this work. As
a representative of one of the NGOs described above observed, “NGOs should not do the
government’s work.” Yet at the state level, this NGO often found itself advising the government
on how to make sense of and use its own data. According to the NGO representative, the
problem is explained in part by a culture that is “allergic to information.” Additionally, according
to this representative, Mexican universities do not conduct enough educational evaluation or
research.
Although the Mexican Government conducts a significant amount of educational
evaluation and research at the national level, there is much more that can be learned through
experimentation and evaluation. In our research we have identified many new and innovative
practices that relate directly to the teachers of marginalized children. These include new
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programmes of study in indigenous and multi-grade teaching at teachers- colleges and
universities, a new national system of teacher hiring, a redesign of the national Carrera
Magisterial programme, and a widespread educational reform that will have profound impact on
teachers’ work and careers. Each of these will need to be followed and evaluated, with an eye
towards assessing their impact on the teachers of marginalized children.
5
Conclusion
Children facing the greatest marginalization in the Mexican education system include
children in rural areas, indigenous children, and children in the urban periphery. We also note the
difficult situations of other marginalized groups, such as out-of-school children, migrant
children, and children with disabilities, but we have less evidence regarding the teachers of these
children. In general, this case study provides strong evidence supporting our conclusion from
previous quantitative work that the teachers of marginalized children in Mexico are on average
less experienced, educated, and trained than teachers of other children. This pattern stems largely
from a system of seniority that gives first choice of teaching assignments to more experienced
teachers, coupled with teachers’ preferences to work in urban areas or to work closer to home.
Mexico’s teacher transfer system plays an important role in perpetuating this pattern. The
national CONAFE programme reinforces the pattern of inexperienced teachers with little
training working with the most marginalized children, as does the practice of assigning teachers
without required qualifications to work in indigenous schools.
Within the inequitable distribution of teachers in Mexico, we also find some exceptions
and reasons for hope. These include recent reforms in teacher hiring and training, the role of civil
society organizations in improving the quality of teachers of marginalized children, and the
potential to identify promising policies and practices through continuing research and evaluation.
Below we briefly discuss key implications of this study, limitations of the study, and areas for
future research.
5.1
Key implications of Mexico case study
It is clear from our interviews in Mexico that many teachers do not want to live and work
in remote rural areas. This reluctance appears to result in large part from a lack of key amenities
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and resources in such areas. To address this problem, Mexican officials must make investments
to develop rural areas so that they will be more pleasant places to live for both teachers and
students. These investments can take the form of better transportation, sanitation, and hygiene
and the availability of water and electricity. This will require a serious and long-term
commitment from the Government of Mexico, but without such a commitment, talented local
youth will move away to greener pastures and those from outside such communities will be
reluctant to move in. Such communities will always be ‘net exporters’ of teaching talent.
The Mexican Government must also continue to invest in young people in marginalized
areas so that they may become the next generation of teachers in these communities. Our
research shows that teacher labour markets are often geographically constrained, meaning that
teachers are only willing to work within a fairly small geographical area. In part this is because
teachers like to work in teaching environments that are familiar to them. If rural areas are
developed so that they offer acceptable daily living conditions, local teachers in rural areas are
much more likely to spend their careers in their own communities. Such teachers will be less
likely to seek transfers and may relate better to their students in terms of language and ethnicity
than teachers from other locations. Finally, local teachers may feel a greater sense of connection
with local learning needs. As governments invest their efforts to provide better infrastructure and
resources to marginalized areas, they must also focus their attention on improving the training
and preparation of human capital in these communities to ensure a long-term sustainable supply
of qualified teachers.
In addition to initial investments in young people in marginalized areas, the Mexican
government must ensure that teachers in these areas have adequate preparation and continuing
professional development opportunities. The teachers of marginalized children in Mexico must
contend with very difficult teaching conditions, including multi-grade classrooms, few resources,
and students who may not speak Spanish. These teachers must receive initial training that is
adequate and relevant to the conditions that they will face. They must also have opportunities for
continuing professional development that supports them professionally and provides examples
specific to their classroom conditions. One promising example is Mexico’s National Pedagogical
University, which has developed training in intercultural education and multi-grade teaching
strategies for practicing teachers.
