Não vai ter creche para todas as crianças brasileiras, fazer o quê?

érica fraga

É jornalista com mestrado em Economia Política Internacional no Reino Unido. Venceu os prêmios Esso, CNI e Citigroup. Mãe de três meninos, escreve sobre educação, às quartas.

	Raquel Cunha - 17.out.2016/Folhapress
	Alunos brincam em creche; 74,5% dos menores de 4 anos no país não frequentam estabelecimentos

05/04/2017  Folha de S.Paulo

Há inúmeras evidências baseadas em pesquisas rigorosas de que o pico da capacidade de desenvolvimento das crianças é atingido logo em seus primeiros anos de vida.
Um grupo de pesquisadores liderados por Sally Grantham-McGregor e Yin Bun Cheung estimou, em um estudo de 2007, que mais de 200 milhões de crianças de países em desenvolvimento não atingiam esse potencial aos cinco anos por problemas como desnutrição e falta de estímulos adequados.
Os autores mostraram que esse deficit tem inúmeras consequências negativas, como renda 20% menor na vida adulta.
As desigualdades de oportunidade na infância cobram, portanto, um preço alto no futuro. Isso ocorre tanto individualmente quanto para o país como um todo, já que crianças que não se desenvolvem plenamente serão profissionais menos produtivos no futuro.
Por isso um coro crescente de especialistas pede mais atenção de governos e famílias para a primeira infância. E esse é um dos motivos pelos quais se fala tanto da importância de ampliar a oferta de vagas em creches.
Uma pesquisa divulgada na semana passada pelo IBGE mostra que, nesse sentido, o Brasil vai muito mal, obrigada.
Com base em dados da Pnad (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios) de 2015, o instituto mostrou que a vasta maioria das crianças brasileiras menores de quatro anos (74,5% do total) não frequenta creches ou escolas.
Nesse grupo, estão justamente as que vêm de famílias mais pobres e, portanto, são mais carentes de estímulos adequados.
Segundo o IBGE, a renda domiciliar das crianças que permanecem em casa o dia todo equivale a 56,7% do rendimento daquelas que frequentam creches em período integral.
Esse dado corrobora uma tendência que já tinha sido apontada por Ricardo Paes de Barros, economista-chefe do Instituto Ayrton Senna e professor do Insper. Com base em dados da Pnad até 2014, o pesquisador e sua equipe notaram que a oferta de vagas em creches no país vinha aumentando mais rapidamente para crianças de famílias menos desfavorecidas.
Além da desigualdade no acesso a creches, os dados elaborados mais recentemente pelo IBGE indicam que o ritmo do crescimento de vagas —para as crianças como um todo— tem sido lento.
Nos últimos anos, a cobertura tem crescido cerca de um ponto percentual por ano. Nessa toada, passaremos dos 25,6% registrados em 2015 para cerca de 35% em 2024, ano em que o país deveria ter pelo menos 50% das crianças menores de quatro anos de idade em creches, segundo meta do PNE (Plano Nacional de Educação).
Dadas as severas restrições orçamentárias enfrentadas pelas administrações públicas do país, sejamos realistas: a maioria das nossas crianças permanecerão fora de creches e escolinhas por muito tempo.
É preciso honestidade sobre esse diagnóstico para pensarmos em alternativas eficazes. E elas existem.
Pesquisas mostram que há formas efetivas de estímulo ao desenvolvimento infantil —jogos, leitura de histórias, incentivos verbais— que podem ser adotadas em casa.
Mas há uma dificuldade à chegada desse tipo de cuidado às crianças mais necessitadas, que é o menor acesso à informação entre seus cuidadores.
Os dados do IBGE mostram, por exemplo, que 26% dos adultos que se declaram os principais responsáveis pelas crianças brasileiras têm baixa escolaridade (menos de sete anos de estudo).
Mas isso não deveria ser uma barreira intransponível.
Há evidências de que programas de visitação domiciliar bem-feitos, em que profissionais treinados levam informações às famílias mais carentes, têm impacto muito positivo no desenvolvimento infantil.
O "Criança Feliz", lançado ano passado pelo governo federal, é uma tentativa de adotar esse tipo de estratégia em larga escala no país.
Segundo o Ministério do Desenvolvimento Social e Agrário, responsável pelo projeto, o programa está agora na fase de treinamento dos visitadores. É cedo, portanto, para avaliar seus resultados. Mas é importante que isso comece a ser feito assim que possível.
Um dos inúmeros problemas do Brasil é a falta de avaliação da efetividade das políticas públicas adotadas.
Dada a urgência do acesso a cuidados adequados a todas as crianças brasileiras, não podemos nos dar ao luxo de esperar anos a fio para saber se nossos tiros estão acertando o alvo. 

