Something I wish would change in Chile

In Chile there are multiple economic and social  problems that triggered the crisis we are in and one of the promises I would like to write about is education, particularly in schools and colleges.

Within the period of educational reform that took place during the military dictatorship, the System for Measuring the Quality of Education (from now on in its acronym, SIMCE) was born “applies to all students in the country who study the levels evaluated ( ...) 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th grade, II and III medium ”(Education Quality Agency, 2018) in order to monitor the effectiveness of educational policy, evaluation was the key piece to inform about the quality of the schools, to guide the demand and to promote a better education, finally adding the accountability of the schools. The accountability function is reinforced when monetary incentives are associated with SIMCE results.

The SIMCE currently measures mainly the performance of students in standardized tests of content treated in the curricular subsectors of: Language and Communication, Mathematics, Understanding of the Environment and Society, they have tried to incorporate items aimed at solving problems that put into play skills and cognitive skills. However, this evaluation bias has meant that only the contents that are part of the school subjects are considered important, it is also important to highlight that the results are strongly stained by the segregation of the system and context. The SIMCE reflects that the great differences and disadvantages in education are related to a territorial variable, which in turn is associated with rurality and poverty, that is, with worse results in education, more rurality, more poverty, less income and less education context.