BackHome
Refresh: OffView Personal Schedule
Session Submission Summary

Education finance research and practice in Latin America

Wed, April 17, 5:00 to 6:30pm, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Street (Level 0), Regency B

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Public spending on education has increased significantly in Latin America over the last two decades. In current dollars, spending on primary and secondary schools surpasses US$2,000 per student, which, while still low compared to most OECD countries, in real terms represents roughly three times what was spent on each student in the 1990s. Most evidence from international assessments shows that LAC countries are making moderate but sustained progress in closing the learning gap with more developed countries. Despite these learning gains, however, education systems in Latin America still lag significantly behind most developed countries on international tests. Economic and political crises in many countries in the region have challenged local governments to develop policies to improve student outcomes with limited resources. School finance strategies offer an important policy lever for governments as they seek to increase efficiency in spending and allocate resources in ways that will produce more equitable educational outcomes.
In Brazil, the main policy governing the financing of basic education is the Fund for the Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and Valorization of Education Professionals, known as FUNDEB. The law that authorizes FUNDEB is set to expire at the end of 2020, and school finance is consequently the topic of intense policy debate. Information about the strengths and weaknesses of FUNDEB and about funding systems in other Latin American countries can help policy-makers to identify potential benefits and problems in the design of the next chapters of Brazil's educational funding.
The Brazilian educational system is highly decentralized (with only 16% of resources coming from the central government), with low social inclusion (according to the indicator of "social inclusion of schools" calculated by the OECD), and the family socioeconomic context is still one of the most important factors influencing performance (14% of the variation in the results of the PISA mathematics are explained by the socioeconomic level of the students, for example). In addition, Brazilian teachers receive approximately 39% of the average salary received by teachers in Japan, for example. At present, the debate about the financing of Brazilian education is polarized between two groups that do not talk with each other. On one side, public investments in education relative to GDP are put forward to support the argument that "the educational results of Brazil are lower than expected given the level of spending" (The World Bank Group 2017). The other side emphasizes the need for additional federal resources in order to guarantee minimum quality standards (Pinto 2015).
Moving beyond this stalemate requires a more comprehensive policy conversation that moves beyond whether Brazil spends "too much" or "too little". This panel moves in this direction by providing both Brazilian and comparative evidence on school funding effectiveness and equity. The panel will include the presentation of three papers, with comments from our discussant (Prof. Martin Carnoy) and chair (Prof. David Plank). For the 90 minutes panel session, we propose the following organization: 20 minutes presentation for each paper, 5 minutes of discussant comments per paper, and 15 minutes of chair final comments.
The first paper of our panel analyzes the existence of an empirical phenomenon in public financing – the flypaper effect – in the Brazilian education context, which has a minimum spending requirement for local funds and intergovernmental transfers from different government levels. In a decentralized education system, the understanding of how local governments use their budgets and how their budget decisions are influenced by the central government is of essential importance to the design of education funding policies. The second study investigates if subsidies for public schools crowd out private expenditures. It does so by examining how private schools and students respond to increases in subsidies that increased the length of the school day in high-schools in a Brazilian state. The third paper uses unique administrative data to analyze and explain the socioeconomic funding gap between regions within Latin American countries.
Prof. Martin Carnoy will then discuss the evidence presented in the three articles, focusing on the importance of each study to inform public policy. Finally, Prof. David Plank, will discuss an initiative that aims to bridge the gap between researchers and Brazilian policy-makers: the “D3e – Data for a Democratic Debate in Education.” The D3e is a group of researchers associated with the Lemann Center for Brazilian education at Stanford University whose objective is to bring technical and scientific knowledge closer to the Brazilian executive and legislative powers. With this purpose, they produce reports that consolidate learning about educational topics in Brazil and in the world. In addition, D3e disseminates the content produced among educators, public managers, members of academia and civil society, in order to enrich the educational debate.
Particularly, Prof. Plank will discuss his experience leading PACE (Policy Analysis for California Education) and how a similar initiative in Brazil can help policy-makers in Brazil to design better education policies using academic research. The focus of his discussion will be in the specific examples presented in the three studies and the report recently published by the D3e, which discusses international experiences in education finance and how Brazil can learn from them.

Sub Unit

Chair

Individual Presentations

Discussant