The Innovation Infatuation (Chester Finn) by larrycuban

Over the past three decades I have admired the clarity of Checker Finn's writing, the wry sense of humor he injects into his prose, and the willingness to challenge whatever is the mainstream wisdom of the moment. Although I have differed with Finn on key education policies (e.g., vouchers, standards and testing), he is a thoughtful, reflective writer who knows well the history of school reform. And that in of itself is a boon. Although I do not agree with all that he says here, it is, in my opinion, worth reading. Chester Finn is a Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. This commentary appeared December 16, 2016 on Flypaper . Every once in a while, American K–12 education is overwhelmed by the conviction that its basic design is obsolete and that it needs somehow to reinvent schooling. One hears statements such as “If Rip Van Winkle were to awaken today from a century-long slumber, the only institutions he’d recognize would be schools and cemeteries.” We hear of education being stuck in an “industrial model.” And we observe educators, policymakers, and philanthropists scurrying to replace the schools of their childhoods with something different for their children and grandchildren to attend. We always seem to be, in the memorable phrase of Larry Cuban and the late David Tyack, “Tinkering Toward Utopia”—although those engaged in what generally ends up resembling tinkering actually fancy themselves to be bold revolutionaries. We went through a phase of this a century ago when educators and policymakers sought to apply Frederick Taylor’s principles of “scientific management” to our disorderly collection of locally devised schools. We went through a further round in the 1920s and ‘30s as notions of child-centered education and “social efficiency” permeated the schools. We went through another round in the 1960s and 70s as “open classrooms” proliferated, schools were desegregated and detracked, and sundry curricular innovations (e.g., “whole language” reading and “new” math) kicked in. We went through another round in the early 90s with “New American Schools”—a purposeful effort by Bush 41, Secretary Lamar Alexander, and former Xerox head David Kearns to “reinvent” the school—and a parallel effort led by Chris Whittle in the private sector (the “Edison Project”). And we’re going through another round today, with initiatives such as “Reimagining Learning,” led by Stacey Childress and her team at the NewSchools Venture Fund; the Emerson Collective’s XQ SuperSchool project; Marc Zuckerberg’s efforts to “personalize learning”; and any number of technology-centric undertakings like Summit Public Schools, Carpe Diem charter schools, and K12-operated virtual schools. Unlike more traditional societies, Americans have always been fascinated by “the new,” and that’s why, historically, a lot of inventing, discovering, and innovating has happened on U.S. shores. (That’s why, for example, so many Nobel Prizes have been conferred on Americans—including people who immigrated to this country because it was more hospitable and generous with research and discovery.) Every sector of our lives shows the after-effects of repeated cycles of innovation, many—but not all—of which have improved our lives. Some have been transformative. Some have simply been transitory, even frivolous. In K–12 education, every reinvention effort gained some traction for a while and left a legacy behind. Indeed, one way to depict U.S. public schools circa 2016 is a vast archeological dig with layers of earlier civilizations visible as we excavate and with the pottery shards and tools that each used now heaped messily all over the place. One may fairly ask whether the cumulative effect of all this innovating and reinventing has been profound and positive or superficial and confusing. How much good has it really done? To what extent are today’s schools truly different from those my parents attended ninety years back? And how much does that really matter? If they’re not palpably better—more effective, more impactful—we may have wasted a great deal of time, effort, and money while attempting to make them over. Each cycle of reinvention fancies that it’s the “disruptive innovation” (in Clayton Christensen’s term) that will squeeze out the old model and replace it with something different, something more efficient, effective, and appealing. In the end, however, the net effect seems more like “tinkering” with the old model. The schools just aren’t all that different. Yes, they have whiteboards and tablets. They have different furniture, lighting, heating, and (sometimes) cooling. They have smaller classes and more ancillary staff. Many have added pre-K and afterschool programs. But fundamentally different? I think not. Occurring in rough parallel have been all manner of external policy changes—standards, accountability, choice, teacher evaluation, funding shifts, categorical programs, etc.