1.1 ENLACE
The virtual portal ENLACE is designed to gather census information (from all elementary schools of all types and modalities) in two major subjects of student’s basic training program: Spanish and mathematics. Thus, the databases produced would have the capacity to show statistically, areas of the city, schools and school zones, and those of its groups and teachers who require greater support and attention in order to achieve the educational goals proposed by their educational authorities.
Thus, the design of the database will permit, if its design is carried out in this way, the production of comparative and spatial as well as more specific quantitative analyses. The practice of evaluation suggests that there is already an established and assessable criterion of excellence, and that a review of the instruments used is necessary.
The intent is to verify whether initiatives can be separated from local public policies of support for basic education in the schools of the city with the information available, based on its coverage and quality, and possibly, to evaluate parallel sources of information that might be useful for this purpose.
1.2 Scholastic achievement of elementary education
Scholastic achievement is a universal theme, whose concept is constantly being transformed and complemented because its study is correlated with the socioeconomic and cultural dynamic which daily configures and characterizes the fabric of society. That is to say, the study of school performance must be directly linked to the social structure. UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2005 (2005) affirms that “…education usually reflects society rather strongly: the values and attitudes that inform it are those of society at large” (p. 14.)
For this reason, scholastic achievement as an object of study, especially in the case of elementary education, should be based on the assumption that there are significant variations involving the environment, because this not only accommodates a variable (that of examination scores), but also a series of cultural and socioeconomic indicators which provide an explanation concerning the context in which students operate so as to stand out in their school performance.1 This means that scholastic achievement must be understood from a broader point of view when it is combined with the perception of social inequality (Schmelkes, 1996).
In the same vein are found the direct variables that influence scholastic achievement: the relevance of learning, teaching practices in the classroom, the quality of teaching, the characteristics of the school and its director, the monitoring system and school dropouts. These variables make up the concept of "the effective school" (Schmelkes, 1996), i.e. those schools that are able to equip their students with all the necessary tools for better scholastic achievement, according to their specific contextual needs.
The concept of the effective school has to do with two more specific guidelines which favor both the study of the socioeconomic and cultural context, and the infrastructure of the school. Neither of these two factors excludes the other. Both directly and indirectly are interrelated in influencing scholastic achievement.
It is evident that a study/analysis of what constitutes scholastic achievement and the factors that influence it should go beyond the test results for mathematics and Spanish, and should be linked with the students’ socioeconomic and cultural context, as well as the schools’ special conditions and human capital. Clearly, the phenomenon of excellence in education, in terms of its efficacy and equality is quite complex, and we cannot hope to cover it completely in this article.
Scholastic achievement is shaped by direct and indirect variables; this is what Cohen (2002) calls intra- and intersectionals, that is, the external and internal factors which influence the development of scholastic achievement to obtain a quality education. We should point out that we use this approach to conceptualize scholastic achievement, in accordance with what the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP, 2007) says in the virtual portal ENLACE:
“For the current administration, the theme of evaluation is of vital importance, not only because it addresses the criteria of transparency and accountability, but also because these criteria are an essential tool for detecting inequalities, explaining progress or limitations and for supporting planning processes and decision making.”
Indeed, basing our view of scholastic achievement on this makes decision-making in educational policy much more appropriate to its everyday practice. But that is where the model falters, since public policy considers homogenous realities rather than heterogeneous realities:
“The results of the SIMCE test (Measurement System on the Quality of Teaching) have emphasized that the policies for educational improvement have failed to increase significantly the achievement percentage in elementary education students. The limited impact achieved is due in large part to the discrepancy between the objectives sought, and the policies implemented to achieve them, which leads to the implementation of homogenous solutions for heterogeneous realities” (Franco et al., 1991).
And while the SEP (in its virtual portal ENLACE) supports following existing educational criteria in terms of social inequality, in its current application there are still many disparities. An example of how this model of educational excellence and scholastic achievement can be problematical in practice is that of Mexico’s northern frontier region, since the specificity of its economic, social and cultural context is very peculiar, due to its geographical position.
