Benno

International Education Policy Making
and Policy Implementation:
The Role of the Summit of the Americas

Benno Sander
Professor of Educational Policy and Management

Lecture delivered at Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 18, 2000

Introduction

The objective of my talk today is to examine the relationship between international education policy making and policy implementation. To demonstrate this relationship, I will present a reading of the promises and achievements of the Summit of the Americas, which brought together the Presidents and Heads of State and Government of the Hemisphere in Santiago, Chile, in 1998.

I elected the topic for two main reasons. First, I have been personally involved in the summitry process during the last four years, in my position as Director of Education and Social Development of the Organization of American States. The OAS in fact is one of the international agencies that supported the preparation of the Second Summit of the Americas in Santiago, and now serves as technical secretariat of the follow-up process. The second reason is the relevance of the topic itself for international scholars and practitioners, and hopefully, here and now, for all of us at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

As for the scope of my talk, I would like to say that we could assess the preparation and implementation of the education chapter of the second Summit of the Americas from several perspectives. As a matter of fact, we could assess the activities and achievements of all participating countries of the Hemisphere. We could also examine the role of the coordinating countries of the education chapter of the Summit, and the effectiveness of their work in both the preparatory process and the implementation process. In addition, we could evaluate the relative role of the governments of our countries vis-à-vis the role of the private sector and civil society organizations. Finally, we could present an account of the collaboration of the so-called international development community.

I will make reference to all these actors, but as a specific objective, my reading of the events will emphasize the cooperating role of the international development community. In this context, I will present some ideas about a new ethic of inter-American educational cooperation. As a second objective, my account will also focus on some general advances and shortcomings of the summitry process being developed at the transition to the new century.
Let us Begin with the Summitry Process

My comment on the summitry process itself, developed by the governments of the Americas in the 1990s, is a little bit of history of the so-called modern phase of Presidential Summits in the Americas. We have had Presidential Meetings before in our Hemisphere. One of them was particularly important for education: the Presidential Summit held in Uruguay in 1967, organized by the Organization of American States (OAS) in light of the Alliance for Progress. Following the recommendations made by the Heads of State at the 1967 Uruguay Summit, the Ministries of Education established, two years later, the Regional Development Programs of Education, Science and Culture, which have been implemented in Latin America for over three decades by the OAS.

The first modern Summit of the Americas convened in Miami in 1994, under the leadership of the United States. Its major objective was to promote and consolidate a community of democracies in the Americas, united by the promise of economic integration with social justice. International trade was conceived as the central factor to achieve economic integration. Trade was in fact the central issue of the Miami Summit in 1994. Education was conceived at the Miami Summit as one social development factor within the overall development strategy envisioned by the Heads of State and Government.

During the years following the first Summit, a number of critical accounts raised questions about the summitry process and its promises. It is fair to say, though, that the overall evaluation of the advances and shortcomings of the first Summit of the Americas reveals considerable accomplishments in terms of inter-American political dialogue and overall development policy making. But in terms of implementation of specific Summit action items, progress has been slower than originally expected. Why? For several reasons:

First, I think that the governments and the international community were too optimistic about the promises and real possibilities of the 1994 Summit. Second, countries were not institutionally prepared to carry out many action items, which came as an additional responsibility for the governments. Third, national technical and financial resources have fallen short to cope with the multiplicity and diversity of Summit action items. And fourth, the international organizations supported the implementation of some initiatives, but failed to come up with the resources and the support services needed to carry out others.

The question then is: What lessons have we learned? My reading reveals that history taught us again, as many times in the past, that political and social changes as well as educational reforms are complex and slow processes, especially in a multinational and multicultural environment. In this context, I think that today we are a little more realistic about the promises and possibilities of the summitry process as an instrument for inter-American cooperation in policy making and policy implementation. We also learned that, in spite of a general consensus on the 1994 promises, we need to examine whether or not our strategy of hemispheric economic and trade integration favors equity and social justice within and among the American nations. Other accounts, published by the Leadership Council for Inter-American Summitry, housed at the University of Miami, argue that there remain important concerns – some times different concerns in the North and the South – related to the implementation process of some initiatives, like the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