—that may have advanced, retarded, or simply ignored the innovators. Some were coordinated, such as the federal “e-rate” program intended to get schools online and thus make modern communications and IT tools functional within their walls. Mostly, though, I’m struck by how few fundamentals have been altered by a century of reinventing and innovating with the model itself. The school day and year aren’t much different in many places, in most of which the educational sequence is still divided into twelve grades. The essential “technology” of instruction is still a solo teacher in a four-walled classroom with fifteen to thirty kids. The curricular core remains quite similar to what it was when I—and my parents—went to school. And school governance, administration, and professional preparation still resemble the arrangements devised by progressive-era reformers and “cult of efficiency” managers. From where I sit, the biggest changes in U.S. K–12 education have been those forced by policy shifts outside the schoolhouse: the right of millions of families to choose their school rather than being told where to go; the emergence of statewide standards and accountability regimes; and the appearance of more non-district public schools—charters mainly—even as the traditional private sector has shrunk. Yet the majority of those new schools, once you walk inside, are awfully similar to the schools to which they are alternatives. Will the NewSchools Venture fund catalyze a different outcome, a truly and fundamentally different sort of learning environment for children? Will the Gates or Walton Foundations? The Emerson super-school? Chan Zuckerberg’s efforts at personalization? They’ll surely introduce more technology, and more classrooms will be “blended” and perhaps also “flipped.” They will strive to customize and individualize the learning experience and to help more students “own” their own learning experiences. All such efforts will, however, collide with the hoary structures, habits, and patterns that have led us to organize schools the way we have for so many decades. Real personalizing of education, for example, would disrupt just about everything: from school architecture to teacher preparation, from state academic standards and grade-level class assignments to the scheduling of the period, the day, the week, and the year. I think it makes sense to move in this direction, but I can’t see it happening at more than a snail’s pace. In the end, I suspect, it will end up looking awfully much like more tinkering. Utopia will remain the goal. I’m all for it, for all the experimenting, innovating, and reinventing that anyone has the imagination and money to undertake. But let’s do it in an experimental mode, evaluate the bejesus out of it, and not put all our eggs in any one utopian basket. Let’s recognize that some of the most appealing (to me, at least) and high-performing new schools in the land are innovating in a “back to the future” sense, places like Great Hearts Academy with its focus on character and classics, the Latin-centric schools that have arisen in Washington and Brooklyn, the Reno- (and now Internet-) based Davidson Academy for highly gifted youngsters, and career-tech programs that integrate the classroom with the world of modern work. Much of what’s good about today’s policy regimen of common standards but independently-operated schools of choice is the enhanced capability of school innovators to strike out in potentially promising directions that may work well for different kids. I don’t want my grandchildren to go to schools that resemble the ones I attended, but neither do I want any given innovator, zillionaire funder, or snake-oil vendor to think he or she knows what’s best for them. Let’s encourage plenty of education flowers to bloom and welcome school diversity, loosely united by common standards and metrics. But let us not bow before the trendy, the fashionable, the politically correct, or the assumption that different is always better. larrycuban | April 5, 2017

