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engineering mindset rather than the dynamism inherent in human development. In any case, there are few good examples of successful scaling up of education reforms in either developing or developed countries. Scaling up is challenging for two general reasons. First, development projects create artificial conditions in target schools or regions. These conditions—of financing, technical assistance, training, materials (and of plain attention from experts and national leaders)—are different from those faced by other schools. The arrival of external assistance creates a ‘project bubble’ within which the conditions, the ‘rules of the game’ that apply to all other schools, are suspended. The second, and closely-related reason is that successful scaling up requires more than just duplicating the external assistance resources and processes in all schools (usually a financial and practical impossibility), but changing the conditions within which all schools operate. The critical insight captured in USAID’s Education Reform Support studies is that achieving development success on a national level requires scaling up the conditions that facilitate successful activities within schools, rather than the activities themselves (Crouch, DeStefano, 1998). Other reform projects take an opposite approach, and seek to work at scale from the beginning, addressing the incentives and conditions through policy reform, organizational capacity building, curriculum reform, teacher training, and similar national level interventions. The potential strength of this strategy is that policies can, in theory, fundamentally change the incentives and disincentives of the system, and affect the behavior of thousands of teachers and principals. In practice, however, there is a significant stretch between a regulation or policy and day-to-day teacher behavior in a classroom; policies frequently fail to reflect critical constraints confronted by teachers and principals. In practice, policy change almost always elicits unanticipated response at the school level, and therefore requires a robust feedback and adjustment mechanism. Effective implementation of a new policy on a national scale is an endeavor that requires considerable capacity and resources. For students, policy implementation happens on a school-by-school level. Under the best of circumstances, top-down development strategy takes a long time to show tangible results in the classroom. The following checklist of the requirements for scaling up (World Bank, 2002) captures the essence of system improvement. However, as is often the case, a checklist may simply be stating the obvious, without providing useful guidance about how to achieve these goals. 26 SECTION 1: INTROdUCTION
Country commitment to improving policies, governances and institutions. • Sound policies and committed leadership at the country level, supported by appropriate expenditure frameworks and effective budget execution. • Community and country ownership is essential. Adequate operational capacity to implement at all levels. • Capacity of communities to participate effectively, and the right incentives, so that countries can translate sound policies and strong leadership into effective action. • External support for change and capacity building. Financial resources adequate to scale up programs that work. • Cost structure M&E, hiring of staff, avoid high staff turnover Government needs to see advantage in scaling up. • Many programs have yet to become comprehensive in either geographical coverage or context. • Scaling up should depend on empirical evidence that the program works. A strong focus on results- accountability for learning and outcomes- so that policies and programs are built on empirical evidence of problems and solutions that work. —Summarized from Development Effectiveness and Scaling Up: Lessons from Case Studies, World Bank Board Report (2002). The issues of effectiveness, sustainability, capacity, scaling up, and ownership discussed above are all illustrations of a complex system, in which different aspects are mutually dependent and interrelated. Change can only take root when all aspects of the system support technical and pedagogical innovations. This implies that effective engagement in education reform requires more than a series of activities, but rather a coordinated systems approach. The following section discusses an approach to dealing with education as a system. A SySTEMS APPROACh TO EDUCATION REFORM: WhAT CONSTITUTES MEANINgFUL ChANgE IN EDUCATION SySTEMS Evaluations of aid to education usually focus on project activities, outcomes, and, to a lesser extent, impact. However, there is a growing recognition that the “process of change is as important as the immediate or quantifiable results of the change” (Samoff, 2001). In a background paper to the Joint Evaluation of Aid to Basic Education, Dr. Joel Samoff noted that some of the most important contributions to effective change were not the immediate outcomes, but in programs that “emphasize relationships rather than distinctions, reciprocal interactions rather than causality, and shorter-term proximate consequences rather than longer term impacts”. From this perspective, meaningful change SECTION 1: INTROdUCTION 27
Page 1 and 2: The Power of Persistence Education
Page 4 and 5: table of Contents Acknowledgments F
Page 6 and 7: generously granted us their time an
Page 8 and 9: Foreword The United States Agency f
Page 11 and 12: Executive Summary EQUIP2 Education
