The equity of education in Mexico

8/6/2019 The equity of education in Mexico

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Andrs Sandoval Hernndez MPhil/PhD Transfer Paper

The equity of education in Mexico: A study of lower-secondary schools from the school effectiveness approach.

Andrs Sandoval Hernndez

Paper submitted for MPhil/PhD Transfer Seminar

December 2006

Supervisors: Hugh Lauder and Anthony Robinson

1. Introduction

This research is concerned to identify, theoretically justify and test in multi-levelmodels variables that have not previously been used in models of schooleffectiveness in developing countries and in some cases developed countries. Theapproach is one which sees developments in school effectiveness as having reacheda new stage (Lauder, and Brown, 2006) in which the earlier common senseidentification of variables used in statistical modelling has now given way to a moretheoretically informed approach to the variables used in school effectiveness models.

The unequal distribution of educational opportunities is, sadly, one of the salientfeatures of Mexicos education system (Muoz, 2005). Despite its long duration andhigh priority among the most important issues besetting Mexicos education policy, itstill remains unresolved. This problem has at least two dimensions: on the one hand,unequal distribution of opportunities to access and stay in the education system; and,on the other, unequal distribution of opportunities that would guarantee adequateacademic performance for all.

In order to address this problem, the Mexican Ministry of Public Education (SEP) hassought to create conditions that guarantee access to a quality education for all thepopulation, regardless of the type and modality, or location where it may berequired. (SEP. 2004). To this end, it has worked to increase the number of schoolsin the national territory, and designed and implemented educational options for thoseexcluded.

According to Torres and Tenti (2000), the Mexican government has attempted tobreak away from the logic of homogeneous school offerings by creating differentoptions and academic programs designed to cater to the various social andeducational needs of the population. Recently adopted academic alternatives suchas Community Education1, post-elementary education, and the different modalities ofindigenous education, reflect the significant efforts being made in this area.Additionally, the Quality School Program and Telesecundaria (television-supportedlower secondary schools) have also been extended to reach the poorest and mostexcluded sectors of the population.

1Community Education is a program developed by the Mexican Government towards providing

educational services to the rural population.


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Data provided by the SEP, reveal that there has been considerable progress in thesolution of the first dimension of the problem (inequity in the distribution ofopportunities to access and stay in the education system). In fact, educationcoverage in Mexico tends to show continuous growth, as increasingly more childrenare completing compulsory education. For example, the rate of lower secondary

education coverage went from 66.1% in the 1991-1992 school year, to 87.5% in the2003-2004 period.

However, despite these remarkable achievements, inequities within the educationalsystem seem to prevail. Sandoval and Muoz (2004) have claimed that thedistribution of opportunities that would guarantee an adequate academicperformance for all the population still remains unequal a trend that continues togrow . In other words, students coming from less favourable socio-economicsectors do not perform as well. Other authors such as Noriega and Santos (2004),Ahuja and Schmelkes (2004), Zorrilla and Romo (2004), and Muoz, et al (2004)among others, have also endorsed this observation.

In order to provide a sound basis for the design of a new generation of public policiesthat may effectively help to narrow the disparities affecting educational opportunitiesin Mexico, it is necessary to determine and compare the inequity patterns of the basiceducation in Mexico. Special interest should be given to the differences betweenschools regarding to their capacity to achieve equitable distributions of theeducational results among their students and to the inclusion of new sets of proxyvariables to model context characteristics that may have an influence in the schoolsoutcomes and that have not been used before in the school effectiveness research.

2. Reference framework

This section consists of four subsections, the first one draws on the structure andgovernance of the Mexicos Education System; next, the relevant literatureconcerning the different effectiveness-related areas of educational research andmodels of educational effectiveness is reviewed in the second part, whilst the thirdsubsection focuses on some recent studies in the field developed with Mexican data;finally, the kind of variables proposed to be considered in this work and its theoreticalunderpinnings are analysed.

A. Mexicos Education System

StructureAccording to the Article 10 of the General Law of Education, the Mexicos EducationSystem is formed by students and teachers; educational authorities; plans, curricula,methods and educational materials; state schools and their decentralized organisms;private schools with authorization or recognition of official validity of studies; and theHigher Education Institutions to which Law gives them autonomy.