Em nota, ONU Mulheres manifesta “consternação” com morte de Maria Eduarda

A ONU Mulheres divulgou na última sexta-feira (31) uma nota pública manifestando “consternação” com o assassinato da adolescente negra Maria Eduarda Alves da Conceição, de 13 anos, vítima de bala perdida na quinta-feira (30), enquanto estava em aula na cidade do Rio de Janeiro.
Maria Eduarda foi uma das participantes do projeto ‘Uma Vitória Leva à Outra’ sobre o empoderamento de meninas pelo esporte, desenvolvido pela ONU Mulheres e pelo Comitê Olímpico Internacional durante os Jogos Olímpicos Rio 2016.
A agência especializada da ONU destacou os dados “alarmantes e inaceitáveis” com relação à violência contra as mulheres e meninas brasileiras, especialmente as afrodescendentes.

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“A ONU Mulheres Brasil manifesta consternação com o assassinato da adolescente negra Maria Eduarda Alves da Conceição, 13 anos, vítima de bala perdida, em 30 de março de 2017, durante o desenvolvimento de suas atividades escolares. Apresenta condolências às e aos familiares, amigas e amigos da adolescente e comunidade escolar da Escola Municipal Daniel Piza, localizada na Pavuna, Rio de Janeiro.
Até outubro de 2016, Maria Eduarda foi uma das participantes do projeto ‘Uma Vitória Leva à Outra’ sobre o empoderamento de meninas pelo esporte, desenvolvido pela ONU Mulheres e pelo Comitê Olímpico Internacional, no contexto do legado dos Jogos Olímpicos e Paralímpicos Rio 2016.
Em face da violência fatal contra Maria Eduarda, a ONU Mulheres Brasil reitera o apelo público em defesa do direito das mulheres e meninas, notadamente as afro-brasileiras, a terem uma vida sem violências, incluindo o respeito à memória das vítimas. Reforça o alerta às autoridades públicas para a continuidade de investimentos em políticas para a prevenção e a eliminação da violência contra as mulheres e meninas e a juventude negra, a fim de evitar as mortes violentas por razões de gênero e raça.
A entidade relembra os dados alarmantes e inaceitáveis com relação à violência contra as mulheres e meninas brasileiras, especialmente as afrodescendentes.
De acordo com o Mapa da Violência 2015 sobre o assassinato de mulheres, entre 2003 e 2013, houve um aumento de 191% na vitimização de negras. Ainda conforme o estudo, elaborado pela Faculdade Latino-Americana de Ciências Sociais (Flacso) com apoio da Secretaria de Políticas para as Mulheres, ONU Mulheres e Organização Pan-Americana de Saúde/Organização Mundial da Saúde (OPAS/OMS), em dez anos, houve um aumento de 54% no número de homicídios de mulheres negras, passando de 1.864, em 2003, para 2.875, em 2013.
Por fim, a ONU Mulheres retoma os compromissos da campanha global UNA-SE pelo Fim da Violência contra as Mulheres, neste ano, sob o lema “Não deixar ninguém para trás: acabar com a violência contra as mulheres e as meninas”, alcançando as pessoas mais vulneráveis primeiro. A campanha apoia o cumprimento da Agenda 2030 para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável, adotada em 2015, pelos Estados-membros da ONU.
Nadine Gasman
Representante da ONU Mulheres Brasil”

Mnauel Otero: Rural farmers must understand ‘new agriculture’

Argentine Manuel Otero declares bid to lead IICA

JAVENE SKYERS Observer staff reporter skyersj@jamaicaobserver.com

Monday, April 03, 2017    

Jamaica’s Minister of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries, Karl Samuda (right) greets Ambassador of the Republic of Argentina to Jamaica, Ariel Fernández (left) and Argentina’s candidate for Director General of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation, Dr Manuel Otero, during a courtesy call at the ministry’s New Kingston office last Tuesday, March 28.

THE election process for the post of director general at the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) is not set to commence until late April, but prospective candidate, Argentinian Dr Manuel Otero, has long been in preparation mode for the position which is expected to become available next year.

Otero, who has worked extensively with the organisation, hopes to succeed the current director general of the institute, Dr Victor Villalobos, who is serving his second term.

IICA, which is headquartered in Costa Rica, is the specialised agency of the Inter-American System for agriculture and aims to support the efforts of the member states, which include Jamaica and other Caribbean countries, to achieve agricultural development and rural well-being.

Otero, on a two-day visit to Jamaica last week, explained that as far as he knows, he is the sole candidate for the position to date, but it wouldn’t be rare for other countries to present candidates once the election process has been formally started. He added that, for any election, there are usually two or three candidates.

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The director general candidate, who visited the Jamaica Observer’s Beechwood office in Kingston along with the Argentine ambassador to Jamaica Ariel Fernandez last week, laid out arguments to support his view that he is the best man for the job.

“First of all, I know IICA, and I joke that IICA knows me, but I know IICA very well, since I have worked 25 years in the headquarters and also other countries. I recognise the…realties of agriculture and I represent the country that has a past, present and future closely related with agriculture,” Otero said.

“Argentina is one of the key actors in the international agricultural arena, producing 130 million tonnes of grains and we also produce a lot of beef and fruits. I’m a part-time farmer, so I understand what agriculture is, because I represent the country in which agriculture expresses a strategic sector of our economy,” he continued.

Otero described his five-hectare farm, which includes an orchard of about 50 trees and among other agricultural inputs, as his “escape” from stress. He also maintained that, having visited or lived in various member countries, he understands the reality for the different agricultural sectors in different countries.

As it relates to the work of IICA, Otero said that Villalobos has eliminated the silos and compartments within the organsiation through modernisation as well as the introduction of flagship projects in an effort to unify all 34 offices of IICA.

“There’s one related to competitiveness and productivity, the other one with the promotion of family agriculture, the third one is social inclusion for those that are very vulnerable in the sector, and the fourth one related to coping with climate change,” Otero outlined.

He stated that the overall initiative is good, as the director general has taken an integrated approach with more consolidated efforts.

When asked about his prospective approach and initiatives should he be given the nod to serve in the position, Otero explained that a key focus of getting results is managing rural to urban migration in countries, as this has a significant impact on the agricultural sector.