During the transition from the first Summit in Miami in 1994 to the second Summit in Santiago in 1998, the countries of the Hemisphere became increasingly aware that, beyond trade integration, they have to confront a number of important challenges related to democracy, human rights, education, poverty, and the environment. In addition, formal trade integration has become a difficult challenge for the time being. The difficulties come from the North and from the South. As we all know, up to now the United States Congress did not grant “fast track” negotiating authority to the Executive, which inhibits US negotiations in the short run. On the other hand, the Mercosur nations, as well as other nations of Latin America and the Caribbean, are determined to prepare a safe transition for them, and to ensure, in their view, the development of a more equitable trade model in the Hemisphere.

I believe that these facts have played a decisive role to make education the central issue of the 1998 Santiago Summit. How did it happen? It is my reading that the countries were not ready for a new presidential round on trade integration. This meant that the governments needed another important issue. Otherwise, why should the Presidents meet in the first place? Another decisive factor, of course, was the renewed importance given to sustainable human development and to the growing awareness in political, business, communications, and intellectual circles of needed education reforms in the Hemisphere to cope with the new demands of today's global knowledge-based society.

As education became a central issue, a new political and academic debate laid the groundwork for the preparation of the 1998 Summit. Who was involved in the debate? Among many protagonists, were the governments, nongovernmental organizations, and international agencies. Mexico coordinated the governmental preparatory efforts, with the decisive support of Chile, Argentina, and the United States. The international development community was invited to join – namely the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Development Bank, the World Bank, UNESCO, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). In a parallel civil society movement, universities and research and development institutions throughout the Hemisphere, which had not been formally invited to join, sponsored numerous studies and meetings on the subject.

What was the purpose of the debate? The purpose of these efforts was to build consensus around major regional policy issues. Needless to say that all countries involved faced a challenging task, the task of agreeing on common regional goals and strategies, while trying to preserve their own social and cultural values and their own national political and economic interests. Such a task was particularly challenging in those countries that could not reach consensus on education policies and plans of action at the national level. But at the end, the countries were able to agree on an education plan of action, which was submitted and approved by the Presidents and Heads of State and Government in Santiago.

The Education Plan of Action of the
Second Summit of the Americas

A word about the nature and the scope of the Santiago Education Plan of Action is now in order. The Plan covers all education levels and is based on a broad consensus on some basic issues to be addressed. The Summit initiatives are founded on four principles adopted by the governments: equity, quality, relevance, and efficiency. I would like to point out that it took a considerable amount of energy and time, about two years, for the governments to agree on these guiding principles, which were conceived to underline all the preparatory efforts and implementation activities of the Santiago agreements.

In light of these four guiding principles, the Heads of State and Government reaffirmed in Santiago the education commitments of the 1994 Miami Summit, in order to assure the achievement of three major goals by 2010: (1) provide for universal access to and completion of quality primary education; (2) provide access for at least 75% of young people to quality secondary education; and (3) provide the general population with opportunities for lifelong learning.

To achieve these goals, the governments committed themselves to nine action items. Let me list them:

1. Implementing targeted policies of compensatory education for at-risk groups, with special attention to children, women, minorities, and vulnerable populations. Equity is the major underlying principle of this line of action.
2. Establishing quality assessment indicators and education evaluation systems; Quality is here the main guiding criteria.
3. Teacher training and preparation of educational administrators. Quality and efficiency are the underlying principles.
4. Strengthening of educational management, institutional capacity building, and community participation. Again, quality and efficiency are major concerns, together with relevance because of the community item.
5. Education for work and vocational training. Relevance and efficiency are the guiding criteria.
6. Bilingual and multicultural education, with emphasis on indigenous peoples. Relevance is the guiding principle is this line of action, together with equity.
7. Education for peace, democracy, human rights, gender, and the environment. Relevance and equity are major concerns.
8. Development of educational information and communication technologies and teaching materials. Efficiency is the major criteria.
9. Establishing exchange visitor and scholarship programs for students, teachers, researchers, and educational administrators. Quality and efficiency are the major guiding criteria.
Summit Education Reform Actors

Three actors have been entrusted by the Presidents to implement the commitments of the Santiago Summit of the Americas and to support education reform initiatives: governments, nongovernmental organizations, and the international development community.