Up to now, the whole educational system enrols 31.18 million students, which is

63.41% of the population aged between 3 and 25.


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The education system in Mexico has five main levels (the three first are form thebasic education): preschool, primary education, lower secondary education, uppersecondary education and higher education.

The school choice in the basic levels is up to parents, in this way they can choose

the school they think is better for their children.

The Article 3 of the Mexican Constitution states that basic education is compulsoryfor all the population and must be free, non-religious and provided by theGovernment.

Although the Government is only in charge of providing the basic education, it is alsoinvolve at the other levels and provide different options of upper secondary andhigher education.

PreschoolPreschool provides early education for children between 3 and 5 years old, and

currently enrols about 4.5 millions students, which is about 73.87% of the populationin age to attend this educational level.

Recently, the Government has released a new law that make preschool part of thecompulsory education, trying with this to improve the coverage rates in this level.

Primary educationPrimary education includes 6 grades to children between 6 and 12 years old, andnow it enrols 92.45% of the relevant age population.

Primary education is offered in three different modalities: the general modality, whichrepresents about 93.37% of the primary education, the community and the

indigenous modalities, which together represents 6.63% of the primary education.The two last modalities are mostly offered in multi-grade schools, where a singleteacher is in charge of impart, at the same time, several grades. According toSantibaez et al (2005), in the primary educational level one of each four schools aremulti-grade.

Lower secondary educationLower secondary education includes 3 grades to children between 13 and 15 yearsold and enrols 6 million students (SEP, 2005), which represents the 89.51% of thepopulation in this status of age.

Lower secondary is also offered in four different main modalities: the generalmodality (50.33%), the technical modality (28.18%), the telesecundaria,also knownas distance learning modality (20.80%) and the secondary for workers (0.70%).

The secondary schools in the general modality are placed in rural and urban areasand are characterised because they follow the traditional format where each subjectis given for specialised teachers.

The curriculum of the technical modality is focused on the technical issues that areneeded in each region and it could be focused on agricultural and livestockproduction, fishing production, forest production or services. One of the principalobjectives of this modality is that at the end of their studies the students have the

skills and knowledge needed to incorporate themselves to a productive activity.


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The telesecundaria modality is designed to attend population from urban, suburban,rural and marginalized areas, in which it has not been possible to establish general ortechnical education modalities. One of the reasons of that is that in such areas thereare a reduced number of people who has finished the primary education. In thiseducation modality there is only one teacher per grade, who assists the students with

their schoolwork, answers questions and facilitates the lectures that are giventhrough satellite television.

Finally the secondary for workers mainly enrol people who are over 15 years old,whom were not able to take the secondary education in the relevant age.

Upper secondary educationUpper secondary education is for people between 16 and 18 years old and includes3 grades too. At present the rate of coverage of this level is 57.30%.

Many of the upper secondary schools are part of the large public universities, like the

National University (UNAM) or the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN). This level isalso offered the general and technical modalities. The people who study in theseinstitutions obtain a high school diploma that allows them to study at the university.

There are other upper secondary schools in which the curriculum is more technicaland are focused in students who not necessarily want to study at the university.These institutions, that are called Professional Technical Institutions, provide to theirstudents a technical preparation that allows them to start working immediately theyfinish their studies.

In recent years appeared a reform that, trough taking additional lessons, allowstudents from these institutions to get a high school diploma also and to continue

studying at the higher education level (Santibaez et al, 2005).

Higher educationThere is not a specific age to study at the university, but most of the students whoare at this level are between 18 and 25 years old. At present the higher educationsystem enrols almost 2.5 million people and its rate of coverage is 23.80%.

Most of the students are enrolled in the large national universities, according toSantibaez almost 55%. In addition to these large national universities, each of the32 Mexican states has a public university and a teachers training college. Thestudents who enrol in this modality obtain a university diploma.

For the people who can not or do not want to spend four to five years in the highereducation, there is another option called Technical University. This option only lasttwo years and intend to provide students with the skills and knowledge needed toincorporate themselves in to the labour market in a higher level than the ones whostudy the upper secondary technical modality. The people who study in theseinstitutions obtain a higher university technician diploma.