Up to this point, we have presented the factors that constitute scholastic achievement. However, we must remember that this concept is composed of a series of indicators, variables and factors. That is, if observed in a geometric manner, it is a circle encompassing the socioeconomic and cultural context, as well as the space in which the students receive their instruction. It is not that the content quality of the teaching is unimportant —indeed, it is crucial. It is that because public elementary education in Mexico is in a state of crisis related to its dropout rates, the need for grade repetition, and failed grades,2 it is even more important to get to the bottom of how these contents are to be taught for optimal achievement.
Cohen (2002, pp. 2-3) calls it technologies, or the "way of doing something”, and says about it: "Unless the demand is homogeneous, there are as many technologies as a relevant target populations. Therefore educational policy should be analyzed beginning from different segments of the population."
For this reason, the concept of scholastic achievement is holistic, or at least it should be.
It has already been stated here that scholastic achievement is intrinsically linked to the social fabric and the segments which compose it.3 This is because what we understand not only from a pedagogical point of view, which has more to do with the educational content, but from the social, economic and cultural point of view. This is the purpose of this essay: to reach an approach that speaks of scholastic achievement and everything that it influences to attain its optimal development.
To illustrate in practice what is presented here, let us consider the case of the northern frontier region of Mexico, in particular that of Ciudad Juarez. In doing so, we must take into account that this is one of the border regions of greatest economic activity, due to the expansion of the maquiladora industry, which characterizes it, and has controlled its urban development. That industry has made it the fifth largest economic area in the country, and the first in its state, according to the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI, 2000, 2005).
This presentation is only an approximation of what in reality could be obtained by analyzing the educational context of the northern frontier region. In this case the idea is simply to lay on the table the state of scholastic achievement in elementary education in this area, and the difficulties facing the model of educational quality here.
1.3 The context of the Ciudad Juarez schools
1.3.1 Primary schools
The distribution of primary schools in the urban area of Ciudad Juárez is shown in Figure 1. There are 485 schools of this level. The mapping of them was developed by the Ciudad Juarez Municipal Institute of Planning (IMIP, as its acronym in Spanish, 2005). Simply in terms of coverage, there is a homogeneous distribution for the urban district of the city, and there are problems detected in the southern part. According to Teresa Montero (as cited in Cervera, 2005), there is a 94.48% level of coverage in primary education.
Figure 1. Distribution of primary schools in, school year 2005.
1.3.2 Junior high schools
The IMIP database reports a total of 119 schools of junior high level. The geospatial distribution of junior high schools covers about 70% of the city. The remaining 30% without coverage is plainly in the southern area of the city, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. Distribution of junior high schools in Ciudad Juarez, school year 2005
1.4 Overview of ENLACE in the Municipality of Juarez
The ENLACE database is composed of 21 variables, and is based on results of the first stage of the examination, initially applied to students in third, fourth, fifth and sixth grades of primary school, and third grade of junior high school. Students are tested in Mathematics and Spanish, from which subjects come all the questions asked in the examination. It yields information about the achievement of each student in the areas tested, his/her grade level and site, and the number of questions answered correctly on the test. The database can also find information about the school she/he attends, such as the key, the name, the shift (morning, afternoon or evening); the school zone; the municipality and its location; as well as the level (primary or junior high school) and the modality (general, indigenous, private and technical) to which it belongs.
1.5 Scholastic centers by zone
According to the database, 248,610 primary and junior high school students were examined in the specified subjects in the whole of the state of Chihuahua. Of that total, 92,121 students (37.1%) belong to the Municipality of Juarez, which is divided into six zones. Ciudad Juarez is the one that represents the vast majority (99.4%), with 91,524 students (see Table I). This is the town addressed by this article.
Table I. Name of the zone in which the school is located
1.5.1 Level and scholastic modality
Of the total number of students tested, the majority (92.8%,or 85,505 students) belong to the primary level, while for the junior high school level, 6616 were tested. Primary schools were classified in the modalities of general, indigenous and private; while the junior high schools were in general, private and technological modalities. Table II and Figure 1 illustrate the distribution of students in schools by level and modality.
