Brookings: Equitable Learning is the True Intent of the Education MDGs

[Guest guest]

http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/0920_mdg_winthrop_adams.aspx

Equitable

Learning is the True Intent of the Education MDGs

Millennium Development Goals,

International Education, Global Poverty, Development, Education

Winthrop,

Director, Center for Universal Education

Anda , Associate Director, Global Economy and Development,

Center for Universal Education

The

Brookings Institution

September 20, 2010 —

This week, leaders from around the world will gather in New York to

participate in the U.N. Summit on the Millennium Development Goals to take

stock of progress made over the past decade and accelerate those efforts in

advance of the 2015 target. Education is at the core of two of those goals:

Goal 2 of universal primary completion and Goal 3 of gender equity at all

levels of education. When the world leaders discuss their progress on these two

goals, they will report on the following indicators: the number of children in

primary school, the proportion of children who start in grade 1 that complete

their primary education, literacy rate of 15-24 year olds by gender, and the

ratio of girls to boys in primary, secondary, and higher education. [1]

Measuring

progress by these indicators, education will appear to be one of the more

successful of the global development goals thus far. Primary school enrollment

rates in developing regions have increased from 83 percent in 2000 to 89 percent

in 2008, a notable accomplishment particularly in the face of increasing

population rates in many of these countries. Over the last 10 years, the

primary school enrollment gap between high-income and low-income countries has

closed almost completely. [2]

Education stakeholders from local communities to national governments to

international bodies must be commended for the tremendous effort made to expand

access to schooling for boys and girls around the world.

Yet, declaring global education reform successful is problematic. First, the

current pace of progress on enrollment will fall short by an estimated 56

million children who will still be out of primary school in 2015. Second,

primary completion levels lag significantly behind reported enrollment levels.

In sub-Saharan Africa, more than 30 percent of students drop out before

reaching the last grade of primary school. Third, there is a hidden early learning

crisis that exists beyond the global metrics focused on enrollment and

completion rates: in many developing countries, children are spending two,

three, four, and even more years in school without acquiring fundamental

literacy, numeracy, and critical thinking skills that are the backbone of

relevant education. Although youth literacy is included as one indicator, from

a pedagogical perspective, children who are failing to learn to read must be

identified as early possible to improve their overall learning trajectory.

Glick and Sahn found that primary school completion in Senegal was affected

most by a child’s performance in grade 2. [3] Thus, while knowing how many kids

enroll in school and how many complete a full primary cycle is important,

learning outcomes in the early grades is the missing data needed to measure

progress toward achieving universal quality education.

Focus on the Education, Not the MDG

Evident in the increasing number of rapid reading assessments conducted in

primary schools worldwide, some countries show that 50, 80 and even 90 percent

of children cannot read a single word by the end of grade 2. [4] While the majority of these

assessments have been conducted at the end of grade 2 and beginning of grade 3

in order to modify teaching and learning practices as soon as possible, the low

learning levels persist through grade 3 and beyond. At the global level,

primary completion rates have been considered an acceptable proxy for quality

education. However, using completion as a stand-in for quality assumes that

children who complete five or six years of primary school have learned to read,

calculate, and think critically. For example, in 2008 Honduras had a 97 percent

net enrollment rate for primary school, an 84 percent primary completion rate,

and yet about 1 in 3 students are non-readers at the end of grade 2. Malawi has

achieved a 91 percent primary enrollment rate and yet 28 percent of grade 4

children are Chichewa non-readers, 56 percent are English non-readers and only

33 percent of students are completing primary school. In Uganda, where 97 percent

of students are enrolled in primary school, only 44 percent complete it. And

there are striking differences in early reading levels throughout Uganda, with

more than 80 percent of grade 2 students in the Lango Subregion not being able

to read at grade level, compared to around half of grade 2 students in the

Central Region. [5]

Given these types of findings in many developing countries around the world,

how much weight does a country government report hold when the calculated

number of primary school completions includes students who have not acquired

the basic knowledge and skill sets? At the global level, countries (donors and

recipients alike) are fixated on achieving the MDGs; yet they are ignoring the

main objective: to foster the next generation of citizens that is able to

participate fully in the economic, political, and social roles of their

community.

Learning, not Enrollment, is Driver of Development

The global education agenda began to take shape in Jomtien in 1990 with the

World Declaration on Education for All, which asserted that: “For basic

education to be equitable, all children, youth and adults must be given the

opportunity to achieve and maintain an acceptable level of learning.” [6] Article 4 explicitly laid out the central

importance of learning, that “meaningful development… depends ultimately on whether

people actually learn as a result of those opportunities, i.e., whether they

incorporate useful knowledge, reasoning ability, skills, and values.” [7] The Dakar World Education Conference in

2000 reaffirmed this approach to education in the adoption of six Education for

All (EFA) goals that included comprehensive early child development, primary

education, youth learning, and adult literacy and emphasized throughout the

importance of gender equity and the quality of education. [8]

These six goals were developed together to kick-start development by expanding

the pockets of educational excellence available to reach all children, youth

and adults everywhere.