“Yesterday, [las Tuesday] we had a meeting with Minister (Karl) Samuda and he emphasised that the next director general has to take decisions based upon data…Countries are waiting on results; results are not (just) documents…IICA has to help to continue working together with the member countries in transforming agriculture and improving the quality of life in rural areas,” he said.

He added: “I’m preoccupied with the way in which Latin American countries, in general, the people from rural areas are going to the big cities and, in part, it’s sort of the failure of rural development strategies. We have to consider these rural areas as the spaces of social construction in which agriculture is equally important as non-agricultural opportunities.”

Otero said efforts, therefore, need to be concentrated in trying to promote strategies and goals that result in reducing the numbers of people immigrating to cities.

He added that agriculture has been transformed and has become very sophisticated in which the services, commercialisation activities, research, trade and banking are becoming very important and interrelated.

“The farmers of this century are much more sophisticated and have to take advantage of the new technology in order to increase productivity to put more value added in basic products, to understand the variables of climate change. So, agriculture is not anymore an art, it’s a very complex science in which farmers and workers have to be prepared,” Otero stated.

He said rural farmers need to understand that new agriculture is emerging and that the sector is industrialising and modernising, which is a trend no one can stop.

Otero noted, too, that the rural development strategy for IICA moving forward has to be high on the agenda, and that agriculture, especially rural and family agriculture has to be seen as part of the solution and not the problem.

“We have to see agriculture as the glass being half-full, instead of half-empty. We have to provide credit, we have to provide appropriate technology, we have to provide extension service in order for farmers themselves to become protagonists of this new agriculture revolution,” he said.

However, Otero pointed out that while IICA has limited resources, as it is a technical corporation institution and not a bank, he posited that it is not necessarily a matter of resources that will make agriculture in the various countries of the region successful, but a willingness to do as much as is possible.

According to his curriculum vitae, Otero is a trained veterinarian who has a Master of Science in Agriculture Development as well as a Master of Science in Agricultural Sciences, in addition to specialised training in quality management and systems and high management applied to agriculture.

Otero served as a professor of genetics at the Faculty of Veterinary Science at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina, before moving on to holding various positions within IICA such as the head advisor of the director general in 1989, as well as the post of director of programming and evaluation for three years, having started in 1991.

He then moved to the position of director of the Andean Regional Centre of IICA in Peru in 1994, and later a representative of the IICA office in Uruguay and then Brazil, where he also held the position of technical coordinator of IICA’s southern region.

His most recent posting within the organsiation is special advisor of IICA’s director general for institutional matters in Argentina, which he has held since 2016. Otero has also served in various agricultural capacities outside of IICA, such as being listed as the agricultural counsellor in the Agriculture Secretariat of Argentina in Washington, DC, and vice-president of National Agricultural Technology Institute in Argentina.

Argentina: Brecha educativa: los estudiantes del norte del país aprenden menos que los demás

Lo revela el resultado de la prueba Aprender, que se tomó a fin de 2016 a alumnos de 6° grado y 5° o 6° año. Catamarca, Chaco, Formosa y Santiago del Estero, los casos más preocupantes.

,Ricardo Braginski, Clarín, 2/4/2017

Capital, Córdoba, Neuquén, Santa Fe, Río Negro, La Pampa y Mendoza están entre los que mejores resultados obtuvieron.

Los resultados de las pruebas Aprender, tomadas en octubre a todos los alumnos de 6° grado y 5° o 6° año del país, siguen entregando evidencias acera de un país partido, desigual. Una de ellas son los datos sobre el desempeño de los estudiantes en las distintas provincias. La información fue analizada el miércoles y jueves por todos los ministros de Educación del país, en la reunión del Consejo Federal que se hizo en Salta. Clarín accedió a los informes que recibieron los funcionarios y que muestran que los alumnos del norte del país aprenden menos que los demás, especialmente los chicos de Chaco, Catamarca, Santiago del Estero y Formosa. Los casos más preocupantes son Chaco, Formosa y Catamarca en donde casi el 90% de los estudiantes termina la secundaria sin los conocimientos mínimos de matemática: apenas si pueden reconocer algunos conceptos y resolver problemas sencillos. Si bien el resultado general de las pruebas Aprender, en toda la Argentina, muestra desempeños por debajo de lo esperado, distritos como Capital, Córdoba, Neuquén, Santa Fe, Río Negro, La Pampa y Mendoza están entre los que mejores resultados obtuvieron.