Table II. Distribution of students according to level and scholastic modality
As previously mentioned, most of the students are in the primary level. Of these, a large part belong to the general modality (87.2%), followed by the private modality, and finally —with very few cases— the indigenous modality. There were no cases of technical primary schools.
Most students of secondary level also belong to the general modality, followed by the technical modality, and thirdly, the private. There were no cases of indigenous junior high schools.
1.5.2 Level, modality and zone
This section describes the distribution of students tested according to the level and type of school, and according to the zone within the Municipality of Juarez. Table III shows the distribution of students tested.
Table III. Distribution of students tested by level, modality and zone
In Table I we can see at a glance that the heaviest zone was Juarez, with 91,524 students tested (99.4%). This majority can be explained in relation to what was stated in the section referring to the Secretariat of Public Education’s virtual portal enlace (SEP, 2007), in the section on researchers, communications media and society: "Excluding Oaxaca and Michoacán, states where there were special circumstances as a result of teachers’ movements, the coverage of the application was 97% of primary schools and 90% of junior high schools."
This coverage explains the fact that the great majority are concentrated in the Juarez zone. The breakdown in Table III allows us to see that, both as a municipality and within the Juarez zone, a large majority of the students tested are concentrated in the primary level and in the general modality (86.5%). This is followed in importance by the private primary level (5.6%) and the general junior high school level (3.8%).
1.5.3 The student’s level in Spanish and Mathematics
In addition to the distribution of the students surveyed, according to the level, modality and zone, it was possible to break down the achievement distribution for both subjects, classified in the following categories: 1) insufficient, students who do not possess the knowledge and skills necessary to continue their learning, 2) elementary, students who master a minimum of the cognitive skills of the grade evaluated, 3) good, students who master most of the content and cognitive abilities and 4) excellent students who master all the content and cognitive skills evaluated. Table IV breaks down the field of Spanish, and Table V does the same for Mathematics.
Table IV. Student’s achievement level in Spanish
Table V. Student’s achievement level in Mathematics
These tables do not specify the percentage distribution within each zone in particular. Although in general terms the analysis calls attention to Juarez, it is interesting to look more closely at the situation in other zones, rural and/or marginalized, without forgetting that in the Juarez zone too, these characteristics are shown in the interior of some of its boroughs.
One noticeable feature is the presence of the indigenous primary level and modality, found only in Juarez —although in a very small percentage— but not in any of the other zones,
Table IV shows in a general way that a slight majority (53.3%) of the students tested reached an ‘elementary’ level of achievement in Spanish, followed by a little more than a quarter (26.1%) whose level was ‘insufficient’. After these comes just under a fifth of the students (18.8%), who arrived at a level of ‘good’, and finally, a fraction (1.8%) who attained a level of ‘excellent’.
Table V gives an overall view of the school zone of the students tested in Mathematics. Although the percentages differ, the performance displayed in this field is similar to that of Spanish. The majority (58.1%) achieved an ‘elementary’ level with a slight increase of 5% as compared to Spanish. These were followed by a quarter of the students (25.10%) who obtained an ‘insufficient’ level. About one-sixth (14.9%) reached the level of ‘good’, and a tiny fraction (1.9%) attained the level of ‘excellent’.
ENLACE’s previously-mentioned coverage gives us the idea that the proportion of schools is close to reality —for example, that there are more general primary schools than private ones. This observation may give direction to a refinement in approach for each type of school. At first glance, in the subject of Spanish in the Juarez zone, we can see that there were more students with an ‘excellent’ level in the general primary schools than in the private ones (1216 vs. 435), but that in the interior of each, the result can be inverted. Of 79,697 students of general primary schools, 1.50% attained an ‘excellent’ level, whereas 5180 students from private primary schools (8.39%) earned an ‘excellent’ rating. One interpretation could be that 1.5 of every 100 general primary school students were ‘excellent’, and that 8.39 of every 100 private primary school students were ‘excellent’.