The first point made by the Presidents in Santiago was that education is, above all, a political responsibility of each nation, its government, and its people. Therefore, policy making and policy implementation are the responsibility of national and local governments, the private sector, and other components of civil society.

The role of the governments

As for the role of the governments in the summitry process, the Heads of State and Government decided to conduct the policy making process themselves, and to coordinate its implementation. They decided to institutionalize such an inter-governmental policy making process. To that end, they established the Summit Implementation Review Group (SIRG), charged with the responsibility to monitor the Summit follow-up process. To chair the Review Group, the Santiago Summit established a troika, composed of the United States (host of the 1994 Summit), Chile (host the 1998 Summit) and Canada (host of the forthcoming Summit in the year 2001).

To conduct the implementation process of the Summit education initiatives, the Ministers of Education established a Coordinating Committee composed of 11 countries, chaired by Mexico. Again, these developments indicate that education policy making and policy implementation in the Hemisphere are the responsibility of the countries themselves and their national institutions.

The role of nongovernmental organizations

Though we need more systematic data on this, there are indications that civil society plays a growing role in education in the Americas. In Santiago, the Heads of State and Government "recognized the contributions of the private sector, philanthropic foundations, and pertinent nongovernmental organizations."

Nevertheless, it is important to point out that the participation of civil society organizations in the preparation of the Santiago Plan of Action has been very modest. As a matter of fact, there has been no formal instance to count on the effective contribution of civil society within the summitry process. Therefore, a renewed effort is needed to assure the involvement of the private sector and other components of civil society in summitry. Canada, as host of the third Summit, is playing an important role in this field as the country coordinates the preparatory process under way.

The role of the international development community

The Heads of State and Government reaffirmed their commitment to promote multilateral horizontal cooperation in education in the Americas. To that end, they decided, "to instruct the Organization of American States (OAS) and requested the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank … to provide … support for programs and initiatives that are consistent with the goals, objectives, and actions proposed in this (Education) Chapter of the Plan of Action."

The Presidents encouraged the Inter-American Development Bank "to work with member countries to substantially increase the share of new lending for primary and secondary education," and requested, "that the IDB establish a special regional fund for education in the Hemisphere, utilizing the existing resources of the institution."

The Heads of State and Government also instructed the OAS and requested the IDB, the World Bank, ECLAC, and UNESCO to develop and strengthen regional cooperation in specific areas of education, such as distance education, internship and exchange programs, educational information technology, educational statistics, and education quality assessment.

The Presidents further decided to strengthen the Organization of American States as the political agency of the Inter-American System. They specifically "instructed the OAS to foster, articulate and facilitate, through ministerial meetings and other mechanisms developed by the member States in the framework of the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI), collaboration and joint efforts in the Hemisphere and, to that end, to convene, in consultation with the coordinating countries, technical consultation forums of the countries in the Hemisphere in order to contribute to the implementation of the commitments included in this Chapter of the Plan of Action."

Finally, the Presidents and Heads of State charged the OAS General Secretariat with the responsibility for providing technical support to the Summit Implementation Review Group (SIRG) and for building an institutional memory for hemispheric summitry. To coordinate this task, the Secretary General of the OAS established the Office of Summit Follow-up within the General Secretariat.

The Implementation Process of the Santiago Agreements

As we said, education was the focal point in the Santiago Summit. The OAS offered its political and technical capabilities to support the Santiago Plan of Action. The Inter-American Development Bank and the World Bank pledged more than eight billion dollars for the three years of the Plan of Action. Other international agencies, like UNESCO and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, also committed their support.

It was then necessary to establish an implementation process of the Summit agreements. To that end, the Ministers of Education established an 11-country Coordinating Committee, chaired by Mexico, and approved a general implementation plan of the Summit education agreements. The Ministers further approved the Inter-American Education Program prepared by the OAS, which covers six Summit agenda commitments.