La provincia de Buenos Aires, en tanto, exhibe un comportamiento casi igual al promedio del país. “Tenemos al 40% de los alumnos y mucha diversidad de escuelas: en el Conurbano, rurales, en el interior; todo esto reproduce en Provincia lo que pasa en el resto del país”, explica a Clarín Alejandro Finocchiaro, ministro de educación provincial. Las diferencias de aprendizajes entre provincias argentinas son históricas: las anteriores evaluaciones hechas en el país (pruebas ONE), así como las evaluaciones internacionales, ya venían mostrando la misma brecha, que todavía no pudo cerrarse. “De acuerdo a estos resultados, vemos que el desafío más fuerte que tenemos es el de la inequidad, mucho más que el modelo de gestión. Estas pruebas siguen mostrando que los chicos pobres tienen resultados pobres. Hay que revertirlo para que todos tengan el mismo nivel: con escuelas con más horas de clase, con un Estado más presente, con más escuelas en donde los chicos no solo estén adentro sino que tengan la suficiente cantidad de horas de clases y con calidad de docentes para acompañarlos”, agrega Soledad Acuña, ministra de Educación porteña. Si bien Santiago del Estero está entre las provincias que peores resultados tuvo, su ministra de Educación Mariela Nasif le dijo a Clarín que está “conforme” con la evolución de ese distrito, aunque admitió que todavía “hay que mejorar mucho”. “Hemos tenido una mejora entre 2013 y 2016, sobre todo en la franja de sexto grado, que son las primeras promociones de alumnos que han circulado por el nivel inicial, dijo.

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Precisamente, el capítulo sobre el nivel inicial es uno de los más destacados por los especialistas. Aprender mostró que los chicos que hacen más años de jardín de infantes (independientemente del nivel socioeconómico) obtienen mejores resultados. A diferencia de Mendoza y Misiones, donde el rendimiento de los alumnos en las escuelas públicas y privadas son similares, en Buenos Aires hay una pronunicada brecha. “En matemática de secundaria, las escuelas privadas superaron en 5 veces a las estatales: el 2,2% de los alumnos estatales obtuvieron el nivel más alto contra 10% de las escuelas privadas”, evaluó Finocchiaro. “Pero el 10% también es bajo. Tenemos que cambiar la formación docente”, agregó. Mendoza fue una de las provincias que tuvo un desempeño por arriba de la media. El ministro de Educación Jaime Correas lo atribuye, en buena parte, al esfuerzo que dice haber hecho esa provincia a favor del presentismo tanto de los docentes como de los alumnos, sobre todo con la implementación del “ítem aula”, un extra del salario que cobran los maestros que no faltan más de tres veces al mes y diez al año, y que tuvo mucha resistencia de los gremios. “Los resultados fueron buenos con respecto a la media nacional pero siguen mostrando preocupantes dificultades. La principal en Matemática, y luego en Lengua”, dijo Correas a Clarín.

La Pampa es otra de las provincias que se depegó algo de la media. La ministra de Educación Cristina Garello puso el foco en los datos escuela por escuela y dijo: “no quiero estigmatización, porque sé que cada una tiene una problemática distinta, que tiene que ver con contexto, lugar, población y cambios de equipos docentes”.

En Santa Fe los resultados de las pruebas Aprender resultaron”satisfactorios” para las autoridades. La ministra Claudia Balagué lo atribuyó a los programas de formación docente que se realizan en la provincia más un “intensivo trabajo entre los ministerios de Educación, Desarrollo Social, Salud, Cultura y Seguridad que realiza un abordaje integral en las grandes ciudades y permite achicar la brecha de igualdad”, dijo a Clarín.

El ministro de Educación de Misiones, Mauricio Maidana, se mostró conforme con los resultados y dijo que los flojos resultados en secundaria “puede deberse a una cuestión metodológica, porque hay una cuestión constante que se repite en todo el país”. La ministra porteña Soledad Acuña hace hincapié en rescatar la experiencia de aquellas escuelas que, en contextos vulnerables, obtuvieron buenos resultados. “Hay que observar las prácticas de esas escuelas. En anteriores evaluaciones se vio que todas ellas tienen continuidad de los equipos directivos, de los equipos docentes y trabajo personalizado con los alumnos. Para esto nos tienen que servir las evaluaciones”.

