"Alto al SIMCE" Campaign: Challenging the Common Sense of Standardized Testing

• In Event: 70.017 - Resisting the Standardization of Our Souls: Building Collective Power to Stop Neoliberal Reforms

Abstract

The SIMCE or System for Measurement of Education Quality in Chile consists of a battery of standardized tests applied each year to students in public and private schools. The tests cover an increasing and variable number of core curricular areas, and the results of each school are public. The SIMCE is part of a larger framework of education policy in Chile, based on the logic of educational markets and accountability. This system was created to provide ‘neutral’ and comparable information so parents can be informed consumers of education, and also to determine the assignation of resources by the central government.
The “Alto al SIMCE” (Stop SIMCE) campaign was initiated in 2013 by a group of educational activists concerned with the ways in which educational practices are being limited by standardized evaluations, and the role of SIMCE as a pillar of the neoliberal project in Chilean education. The “Alto al SIMCE” campaign developed from and is oriented towards the mobilization of students, teachers, parents, and academics. The initiative is rooted in the student mobilizations that continue to demand free public quality education for all, as well as the replacement of the market logic for one of social rights.
The “Alto al SIMCE” campaign has been successful in initiating a debate about evaluation in Chile, and in changing the common sense regarding the implications and effects of the SIMCE. This has been achieved by bringing together the voices of different actors involved in the educational system: educators and academics in Chile and countries around the world, as well as students, teachers, and parents. The group has used four core strategies: a) Organizing and building cooperation between multiple actors; b) Changing the public narrative regarding standardized testing by questioning the legitimacy and impact of SIMCE in mass media; c) Direct action through organizing SIMCE boycotts, walk-outs and marching in the streets during the days of its implementation; and d) Elaborating and disseminating educational research on the SIMCE.
The purpose of this presentation is to discuss the development of the “Alto al SIMCE” campaign, and what we consider its main outcomes: a) A movement of the academic and public conversation beyond the technical aspects of the tests toward questioning the ideological and political assumptions underlying SIMCE challenging the hegemonic logic that reduces ‘quality education’ to ‘neutral’ tests scores; b) Its contribution to broaden the conversation about school evaluation in Chile, and the problems that struggling schools face; and c) The campaign has brought to question the assumption that top-down control over schools, along with competition and external pressure, are the only paths to school improvement. The presentation will also discuss the challenges the campaign currently faces, such as the need to question the traditional ways in which education reform is planned and developed in Chile, in order to develop an educational evaluation system that is participatory and democratic.

Authors

• Javier Campos-Martinez, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

• Maria Beatriz Fernandez Cofre, Boston College

• Jorge Luis Inzunza, Delavan Darien School District

• Andrea Lira, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Mauricio Pino-Yancovic, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

• Sergio Alejandro Saldivia, New York University

• Ivan Salinas, Universidad de Chile