Intellectual Discourse for Legitimizing Neoliberal Education: The Case of Educational Standardization in Chile

• In Event: Neoliberal Education Reform: The Ongoing Laboratories in Chicago and Chile

Abstract

Objective. We describe the academic discourse framing the acceptance of neoliberal educational policies in Chile, using as example the 1988-born high-stakes testing system: SIMCE (“System of Measurement of the Quality of Education”). SIMCE is a battery of standardized tests applied to all students in several subject areas and grade levels. Since the mid 2000s, policymakers have expanded SIMCE’s reach, adding other subject areas and grade levels, creating reward and punishment systems for schools, and orienting education policy and school funding through test scores.
Theoretical perspective. We understand SIMCE as educational policy, as government control, but also as a cyclical dual device: as text and discourse (Ball, Maguire & Brown, 2012). As text, it becomes the temporary product of multiple negotiations and commitments among actors included in the development of the policy. As a discourse, it functions limiting the debate to “the possible”, excluding critical responses as unrealistic. In this paper we examine the SIMCE’s discursive dimension by exploring the ways in which academic production has limited “the possible” for educational assessment policies, and used to legitimize neoliberal approaches to schooling.
Mode of inquiry. We define the “intellectuals” operationally as actors producing arguments published as academic articles or research papers. We conducted a systematic review of the arguments produced in order to cluster authors by identifying SIMCE regarding methodological uses, validity and attributed objectives, and ideological perspectives to their use.
Data sources. We performed systematic searches for these studies in scholarly databases, Chilean conference proceedings, and academic resources from think tanks and other organizations, and analyzed them accordingly. In order to strengthen our search we included a “snowball” search within the articles.
Preliminary findings. Our initial search yielded 278 articles, from which analysis of a random sample of 10% indicate: a) authors tend to define SIMCE scores as a dependent variable in quantitative studies; b) to a lesser degree, SIMCE is used as a descriptor of school samples, both in qualitative and mixed methods studies, as well as in essays; c) mostly, SIMCE is unquestioned and naturalized, considered either as a synonym of school quality or school effectiveness, or as a dependable and valid instrument to measure learning achievements; d) studies do not explore the impact of testing in school life, limiting only to descriptions of consequences associated to other policies; and finally, e) studies tend to use SIMCE for expressing public policy recommendations. We hypothesize that assessment public policy might have been mostly influenced by quantitative accounts of schooling that regard SIMCE as unquestionable.
Scholarly significance. The development of SIMCE in Chile epitomizes a naturalized neoliberal policy with limited attention to the effects of testing in the school experience of children and teachers, and with narrow forms of inquiry (e.g., mostly quantitative). Nevertheless, SIMCE policy has been sustained by powerful ‘advocacy networks’ conveying its discursive legitimacy (Campos-Martinez, Corbalan, & Inzunza, 2014), thus, positioning SIMCE as the central source of school reform and policy making.

Authors

• Andrea Lira, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Manuela Mendoza, PhD student (UCL Institute of Education)

• Ivan Salinas, Universidad de Chile

• Javier Campos-Martinez, University of Massachusetts - Amherst