In 1990, it was clear that learning must be at the core of education reform

efforts. More recently, that approachhas been further bolstered by economic

analysis showing that the true benefits of education for long-run development

are derived from learning achievements, not just increasing the number of years

in school. Their evaluation showed that an additional year of schooling that

does not result in learning has no effect on economic growth. The powerful

effects of cognitive skills on individual earnings, on the distribution of

income across society, and on economic growth support a causal interpretation

of their results. [9] Thus learning, not enrollment and

completion, must be the minimum educational goal to which we aspire.

Early Reading as a Necessary First Step Toward Equitable Learning

Equitable learning, which was at the core of the original global education

movement, must once again be elevated to the top of the education agenda.

Continuing education reform efforts without sufficient focus on learning

results in one of two untenable situations: either expanded universal schooling

opportunities without actual learning; or increased learning for a small

population of elites. Neither situation will reduce poverty and improve living

conditions for the bottom billion citizens of the world. This “equitable learning

crisis” requires urgent attention.

According to a new analysis by UNESCO’s EFA Global Monitoring Report team, over

170 million people could be lifted out of poverty if all students in low-income

countries acquired basic reading skills. [10]

This finding builds on an expansive and growing body of evidence on how

education is a core ingredient to achieve the other development goals, including

that educating women and children result in healthier and wealthier families.

Learning to Read is Learning for All

Learning to read, including the related tasks of text comprehension and

analysis, is a fundamental skill upon which many other cognitive skills are

based. As they progress through school, students acquire an increasing amount

of information by reading texts; poorly developed literacy skills severely

compromise a student’s ability to access new knowledge. The acquisition of

early reading skills is one good proxy for assessing learning outcomes more

broadly. Thus, in addition to measuring net enrollment, primary completion, and

youth and adult literacy, progress on achieving universal primary education

should be measured by the proportion of students who, by the end of primary

school, are able to read with comprehension, according to their country’s own

curricular goals. Adding a fourth indicator to MDG 2 is an important step

toward fulfilling the basic human right of every citizen to an education. The

importance of learning is undisputable. The case for measuring early reading as

an indicator of progress on the universal education goals can be substantiated

on a number of fronts, including the following three arguments:

1. Human Rights Approach to Education. A child

who leaves primary school without acquiring basic literacy is being denied her

human right to education. Basing success on illiterate graduates is unethical

and plays a political game at the expense of people. Counting heads in

classrooms shirks the international commitment to ensuring that all children

have a basic education.

2. Good Place to Start. No single measurable

indicator will suffice as the measure of progress toward achieving universal education.

However, focusing on basic reading skills represents an essential component of

the global education goals and provides a floor from which greater attention to

learning achievements, including numeracy, critical thinking, and

social-emotional skills, can be founded. The wide uptake of rapid reading

assessments conducted in the first three years of primary school demonstrates

that we have a straightforward way of measuring early literacy acquisition.

3. Educating the World about Education. By measuring

progress through enrollment and completion, global education reform remains

primarily focused on an access-driven agenda. Despite a growing emphasis on the

quality learning agenda among important stakeholders, too many policy

statements are still focused almost entirely on increasing access to education

with little to no mention of improving the quality of learning in the

classroom. Even the World Bank, which has spent 2010 developing its education

sector strategy for the next 10 years, recently announced that its commitment

to help countries achieve the education MDGs will be used “to support

innovative interventions that improve access” and address demand-side obstacles

to “school enrollment and attendance.” [11] An equitable learning approach removes

the false choice between access and quality and positions the real goal of

education – knowledge acquisition and skill development – at the center of

achieving education for all children, youth and adults.

Facing the Critics

To be clear, this is not a call for a new Millennium Development Goal now or a

push for a post-2015 focus on learning. This is an important distinction to

make for two reasons. First, learning must be considered part and parcel of the

existing education goals. The World Declaration on Education for All, the EFA

Goals, and the MDGs were never intended to just get more children through the

schoolhouse door; expanding educational opportunities so that every child would

complete at least a full course of primary schooling included the belief that

students would acquire the necessary knowledge and develop relevant skills that

enhance their capabilities, economic opportunities, and wellbeing. Second, it

is essential that any planning for a vision beyond 2015 does not overshadow the

hard and necessary work that must continue in countries over the next five

years. We know that the current pace of education reform must be quickened and

the quality deepened to achieve the goals but that should not dissuade us from

relentlessly pursing these goals in the immediate term; moving too quickly to

formulate the next set of global targets puts the chance of significant

progress in the next five years at risk. In discussions with colleagues, we

have encountered three central arguments against adding a new indicator:

1.