To monitor and evaluate the implementation process, the coordinating countries celebrated a number of meetings from 1998 up to 2000:

1. A planning meeting was held in Washington, DC in August 1998, to agree on the specifics of six multinational projects to be submitted to the OAS for financing. Projects have later been submitted to and approved by the OAS.
2. A general follow-up meeting was held in Mexico in March 1999, to discuss the implementation process of the approved Summit projects and strengthen the follow-up of national obligations and international commitments to the Summit goals. Following the Mexico meeting, the OAS disbursed some $2.5 million to support the six multinational projects of its Inter-American Education Program, conceived in light of the Summit recommendations.
3. A subsequent general follow-up meeting was held in Mexico in September 2000, to assess progress made by national and international organizations toward meeting the 1998 Summit goals. This meeting also advanced some new educational policy proposals to be submitted to the third Summit of the Americas in Canada.
4. The last meeting of the coordinating countries took place in Mexico City in November 2000. Its major agenda item was the preparation of the Education Chapter of the Canada Summit.
5. Several countries also convened separate meetings to monitor the development of specific Summit projects. The most outstanding case was the meeting organized by the Brazilian Ministry of Education in Brasilia in April 2000, bringing together national and international organizations involved in educational assessment to discuss possible actions for promoting cross-national comparisons and strengthening national testing systems. This initiative has the decisive support of the Regional UNESCO Office in Santiago.

What About Meeting Concrete Summit Goals?

As I pointed out earlier, three major actors have been involved in the implementation of the Summit goals and recommendations. First, the governments; second, the international organizations; and third, civil society. The governments are the leading actors; the international agencies played a cooperating role; civil society played a minor role.

As for the governments, there has been no process in place to assess the progress achieved by national institutions in the implementation of the Summit recommendations. Countries did not agree on specific targets or on steps toward meeting the targets. Therefore, it has been difficult to evaluate empirically the progress made by individual countries to meet the Summit agreements.

As for the international development community, there are some concrete indicators of their contribution to the implementation of the Summit recommendations. For instance, the Organization of American States actively supported the Coordinating Committee; prepared and implemented its Inter-American Education Program conceived in light of the Summit recommendations; and provided some $2.5 million to fund six Summit projects.

UNESCO played a decisive role in the preparation of a comprehensive proposal on regional educational statistics and educational indicators, led by the Government of Chile, with the support of the US Department of Education and the Brazilian Ministry of Education.

The international banks, though committed to the Summit policy agreements, have been less involved in the follow-up work of the Summit Coordinating Committee. The main function of both the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank is to provide loans based on requests submitted by the countries themselves. In this context, both banks have included Summit recommendations in their education plans, but according to their methodology, it is the countries’ responsibility to focus on the Summit recommendations in their proposals submitted to the banks.

Finally, it is important to emphasize that civil society has not been actively involved in the planning and implementation of the Summit projects. Nevertheless, progress is in the making. Some NGOs have been invited to the last follow-up meetings in Mexico. NGOs are increasingly involved in the preparation of the third Summit to be held next year in Canada.

So much for the implementation process. The question now is whether or not the countries will actually meet the Summit goals. Current international statistics suggest that Latin America as a whole will not meet the three Summit goals by 2010, as established by the Heads of State in Miami and reaffirmed in Santiago. Let’s examine the international statistics related to the three goals, i.e., achieve universal quality primary education; achieve 75% of secondary school enrollment; and provide lifelong learning opportunities for the population.

First goal. Current trends in primary school enrollment rates in Latin America suggest that many countries will not meet the 100% target by 2010. According to UNESCO (2000 World Development Indicators), today’s net primary enrollments are a little over 90% in Latin America as a whole. Five countries (Argentina, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, and Trinidad and Tobago) have already reached the 100% net primary enrollment target. On the opposite pole, in some Central American countries net primary enrollment is less that 80 percent. As for completion of primary education, data available today reveal that Latin America is far from achieving the Summit objective of universal primary school completion by 2010.

Second goal. In secondary education, the most recent statistics from UNESCO (1998 World Education Report) reveal that the current 56% enrollment level is far from the 75% target for 2010. Based on the growth rate of the last decade, Latin American secondary school gross enrollment rate will reach 66% by 2010. And according to a recent projection of the World Bank, based on net enrollments, secondary school enrollments will have to double between 1998 and 2010 to reach the Summit goal. The fact is that only three countries (Canada, Cuba, and the United States) meet the 75% target established by the Summit. In most countries less than 50% of secondary school-age youngsters are actually enrolled in the schools. This means that the Hemisphere as a whole faces a particularly challenging task in the near future.

