School Reform Is Tough All Over, Not Just in the U.S.

Spain’s former Secretary of State for Education Montse Gomendio is
out with a book drawing on her experience, titled Dire Straits-Education
Reforms: Ideology, Vested Interests and Evidence. Montse, the former head of
the OECD’s Centre for Skills and director of Spain’s Natural History Museum
and currently a visiting professor at University College London, offers
sharp-elbowed takes on school reform in Spain and around the globe. For those
who worry that school improvement in the U.S. is too political, it may be
reassuring to see that this is hardly exceptional. She discusses the
challenges of education politics, the naiveté of international reformers, and
hard lessons learned. Given the timeliness of the subject, it seemed well
worth a conversation. Here’s what Montse had to say.

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the Teacher? 14 Lessons Students Taught Their Teachers (Opinion)
Montse:
In 2012, I became Secretary of State for Education in the Spanish government
after a career in academia. Afterward, I joined the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development, first as deputy director of education and then
as head of the Skills Centre. It was a fascinating experience because as a
policymaker, I was regarded as the “adversary,” while as an OECD
representative, I was regarded as an honest broker—which gave me the chance to
have many open and frank conversations with ministers and stakeholders. On the
whole, I spent almost 10 years observing the huge differences between
countries both in the quality of their education systems and in the nature and
magnitude of the barriers that education reforms face.

Rick:
Earlier this year, you came out with your book Dire Straits–Education Reforms.
Could you say a bit about what motivated you to write it?

Montse:
When I became secretary of education in Spain, politics was not an environment
I was familiar with, so it was a steep learning curve for me to apply my
knowledge of analyzing and interpreting data to designing evidence-based
policies with real-world implications. After having many meetings with
different stakeholders, I realized that my “evidence-based approach” was not
popular with other actors. My experience in education leadership opened my
eyes to the ways in which we use or discard data when making policy. I felt it
necessary to reflect on my experience both working in government and advising
other governments. This new e-book is the result of that reflection.

Rick:
There’s a lot of talk about the impact of political polarization and how it’s
made educational leadership more challenging in the U.S. How much appetite for
consensus did you find in Spain?

Montse: In my experience, there
was no room for consensus or even negotiations about the most basic aspects of
education policy reform. During my first meeting with the representative of
the main opposition party, he told me that his party would not accept any
changes to the existing education law. I asked how he could know, since I
myself did not know at the time what changes we would propose and since it was
just a few days after I started. His reply was that the existing law had been
approved by a government from his political party, so they would defend the
status quo no matter what. As I met with other stakeholders, I gradually began
to understand the true nature and magnitude of the political conflicts. My
conversations with most stakeholders—even in parliament—were not about what
leads to improvements in student outcomes. This issue was rarely discussed.
Instead, decisions about reforms depended largely on whether different
stakeholders felt threatened. I may be naïve, but I was surprised by the huge
disconnect between the demands that most stakeholders made in exchange for
support and the narrative that they expressed in public.

Rick: In
an Education Next essay earlier this year, you argued, “After almost two
decades of PISA testing, student outcomes have not improved overall in OECD
nations or most other participating countries.” How does this provocative
argument relate to what you say in the book?

Montse: The book
covers a much broader range of factors which have a big influence on education
reforms, such as ideology and governance arrangements, and also looks at the
evidence in much more detail. In the piece, I decided to focus on the role of
the Programme for International Student Assessment, PISA, and address the
question of why the generation of tons of comparative evidence has not led to
improvements in most education systems. To understand this conundrum, I had to
question some policy recommendations as well as challenge the idea that
evidence is in itself powerful enough to overcome political obstacles. I find
this an incredibly naïve perspective.

Rick: In your EdNext essay,
you also suggested that PISA “seems to misunderstand the nature of the
political costs that reformers face.” Can you say a bit more about PISA and
the problems you see with its efforts?

Montse: PISA is an
international survey developed by the OECD—an organization that provides
advice to governments based on the available evidence. Thus, OECD
representatives have direct communication channels with governments. This
makes PISA recommendations very influential among policymakers. As a
consequence, any misleading recommendations made by PISA often translate into
poor decisions by policymakers, who must then take full responsibility for the
disappointing outcomes that follow. The alternative is also difficult for
policymakers: If they do not follow PISA’s recommendations because they are
looking at their specific context and draw a different conclusion, they are
vulnerable to criticism for not following the OECD advice and they are assumed
to have a hidden ideological agenda. Thus, a mistake by PISA has profound
consequences, but it is not held accountable for them.

Rick: In the
U.S., there’s been a lot of debate about whether school choice blurs the
boundaries of public education. From your perspective, what do you make of
this debate?

Montse: As societies become more diverse, a public
system which funds both privately and publicly managed schools offers great
advantages, since it gives parents the possibility of exerting their right to
choose. Also, privately run schools tend to use public resources more
efficiently as long as they are held accountable for their results.