Why Are There So Few Films and TV Programs That Capture the Daily Work and Life of Teachers In and Out of School? (Part 3) by larrycuban

Hollywood and network television have filmed cop shows, lawyer series, and doctor programs again and again over the past half-century. From "Law and Order" and "Dirty Harry" to "The Good Wife" and "The Firm" to "ER" and "Patch Adams," viewers have gotten a sense of how detectives do stakeouts and grill suspects, lawyers do briefs and argue in court, and doctors deal with patients and emergencies. And in the past decade, computers appear regularly in the filmed work these professionals do. These network, Hollywood, and cable procedurals  have been (and are) weekly fare for tens of millions of viewers. Procedurals show how professionals do their work daily--allowing for the ever-present conflicts and resolution within 48 minutes for a network TV program or 90 minutes for a film. They reveal how cops, lawyers, and doctors not only follow step-by-step procedures, often using cell phones and computers in doing their job, but also that their work mixes with family life and friends creating dilemmas that spill over to their private lives. These are staples for U.S. viewers. The accuracy of these TV programs and films is secondary to their entertainment value. Nonetheless, they do capture key activities of each professional's craft. What about teachers and teaching? In the previous post, I pointed out that new technologies have yet to "disrupt" public/private organization, governance, and instruction in K-12 schools--as they already have in print journalism. Moreover, there are distinctions that can be made between technologies that help students acquire content and skills (e.g., playlists, software games, personalized platforms) and the actual craft of teaching that requires much face-to-face contact through hour long lessons with varied activities, different groupings of students, and screen time to reach a teacher's content and skill objectives. But where are the procedurals that capture six hours in schools with children and youth and how being a teacher has its own dramatic moments and dilemmas that spill over families and friends just like cops, lawyers, and doctors? I ransacked my memory of films and TV shows about teachers and teaching (yes, I used to watch network TV's "Our Miss Brooks in the 1950s," "Room 222" in the 1970s and saw the Hollywood film "Blackboard Jungle in 1955 a few months before I began teaching in Cleveland, Ohio). Then, I looked up lists of popular TV shows and Hollywood films on teachers such as   "Top Twelve Must See Movies." The same names showed up repeatedly on these lists (e.g., "Dead Poets Society," "Lean on Me," "Stand and Deliver," "Mr. Holland's Opus," "Dangerous Minds"). The film genre is heavy on teachers as heroes ("Freedom Writers," "Akeelah and the Bee," "To Sir with Love"), satire (e.g.,  "Chalk," "Bad Teacher"), and violence (e.g., "The Substitute," "187"). Except for occasional documentaries such as Frederick Wiseman's "High School" (1968), "American Teacher" (2011) and David Guggenheim's "TEACH" (2013), few films and TV programs ever show the complexities and difficulties of the craft, the long hours spent preparing lessons, reading students' work, the tedium, and interactions with students while lessons unfold. How come? One obvious answer is the nature of film and TV which is an entertainment medium. Conflict, life-and-death decisions, making difficult choices, wreaking or avoiding violence, flawed but lovable protagonists--appeal to audiences. The film, for example, of an engaging elementary school teacher in Harlem who garners the interest of his class but is a cocaine addict ("Half Nelson") is just what the screen demands of this genre. Audiences would fall asleep if they were to watch how a teacher plans a lesson on the Declaration of Independence or one on polynomials, or a unit on evolution. The hours teachers spend facing a computer screen at home finding sources for students to read and watch on their screens does not make for engaging drama. Were a TV episode devoted to a teacher managing a class reasonably well, asking stimulating questions,  and grading tests, count on audiences snoring. Orchestrating a class's whole-group discussions, small-group work on questions to answer, and independent work on a project hardly captures viewers' emotions. All of that, or even a portion, would leave viewers rolling their eyes , that is, if they were still open. Then at the end of the school day, the teacher leaves school to be alone in an apartment or home with family and friends leaving time set aside to plan the next  day's lesson and grade homework. That kind of TV  or Hollywood script, pitched to a producer in a one-minute elevator ride would be laughed at by the producer, much less make it past an editor's eye for audience appeal. Yet such a film or TV program would be describing the daily tasks and activities that teachers and students engage in. Another answer that may account for the low incidence of quasi-accurate teacher procedurals on screens is that every script writer has been in K-12 schools and knows teachers and the act of teaching well, they believe, because they sat a few feet away from them day in and day out for well over a decade. They think they know the topography of classrooms. Like driving a car gives the person behind the steering wheel no special knowledge of what's under the hood or how driving has become increasingly computerized, being a student for years misses all that goes on before the teacher enters the classroom and the craft of teaching as a lesson unfolds over an hour. The above reasons for the lack of teacher procedurals is speculation. Viewers might offer other explanations. A few writers, however, have been teachers and their classroom savvy shows up from time to time. In HBO's fourth year of "The Wire," a former cop becomes a middle school math teacher in a drug-infested Baltimore neighborhood where he had been a member of a police unit working to catch drug dealers. Script writer Ed Burns was a Baltimore cop for 20 years, retired and became a school teacher in the city. He drew from both experiences to write episodes that were fictitious but conveyed a real-life classroom where a teacher was struggling to teach math to students he wanted to connect with and help; he slowly developed his craft through trial and error--to reach some but hardly all of this 8th grade students. There are very few Ed Burns writing scripts for cable and network programs or Hollywood about the fundamentals of teaching students. I guess that is another reason why there are so few procedurals about teaching. larrycuban | April 2, 2017