Third goal. It is very difficult to assess progress toward meeting the goal of providing the population with lifelong learning opportunities. There is no operational definition of the goal, no quantitative targets were established, and there is no pertinent data available on the subject. There are indications that a good amount of activities have been carried out, but there is no way to assess the real progress made by the different countries of the Hemisphere.

So much for the Second Summit of the Americas and the implementation efforts of its education agreements. But the beat goes on. By this I mean that the governments are now preparing the third Summit of the Americas.

The Third Summit of the Americas

The Third Summit will be held in Quebec City, Canada in April 2001. The Summit Implementation Review Group (SIRG) is coordinating the preparation of the Canada Summit. The Review Group is chaired by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade of the Government of Canada and is supported by the OAS Office for Summit Follow-Up. The Review Group has held a number of preparatory meetings during the year. Its last meeting, the 20th meeting, was held in Washington, DC on November 28-30, to examine the central issues of the Summit Action Plan.

The Review Group has prepared a general “Framework for the 2001 Summit of the Americas Action Plan”. The Framework has three major Baskets: Strengthening Democracy, Creating Prosperity, and Realizing Human Potential. The Basket on Strengthening Democracy covers issues like human rights, justice, hemispheric security, and civil society. The Basket on Creating Prosperity covers trade, financial markets, labor, the environment, telecommunications, and economic disparities. The Basket on Realizing Human Potential includes education, health, gender equality, indigenous populations, cultural diversity, and children and youth.

The working document for the next Summit recognizes that “education plays an increasingly important role in the development of human potential, in promoting understanding, and in the acceptance of values shared by our multiethnic and multicultural societies.” The draft document on education reaffirms the commitment of the governments to promote the principles of equity, quality, relevance, and efficiency established in Santiago. The document also restates the Miami and Santiago goals to ensure, by 2010, universal access to quality primary education; access of at least 75% of young people to quality secondary education; and provision of lifelong learning opportunities for the general population. The draft document mentions the following action items:

1. Promote early childhood education and adult education, especially of disadvantaged segments of the population, to ensure access to quality education for all.
2. Support regional initiatives to develop comparable indicators and educational assessment programs, including cooperative assessment activities on student performance.
3. Promote alternatives for secondary education that provide students with solid training for work as well as practical skills certification.
4. Promote university-society dialogue and cooperation for research in science and technology to cope with the challenges of today’s knowledge-based society.
5. Support lifelong learning opportunities, by strengthening education in skills, know-how, civic and democratic values that are relevant in the context of globalization.
6. Strengthen education institutions, by enhancing the teaching profession, and promoting local school-based management and community participation to ensure that students receive a quality education.
7. Promote open access to new information and communication technologies applied to education by teachers, students, and administrators, in order to reduce the knowledge gap associated to the digital divide within and among societies in the Hemisphere.
8. Support the mobility and exchange of students, educators, and administrators among the countries of the Americas, in order to provide them with new opportunities to become active participants of the new knowledge-based society and facilitate the establishment of hemispheric multicultural networks.

Finally, the Presidents are expected to entrust the Ministers of Education to hold a meeting in 2001 to:

1. Identify mechanisms to ensure the implementation of the Education Plan of Action of the Summit.
2. Identify timelines and benchmarks to monitor the implementation of the education commitments.
3. Establish cooperative mechanisms to mobilize resources and ensure productive partnerships with other governments and regional and international organizations and financial institutions.
4. Promote the participation of civil society organizations with the goal of enhancing public-private partnerships.

In light of past achievements, all these items are promising developments. The challenge remains in their effective implementation.

Conclusion: Lessons Learned

I would like to conclude with a note on some implications of the Summit experience for international educational cooperation in the Americas. The Presidents did not prescribe a compliance recipe for the international development community. Nor did they instruct or request the international agencies to come up with universal reform prescriptions for the solution of educational problems in the Americas.