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Unfortunately, teachers working with the most marginalized children are often far
removed from training opportunities in urban centres. Our case study in Mexico revealed a great
deal of unmet demand on the part of teachers for training specific to their conditions in
marginalized environments. To meet these demands, governments must attempt to move training
opportunities closer to teachers in marginalized opportunities, either physically or through the
use of technology. One example with strong positive evidence is Colombia’s Escuela Nueva
programme, which provides support and professional development to rural teachers through
‘microcenters’, or local centres that support networks of practicing teachers. Where such centres
are not possible, technology can play a role in providing relevant professional development and
networking opportunities for teachers in marginalized environments.
In addition to providing adequate training for teachers of marginalized children, the
Mexican Government must take care in identifying, recruiting and hiring these teachers. Part of
this process requires the identification of proper qualification requirements that actually identify
the potential for good teaching. In setting these qualification requirements for new teachers,
policymakers must maintain a difficult balance between ensuring a minimal level of quality and
forcing qualified individuals to undergo excessive bureaucratic hoops that may discourage them
from entering the profession. Ideally, every teacher working with marginalized children would
have a high degree of initial preparation and a degree from a top university. Although this not
always possible, the lowering of teacher qualification requirements to ensure a ‘warm body’ in
the classroom will perpetuate the vicious cycles we observe in terms of the teachers of
marginalized children. In the case of Mexico’s indigenous education system, the requirement to
speak an indigenous language appears to force education officials to lower other requirements.
Officials must consider the trade-offs involved, as well as continue investing in programmes that
can provide teachers with required credentials.
Once teachers are hired, they must experience initial success in teaching to establish a
sense of optimism that they will be able to succeed in their chosen field of work. Yet in our
research in Mexico we found far too many examples of novice teachers being sent to work in the
most difficult and complex environments. This system of teacher allocation sets new teachers up
to fail and leave the profession or to request transfers to more desirable assignments as soon as
they are able. The practice of teachers transferring after they accumulate seniority is also very
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common in Mexico. The process of initial assignment to marginalized areas, followed by
seniority-based transfer out of difficult locations, not only places marginalized children at a
disadvantage, it also undermines a general sense of fairness in the education system. This system
is unfair for both the newest teachers, who must work in the most complex and difficult
environments, and for marginalized children, who are often taught by a string of inexperienced
and exiting teachers.
To the extent that teacher assignment decisions are governed by patronage-based
considerations, these systems also weaken transparency and faith in public institutions. The
challenge is to revise teacher assignment and transfer policies – as in the case of the Alliance for
Educational Quality – to make them more fair and transparent, and more importantly, to ensure
that marginalized children will not always find themselves in the classrooms of the least
experienced teachers. Transparency can be addressed through the use of widely available media,
such as newspapers and Internet, that publish the results of teacher assignment and transfer
decisions along with criteria for how those decisions were made. Fairness in teacher assignments
and transfer will require discussions between government officials and teachers’ union
representatives, where relevant, to devise a system that recognizes difficulties of assignments in
marginalized environments and compensates qualified teachers to work in such environments.
As discussed above, Mexico has undertaken several large-scale educational reform
efforts. Such initiatives can understandably overburden any government, especially governments
that face competing demands on their resources. In our research, we identified several examples
of fruitful contributions of international organizations and local NGOs that can work with the
Government of Mexico to fulfil policy mandates. These agencies can help with the shortfall in
resources and capacity that the Government is likely to experience. In particular, collaborations
with such agencies may be especially fruitful in providing relevant, adequate and timely teacher
training and professional development, providing resources to marginalized schools, and in the
process of data collection, monitoring and evaluation. The Mexican Government may want to
explore the possibility of forming meaningful and sustainable partnership with other stakeholders
to meet mutually agreed upon social goals. The Mexican Government can also learn from the
example of various NGOs in exploiting numerous educational data sources to understand the
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education system and conduct research and evaluation that informs policy decisions in a timely
and effective manner.
5.2
Limitations and areas for future research
Although we believe that this case study has greatly illuminated issues related to teachers
of marginalized children, we must recognize that like other case studies, this study has certain
limitations. To begin with, we were only able to spend about two weeks collecting data in
Mexico. While we were fortunate to receive excellent support on the ground, we acknowledge
that it is difficult to form deep connections and generate a level of trust needed to discuss serious
issues that may be of serious concern to our respondents. Our inability to travel beyond a certain
radius of major cities in also limited our examination of diverse contexts and points of view.
Nonetheless, where possible we did visit remote locations (such as the rural northern region of
Chiapas), and all of our interviews posed questions about conditions of teachers and
marginalized children in these locations.