Perspectivas econômicas para América Latina e Caribe melhoram, segundo relatório do BID

No entanto, vulnerabilidades externas preocupam. Impacto dos Estados Unidos na região pode cortar 0,4% dos 2,2% de crescimento do PIB projetados para 2017-2019

ASSUNÇÃO, Paraguai – As perspectivas econômicas para a América Latina e o Caribe estão melhorando, impulsionadas por uma economia global mais forte, posições fiscais mais sólidas, redução das pressões inflacionárias e melhores perspectivas para Argentina e Brasil, de acordo com o Relatório Macroeconômico 2017 do Banco Interamericano de Desenvolvimento.

A primeira parte do relatório Routes to Growth in a New Trade World (Caminhos para crescer em um novo mundo comercial) foi divulgada paralelamente à Reunião Anual do BID que acontece em Assunção, Paraguai. A segunda parte, sobre integração regional, será apresentada no domingo, 2 de abril.

“Desde nosso relatório do ano passado, ocorreram muitas mudanças positivas, com a região passando para um padrão de melhores políticas”, disse o Economista Chefe do BID, José Juan Ruiz. “Esforços de reformas fiscais em alguns países tiveram sucesso em obter maior igualdade e melhorar a eficiência. As políticas monetárias nas maiores economias conseguiram manter a inflação sob controle e avaliamos que o processo de ajustes externos está próximo de ser completado na maioria dos países.”

No entanto, a combinação de choques comerciais e financeiros potencialmente negativos dos Estados Unidos, mesmo com a economia americana em crescimento, pode cortar até 0,4% da taxa de crescimento anual de 2% projetada para a região para o período de 2017-2019. O relatório usa as projeções para três anos do FMI como base, depois faz uma estimativa de como impactos externos poderiam aumentar ou reduzir o crescimento da região.

O choque produzido pela economia dos Estados Unidos não é uniformemente distribuído. O México poderia ter um corte de 0,8% em sua taxa de crescimento potencial para três anos, reduzindo a taxa de crescimento anual de 2,2% para 1,4%. O Cone Sul e a região andina poderiam sofrer uma redução de 0,4% na taxa de crescimento anual do PIB. Os choques seriam transmitidos por uma combinação de elevações de taxas de juros e reduções do comércio global.

Ao mesmo tempo, o desempenho de Argentina e Brasil tem um grande impacto sobre a região. Devido às interconectividades dessas economias, um ganho ou perda combinado de US$ 20 bilhões no PIB das maiores economias da América do Sul acrescentaria ou cortaria cerca de US$ 70 bilhões ao PIB da região inteira no período de três anos.

Melhores perspectivas fiscais e monetárias

Um exame dos orçamentos fiscais de 22 países projeta um déficit fiscal primário de 0,8% do PIB para a região, embora a realidade varie de um país para outro. Ainda assim, 15 países na América Latina e Caribe estão seguindo planos de consolidação fiscal que, uma vez implantados ao longo de um período de cinco anos, alcançariam um ajuste de cerca de 2% do PIB. Reformas tributárias poderiam levar a um aumento nas receitas fiscais de 1,2% do PIB. Espera-se que os gastos tenham uma redução de 0,8%.

No passado, choques externos levaram ao aumento da inflação. O relatório observa que essa tendência foi revertida, com inflação mais baixa em meio a preços mais estáveis das commodities e aumento das exportações. Com as importações como porcentagem do produto total declinando, os déficits de conta corrente caíram para as médias de médio ou longo prazo.

“A região virou a página depois de sofrer um crescimento negativo nos dois últimos anos”, disse Andrew Powell, o coordenador do relatório e assessor econômico sênior do BID. “Embora a América Latina e o Caribe estejam em terreno mais sólido do que um ano atrás, o futuro ainda traz grandes desafios para que se chegue ao nível de crescimento que seus cidadãos esperam. Isso exigirá um foco contínuo em reformas para melhorar a produtividade e em um aprofundamento da integração comercial regional.”