In addition, we have learned throughout the years that such universal prescriptions or recipes may well be irrelevant and ineffective in specific education reform attempts. There is in fact an extensive literature on the characteristics and patterns of technical cooperation that favor or hinder educational innovation and reform in rich and poor countries. Many scholars, like Joseph Farrell from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, sustain rightly that there are no universal prescriptions for education reform. They further argue that there are no universal prescriptions for technical cooperation to support policy making and reform implementation.

Critical accounts of the international experience in educational cooperation have in fact taught us some important lessons. For example, today we know that technical cooperation requires a keen knowledge of local conditions under which cooperative action is developed. In this sense, there are convincing lessons in the business world as well as in education, that there is no one "best practice" applicable to all cases, in all places, and at all times.

We also know today that educational experiences cannot be automatically transferred from one country to another, from one culture to another. This means that the results of research conducted in North America on North American issues are not automatically valid in South America or other parts of the world and vice-versa. In this sense, it is encouraging to see Latin American graduate students in the United States and Canada deciding to write and being encouraged to write their research papers or dissertations on their own Latin American issues. I think that such a practice is a productive learning experience for all parties involved. It is a good practice for the construction of knowledge in North America and in South America and, in the long run, this practice will pay high dividends for educational development in the Hemisphere as a whole.

These lessons suggest that we need to develop a growing awareness of cultural diversity in our international education activities. A number of anthropological studies reveal that children and adults of different cultures learn in different ways. During the 1999 Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society, Professor Ursula Franklin, of the University of Toronto, sustained that "each culture has a different way of knowing". These findings call for specific pedagogical solutions when we address specific educational problems in specific cultures. Such findings also call for a revised ecology of international cooperation, which I would call a multicultural ecology of horizontal cooperation among nations; nations with different histories, nations with different kinds of development, nations with different economic, political, and cultural agendas. Needless to say that, in the context of today's global society, these findings place enormous challenges for national and inter-governmental agencies of international cooperation. International agencies have in fact a challenging homework to do. If international organizations are to be politically effective and socially relevant, they have to learn, again and again, that they cannot simplify problems and solutions based upon universal interpretations of the international state of the art in educational development.

A selective bibliography examines the pathways toward a new ethic of international cooperation. Let me just mention a couple of colleagues among many specialists in the field. OAS Secretary General César Gaviria argues that inter-governmental organizations, such as the Organization of American States, should be primarily promoters of international cooperation rather than providers of direct services of technical and financial assistance. In the field of education in the Americas, Thomas Wiggins' call for a transactional approach to technical cooperation, as opposed to the traditional assistance-intervention framework, highlights an acknowledged concern in a number of intellectual circles. In his analysis of the role of scientific institutions and professional education associations of civil society, Jack Culbertson, former Executive Director of the University Council for Educational Administration of the United States, calls for the construction of bridges of collaboration and exchange of knowledge and experiences as a way to ease genuine inter-institutional and international cooperation in higher education. Joseph Farrell proposes a paradigm of horizontal intellectual cooperation, being more concerned about the collective construction and exchange of knowledge than about the transfer of financial resources or pat formulas.

Finally, the evaluation of the summitry process reminds us that different actors of international cooperation play different roles. In other words, there are different forms of international cooperation, which rely on different conditions and produce different results. There are different approaches adopted by the international banks, by inter-governmental political and technical organizations, by national development agencies, and by philanthropic foundations and nongovernmental organizations. There are also a few general tendencies. For example, there is a growing emphasis on horizontal cooperation as opposed to the traditional vertical approach; emphasis on learning rather than teaching; emphasis on collaboration instead of assistance; emphasis on culturally relevant solutions as opposed to universal neutral-free best practices.

It is important to keep in mind, though, that international organizations are cooperating agencies that provide support to national institutions within the limits of the mandates they receive. The political responsibility for the summitry process and for educational reform in general lies with the governments. So does the educational policy making process, which in fact is just the first step of the Summit reform agendas. A lot has been accomplished in terms of implementation of the educational agreements of the two first Summits. But governments, as well as civil society and the international development community, still face important challenges as they prepare the third Summit of the Americas to be held in Canada.

Let me finish here. I am sure that you would like to interact about some of the facts and concerns I presented here this afternoon. Thank you all for coming and for your patience to listen.

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