We are also limited by the availability of only one researcher, who conducted all
interviews in Mexico. This researcher may have benefited from the presence of a research
collaborator to compare interpretations of interviews or to assist with framing or re-framing
interview questions. Additionally, the primary researcher for this case study speaks Spanish
fluently but is not Mexican and is not a native Spanish speaker. Although we believe that we
have captured the data effectively through our interviews, we must acknowledge that as a
foreigner, the researcher may have misinterpreted language or other communications from the
interview participants. To partially address this concern, we had a native Spanish speaker listen
to and transcribe our interviews.
Another key limitation of our case study is our inability to attribute the patterns that we
observed to any specific policy or practice. The patterns we observed may be caused by, the
cause of, or completely unrelated to the teacher-related policies and practices that we describe.
For example, while we identified several strategies used by policymakers to more evenly
distribute teachers across students, in most cases we have little evidence regarding whether or
not they have made a difference. Further, in some cases, such as the availability of training
opportunities only in urban areas, efforts to enhance the quality of the teacher labour force in
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remote areas could actually dampen equity, as the most motivated teachers move to areas where
they can actually receive the training they need.
Future research on the teachers of marginalized children must attempt to assess whether
recent changes in educational policy and practice – such as the Alliance for Education Progress,
Carrera Magisterial, and the new Education Reform, have accomplished their intended
objectives, and if not, how they may be altered. In many cases, we observed NGOs conducting
important educational evaluation and research that can shed light on these important questions.
While we believe that this work should be supported by international organizations and donors,
we also believe that Mexican universities and the Mexican national government, through
institutions like the National Institute for the Evaluation of Education (INEE), should conduct a
great deal of the work that will illuminate the way forward to ensure access to high-quality
teachers for all Mexican children.
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
Appendix A: Consent form
Informed Consent Form for the Study of Teachers for Children Marginalized by Social Origin,
Economic Status, or Location
You are being asked to participate in a research project conducted by Dr. Thomas Luschei in the School of
Educational Studies, Claremont Graduate University (CGU) and Dr. Amita Chudgar at the College of Education,
Michigan State University. You are being asked to participate because you are involved in and knowledgeable of
teacher-related policies and practices in your country. You have been identified to participate in this project through
consultation with educational experts who are aware of teacher-related policies in your country, including
researchers, policymakers, and representatives of UNICEF working in your country.
PURPOSE:
The purpose of this study is to develop a systematic region- and nation-specific understanding of
teacher-related policy and practices, with a focus on the teachers of children marginalized by social origin, economic
status, or location.
PARTICIPATION:
You will be asked to participate in an interview related to teacher recruitment, retention,
and retirement in your country. We expect your participation to take about one hour of your time. The findings of
this study will be available on the website of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
RISKS & BENEFITS: There are minimal potential risks associated with this study. Although questions related to
policies and practices to recruit, hire, and allocate teachers to schools may make some participants uncomfortable,
participants may skip a particular question or terminate the interview. Participants may also feel reluctant to have
their responses known to others. As such, the most important risk associated with the project is that the researcher
could inadvertently identify interview participants or breach their privacy. We will address these risks by following
required research ethics guidelines and maintaining your confidentiality at all times, unless you are in a uniquely
identifiable public position. We do not expect the project to benefit you personally. However, we expect this
research to benefit society by identifying "best practices" and recommendations to ensure that marginalized children
have access to qualified teachers.
COMPENSATION:
You will not receive any monetary compensation for your participation.
VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION: Please understand that participation is completely voluntary. Your decision
whether or not to participate will in no way affect your current or future relationship with CGU or its faculty,
students, or staff. You have the right to withdraw from the research at any time without penalty. You also have the
right to refuse to answer any question(s) for any reason, without penalty.
CONFIDENTIALITY:
Your individual privacy will be maintained in all publications or presentations resulting
from this study. I will record this interview with a digital recorder, but the recording will not identify you. Only I
will know your identity. In all reporting and note taking, your identity will be replaced with a pseudonym. Interview
recordings and pseudonyms will be linked to participants through codes maintained on a paper copy of a participant
list kept either in my possession or in a locked filing cabinet in my office. No electronic record of your true name
will be maintained. Interviews will be transcribed without any information linking transcripts to participants. I will
maintain written transcripts and digital recordings on a password-protected computer that will be in my possession
at all times. Once the research project is completed, digital interview recordings will be erased. In reporting
personal identifying details such as age or location, I will replace specific information with relevant but less precise
information.