Page 13 and 14: local points of contact. In fact, b
Page 15 and 16: Namibia has successfully developed
Page 17 and 18: Sustainability in the context of sy
Page 19: • Manage policy engagement and re
Page 23 and 24: After more than 50 years of develop
Page 25 and 26: to the point of functional literacy
Page 27 and 28: An obvious question for donors is
Page 29 and 30: • Was the investment in education
Page 31 and 32: A final perspective on ownership, a
Page 33 and 34: and recipients. The World Bank has
Page 35: the term differently. Donors someti
Page 39 and 40: The importance of these insights, b
Page 41 and 42: Table: Simple, Complicated, and Com
Page 43 and 44: Basic principles of systems thinkin
Page 45 and 46: Among the many aspects of systems t
Page 47 and 48: EQUIP2 Education Systems Reform Fra
Page 49 and 50: may or may not be influenced by the
Page 51: • There are no magic bullets. Par
Page 55 and 56: These case studies look at educatio
Page 57: El Salvador Egypt Namibia Nicaragua
Page 60 and 61: eform support during the 1980s and
Page 62 and 63: system. In the same year, the USAID
Page 64 and 65: CASE ANALySIS: DIMENSIONS OF REFORM
Page 66 and 67: increased during this period, parti
Page 68 and 69: militant groups (at least until 199
Page 70 and 71: the growing political will and capa
Page 72 and 73: political will and experience in bo
Page 75 and 76: EgyPT TIMELINE
Page 78 and 79: El Salvador: Summary COUNTRy CONTEx
Page 80 and 81: financing, and ensuring adequate le
Page 82 and 83: Impact Structurally, the education
Page 84 and 85: CASE ANALySIS: DIMENSIONS OF REFORM
Page 86 and 87:
2005, USAID assistance further stre
Page 88 and 89:
EDUCO’s success exemplifies a tec
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workshop with representatives of bo
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• The continuing commitment to th
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El Salvador Time Line Before 1988 1
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Strategies Especially in the early
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In terms of quality, the impact on
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The second aspect is that the profe
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• The complex and holistic nature
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efforts have been studied closely,
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NAMIBIA TIMELINE
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Nicaragua: Summary COUNTRy CONTExT
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ASP won the support of donor agenci
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Nicaragua Education Indicators Indi
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Though the strong leadership of Min
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eform. Starting from the early 1990
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Nicaragua Time Line Before 1986 198
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growth; primary enrollment expanded
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accountability and corruption led d
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Selected Reform goals, Policy Chang
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Increased sector leadership from MO
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it have to cope with major governme
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management and administration that
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the education system and have limit
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help an overextended MOE to meet se
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ZAMBIA TIMELINE
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3 summary Findings and Conclusions
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In addition to an EFA-inspired emph
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from political changes. After 15 ye
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ased management, but were limited t
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is not necessarily limited to indiv
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sector limited the agenda-setting m
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and every new government seeks its
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8. USAID and other donors have been
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CONCLUSIONS This review of five cou
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Ownership It is a central tenet of
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actors is a never-ending process. T
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was beyond the mandate of the Minis
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IMPLICATIONS FOR USAID POLICy AND P
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Bibliography general References Alv
Page 175 and 176:
UNESCO. 2007. EFA Global Monitoring
Page 177 and 178:
Healy, F. & Crouch, L. (2007, Novem
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Sidhom, S. & Al-Fustat, A. (2004, J
Page 181 and 182:
Crouch, L., J. Gillies, A. Florez.
Page 183 and 184:
LLECE, “Conclusiones del estudio
Page 185 and 186:
Miller-Grandvaux, Yolande and Karla
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1875 Connecticut Ave., NW Washingto
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