1.5.4 Correct answers and the level of achievement
In percentage terms, for the two subjects, 55.70% obtained an ‘elementary’ level of use, followed by nearly 17% who got a qualification of ‘good’. These two levels (elementary and good) form the great majority, which is close to 73%. However, we must take into account that in the section on the website on consulting ENLACE, the SEP portal, under the heading of "Researchers, media and society”, it is made clear that the grade reflects an underlying scale, based on the Theory of Response to Item (TRI), in which the grade depends not only on the number of correct answers, but on the degree of difficulty of these."
This means that, just as in the distribution of students according to the level achieved, in terms of the number of correct answers the specific weight of the questions should be taken into account, so that medium-low values in relation to the total number of correct answers actually shows that 55.70% are between elementary and good.
1.5.5 Level obtained by subject and grade: value of mode
Based on the type of variables that represent the level achieved by the students tested in two subjects (insufficient, elementary, good or excellent), the measure of central tendency appropriate for describing these is the mode. According to Hopkins, Hopkins and Glass (1997, p. 407), mode "is the observation that occurs with more frequency, the value most common or popular." The determination of the mode implies exercising the values of the frequencies obtained from the crosses of variables that are shown in Tables VI and VII, but was also reflected in Tables IV and V.
Table VI. Level obtained in Spanish by school grade (mode)
Table VII. Level obtained in Mathematics by school grade (mode)
Table VI describes the frequencies of the level achieved by students of different grades in the subject of Spanish. In each grade frequency is the largest mode (max) marked in bold and italics. For the 92,121 students tested in the Municipality of Juarez, the overall mode is ‘elementary’. In each level it is the same for all four grades of primary school, while for the third grade of junior high school, the mode falls to the level ‘insufficient’ in Spanish.
The situation in the field of Spanish is almost replicated in Mathematics (see Table VII). All of the students show that the mode is the Elementary level. In the primary school grades the mode is the Elementary level, but in the third grade of junior high school, the mode is Insufficient.
The data show a troubling situation regarding the majority of students placing in the level ‘Elementary’ in both subjects. However, it is even more troubling that at the junior high school level the result should have fallen to the level of ‘Insufficient’. While the junior high school level comprises a minority of students (7.18%), compared to the Primary level (also see Table 4), the fact is that in that grade the majority (5.13% of the 7.18% represented) attain a level of ‘Insufficient’.
1.6 Depiction of the ENLACE results in digital cartography
One of the contributions of this ENLACE analysis was the creation of a database of a relational type, in an environment of geographic information systems in the ArcView platform. A connection was possible between the original database and the mapping of schools created by IMIP for the school year 2004-2005, using the key called ‘school key’, standardized by the SEP, and contained in the database ENLACE delivered to FoxPro for this project.
The base was made up of the geographical location with coordinates X, Y for each school within the urban area of Ciudad Juarez, and having a direct connection with each attribute or variable of the ENLACE database. Thus, for each school there are 21 original variables registered for the achievement examination. This evaluation of ENLACE will provide the user not only with the potential of a database of shared data, similar to FoxPro, but will also make available the opportunity to access the information in a digital mapping format for the urban area of Ciudad Juarez, both for the scholastic centers inside the urban area itself, and also for the other schools in its municipality.
The distribution in the space of the ENLACE results allows us to observe and establish empirical evidence for the variable achievement in the city’s urban area. It also helps to infer possible relationship between the socioeconomic conditions in the city and their relationship with indicators of basic infrastructures, in addition to establishing possible connections between the results and the presence or absence of libraries. This empirical evidence will permit or support in the preparation of hypothetical approaches between the dependent variable determined by achievement and other potential factors that explain their behavior.
With the goal of helping to explain the spatial distribution between the phenomena of achievement the results were compared with two important indicators: 1) the socio-spatial hierarchy and 2) the infrastructure deficit.