If you have any questions or would like additional information about this research, please contact me at +1(909)
607-3325, 150 E. 10th St., Claremont, CA 91711, USA, or [email protected]. You can also contact my
research collaborator, Dr. Amita Chudgar, at +1(517) 353-5342, College of Education, Michigan State University,
Erickson Hall, 620 Farm Lane 408, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA, or [email protected]. The CGU Institutional
Review Board, which is administered through the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP), has
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
approved this project. You may also contact ORSP at +1(909) 607-9406, Claremont Graduate University, 152
Harper Hall, 150 E. 10th St., Claremont, CA 91711, USA or [email protected] with any questions.
A signed copy of this consent form will be given to you.
I understand the above information and have had all of my questions about participation on this research project
answered. I voluntarily consent to participate in this research.
Signature of Participant ________________________________
Date ____________________
Printed Name of Participant _____________________________
Signature of Researcher ________________________________
Date ____________________
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
Appendix B: Interview protocols
Study of Teachers for Children Marginalized by Social Origin, Economic Status, or Location
INTERVIEW PROTOCOL (PUBLIC OFFICIALS)
Introduction
1. Please describe your current position and your responsibilities related to teacher recruitment,
retention, and retirement.
2. How long have you held this position?
Resource Distribution
3. Please describe your understanding of the availability of educational resources for children of
different backgrounds in your country.
4. Please describe your understanding of the availability of teachers for children of different
backgrounds in your country.
5. Please describe your assessment of the current availability of educational resources and teachers
for children of different backgrounds in your country.
Teacher Recruitment, Retention, and Retirement
6. Can you please describe how teachers are recruited in your country?
7. Can you please describe any policies and practices in place to retain teachers in their schools or in
the teaching profession?
8. Can you please describe the process and current state of teacher retirement in your country?
Teacher Allocation and Distribution
9. When teachers complete their training, how are they generally hired and assigned to schools?
10. When teachers wish to change schools, what processes are in place for them to do so?
11. Are teachers often reassigned from one school to another in your country? If so, for what reasons
does this occur?
12. If a teacher is reassigned to a different school, what is the procedure for doing so?
13. Are you aware of any incentives in place to encourage teachers to work in difficult areas or teach
disadvantaged children?
14. Please describe how these incentives work.
15. In your opinion, are these incentives effective in encouraging qualified teachers to work in
difficult areas or to teach disadvantaged children?
16. In general, do you believe that disadvantaged children in your country have the same level of
access to qualified teachers as other children? Please explain.
17. If not, what do you think educators, policymakers, non-governmental organizations, or teachers’
unions in your country can do to ensure that disadvantaged children have the same level of access
to qualified teachers as other children?
18. Are you aware of any regions, districts, schools, or non-governmental organizations that have
been particularly effective in ensuring that disadvantaged children have the same level of access
to qualified teachers as other children? If so, please explain.
19. Is there anything you would like to add regarding any of the questions I have asked, or questions
that I have not asked but would be pertinent to this discussion?
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Mexico Country Case Study: Teachers for Marginalized Children
ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FOR OTHER RESPONDENTS
For Representatives of NGOs:
•
Can you please describe the role of your organization or other non-governmental organizations, if
any, to ensure that disadvantaged children have the same level of access to qualified teachers as
other children?
For School Leaders:
•
•
•
•
•
As a school leader, what is your role in hiring teachers and reassigning teachers to other schools?
Please describe the strategy that you use in identifying and hiring teachers to work in your school.
Please describe the strategy that you use in assigning teachers to work with different classrooms
in your school.
What are your major considerations and objectives when you hire and reassign teachers and
assign teachers to classrooms?
What do you think that school leaders in your country can do to ensure that disadvantaged
children have the same level of access to qualified teachers as other children?
For Teachers:
•
•
•
•
Please describe how you were hired and assigned to teach in this school and in your current
classroom.
Do you work in another school beside this one? If so, please describe how you were hired and
assigned to teach in that school and classroom.
In the process of being hired and assigned to this school, were you able to select the school and
classroom where you teach?
In the process of being hired and assigned to this school, were you offered any incentives to teach
in difficult areas or with disadvantaged children?
For Teachers Union Representatives:
•
•
What is the role of the teachers union(s) in teacher recruitment, retention, and retirement in your
country?
Can you please describe the role of the teachers union(s), if any, to ensure that disadvantaged
children have the same level of access to qualified teachers as other children?
78