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie. Skeptics

of adding a new education indicator—focused on measuring learning outcomes—have

cited that there is no political appetite for adding or changing existing

indicators. The majority of the analysis and commentary is focused on how far

away countries are from the established targets and what frameworks and ways of

working need to be established to accelerate progress toward the goals. Over

the course of the last decade, there has been some, albeit minimal, change in

the targets and indicators, with the MDG Monitoring Framework being revised for

Goals 1, 5, 6, and 7 in 2007. The process, organized by the Inter-Agency and Expert

Group on MDG Indicators and involving leadership from the Secretary-General and

agreement by the General Assembly, was understandably complex and drawn out

(beginning with the 2005 World Summit and being formally presented in January

2008). The global health community has already set a precedent for expanding

and revising the MDGs when faced with hard evidence and new information that

emerges over time; efforts this year have successfully elevated

non-communicable diseases (e.g. cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes)

to be considered one of the most significant health challenges facing the MDGs.

2.

Indicators are Secondary to

Implementation. Others argue that targets and indicators are

only mile-markers toward the ultimate goal of education for all. Therefore, the

focus of efforts must stay on the programming necessary to ensure equitable

learning. Yet mile-markers play an important role in letting you know where you

are in relation to where you started and where you are going. Thus, in a world

of infinite goals and finite means, mobilizing the necessary political will,

public attention, and financial resources to achieve universal education

requires a strong clear case for what education is accomplishing and what still

needs to be done. Progress in enrollment and completion needs to be considered

through the lens of learning to appropriately focus investments from 2010-2015.

3.

Making the Same Mistake All Over

Again. Adding an indicator that measures reading skills at the end of

primary school is considered by some to be too narrow a focus, with references

to the critiques of the enrollment and completion indicators made above.

Barrett (2009) argues that focusing on one simple measurement of cognitive

learning may be detrimental to learning more broadly conceived, including

mathematics, science, and non-cognitive skills. This argument gets at the crux

of the debate between two old sayings: “What gets measured gets done” and “Not

everything that counts can be counted and not everything that is counted counts.”

If we want children to learn to read, there must be some level of focus to

ensure that this happens; however, learning to read is not the only skill that

matters and educational efforts must include a broader conception of the full

spectrum of cognitive and non-cognitive skills needed to live a full and

productive life. Measuring progress by assessing the number of children who can

read with comprehension at grade level by the end of primary school builds on

the evidence that reading is an early and essential building block of learning.

It also assures that by the end of primary school, children emerge able to read

new texts and learn independently. Adding an early reading indicator

demonstrates that basic literacy is a necessary but not sufficient intermediate

goal toward achieving universal education.

We cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We recognize

that early reading is not the complete panacea for achieving equitable learning

for all. However, ensuring that every child is acquiring basic literacy skills

must be part of the foundation upon which further education progress is built.

Getting children into school is no longer an adequate achievement for a global

society concerned with ensuring basic human rights, eliminating extreme poverty,

and providing opportunities for improved well-being for all.

_____________________________________________________

[1] Millennium Development Goals Indicators,

“Official list of MDG indicators, effective 15 January 2008,” Accessed 15

September 2010: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?Content=Indicators/OfficialList.htm

[2] World Bank .2010. EdStatsQuery, Accessed

August 11 2010,: http://go.worldbank.org/85XM5TBQA0

[3] Glick, P. and D.E. Sahn. (2010). “Early

academic performance, grade repetition, and school attainment in Senegal: A

panel data analysis.” The World Bank Economic Review 24(1): 93–120.

[4] Gove, A. and Cvelich, P. (2010.) Early

Reading: Igniting Education for All. A report by the Early Grade Learning

Community of Practice. Research Triangle Park, NC: Research Triangle

Institute.

[5] Gove and Cvelich (2010) and UNESCO

Institute for Statistics “Key Statistical Tables on Education,” accessed on 15

September 2010 at http://stats.uis.unesco.org/unesco/ReportFolders/reportFolders.aspx

[6] UNESCO (1990). “World Declaration on

Education for All,” Adopted at the World Conference on Education for All,

Jomtien, Thailand.

[7] UNESCO (1990). “World Declaration on

Education for All,” Adopted at the World Conference on Education for All,

Jomtien, Thailand.

[8] UNESCO, (2000). “Dakar Framework for

Action: Education For All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments,” adopted by the

World Education Forum, Dakar Senegal.

[9] Hanushek, E. and L. Woessmann (2008). “The

role of cognitive skills in economic development.” Journal of Economic

Literature 46(3): 607–668.

[10] UNESCO, (September 2010). “Education is

the key to lasting development,” Paris: UNESCO.

[11] World Bank Group (September 2010).

“Unfinished Agenda: Unfinished Business: Mobilizing New Efforts to Achieve the

2015 Millennium Development Goals,” Washington, DC: World Bank.

Stefanie Ostfeld

Senior Policy Officer

Global AIDS Alliance

1121 14 Street NW, Suite 200

Washington, DC 20005

202.789.0432 ext 216

www.globalaidsalliance.org