The Power of Persistence: Education System ... - EQUIP123.net

ASP won the support of donor agencies that provided funds and technical support
for capacity building for decentralization at all levels of the Ministry of Education.
Another strategy that was part of the decentralization push was municipalization,
which involved fiscal transfers to the municipality to administer limited school
responsibilities. This initiative was short lived, in part because it competed with
the ASP. This kind of control at the municipal level undermined the role and
authority of the school councils (Gershberg, 2002). In political terms, it meant
giving power to Sandinistas who held many municipal-level positions.
When the MECD launched initiatives early in the 1990s, there was not a clear
vision of what the education system should look like. There was no policy
framework of the system’s mission, goals, directions, or reform strategies, a
factor that might have actually contributed to the success of the ASP program
(Gershberg 2002) 2 . Rather, the development of school directive councils was
launched, and workshops and capacity building programs were done with
community members, parents, teachers, and local level ministry officials in order
to communicate the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders in the system.
Councils of parents, teachers, and community members, whose involvement in
education was a founding tenet of school autonomy assumed decision-making
responsibilities. The ASP program garnered international donor support early
on even though only later, in 2002 did the Ministry articulate the rights and
roles of each stakeholder and guidelines about how council should work in the
Ley de Participación Educativa, the Education Participation Law (MECD, 2002).
Additionally, the administration of Arnoldo Aleman brought on Belli as minister,
the only one who was reappointed from the previous administration; a factor that
solidified political support for the ASP (Gershberg, 2002).
As the direction of education reform was established, the Plan Nacional
de Educación 2000-2015 outlined the direction and goals for educational
development until 2015 and was to be the basis for education policies (MECD,
2004b). It communicates the principles of the education system, and affirmed a
participatory and decentralized education structure as an overarching tenet of
the system (MECD, 2004b). The National Plan also acknowledges a commitment
to meet the Education for All goals by the target date of 2015 (MECD, 2004b).
The Ley General de Educación, the General Education Law, articulated a mission
and vision for the education system, which include the various modalities in the
system (primary/secondary education, adult education, teacher education, higher
2 For a broader discussion of the ways the lack of a policy framework might have influenced the
successes of reform initiatives, see Gershberg (2002).
SECTION 2: lESSONS fROM COUNTRY CASE STUdIES
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