Finally, there is the possibility to continue studying at a postgraduate level. Theoptions are: a Certificate degree, which last one year, a Masters degree which lasttwo years and a Doctorate degree which last between three and seven years

depending on the programme.


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In all the levels and modalities there are also two options: public, which is the oneoffered by Government and private, which has to be affiliated to the SEP in the basiclevels, it means to have recognition of official validity of the studies they impart. Atpresent, private education represents only the 14.93% of the whole educationsystem.

The next figures show, in a schematised way, the structure of the Mexico educationsystem and some general figures about it.

Mexico Education System Figures

Period 2005-2006e

Students % Teachers % Schools %Rate of

coverage

By fund source

Federal 3.388.700 10,87% 191.478 11,84% 38.099 16,29%State 23.318.300 74,78% 984.614 60,90% 164.507 70,33%Private 4.265.800 13,68% 341.208 21,10% 34.911 14,93%Autonomous 1.509.300 4,84% 136.156 8,42% 1.970 0,84%By education level

Basic 25.024.200 80,25% 1.100.367 68,06% 216.176 92,42% 87,77%Preschool 4.524.500 14,51% 197.065 12,19% 87.182 37,27% 73,87%Primary 14.498.300 46,50% 557.001 34,45% 97.135 41,53% 92,45%Lower secondary 6.001.400 19,25% 346.301 21,42% 31.859 13,62% 89,51%

Upper secondary 3.711.200 11,90% 256.252 15,85% 12.852 5,49% 57,30%Higher education* 2.445.600 7,84% 260.152 16,09% 4.876 2,08% 23,80%

TOTAL 31.181.000 100% 1.616.771 100% 233.904 100% 63,41%e Estimated figures

Relevant

age3 to 5 6 to 12 13 to 15 16 to 18 19 to 23 22+

Level Preschool PrimaryLower

Secondary

Upper

Secondary

Undergraduate Postgraduate

Years 3 6 3 3 3 to 5 variable

General General General University Certificate

Community

coursesTechnical Technical

Teachers

CollegeMasters

Indigenous Telesec.Technical

Profesional *

Technical

University *Doctorate

For workers

Higher Education

Structure of the Mexico education system

*Terminal options

Modality


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GovernanceLooking to improve educational administration; in 1992 Mexico decentralized thebasic education system into their 32 states. The decentralization was supposed togive states more control over educational budgets and greater influence oneducational policy. According to Santibaez et al (2005) the decentralization was

mostly administrative, because in most cases sates still receive the mayor part oftheir budgets from the SEP in Mexico City and because most of decisions are stillmade in the federal instances.

In the primary education, states authorities can no elect their own curriculum, butthey have to follow the national one, which has been design and approved by theSEP in Mexico City. Besides, all primary schools in the country must use thenationally-produced text books for primary education, which are provided for free.

For lower secondary schools, the SEP in Mexico City published a list of the approvedtext books for each subject. Principals and state authorities can choose theirtextbooks from this list (idem).

Decisions about hiring, firing, teachers salaries, curriculum contents, etc. are takenin a centralized way, neither the parents nor principals are allowed to participate. Asit has been said, SEP in Mexico City set the majority of the lineaments for the basiceducation system.

Regarding to the school calendar, at present it consists in 200 days per year,beginning in August and ending in June. Primary education is offered in three shifts:morning, afternoon and evening, all the shifts last four hours and the main subjectsgiven in this time are: Spanish, mathematics, natural sciences and social sciences.There are other subjects that are commonly given as sports or physical education,music or arts.

Lower secondary education meets for seven hours and is mainly offered in two shifts:morning and afternoon, although some lower education schools offer the night shiftor a discontinuous one (idem).

Besides the SEP, the other main actor in Mexico education system is the SNTE(National Union of Teachers). The SNTE is the only union of teachers in the countryand all the teachers and administrative personnel must belong to it. At present theSNTE has over 1 million of members.

Even though the SNTE has factions in all states, its leadership is strongly centralizedand central SNTE negotiates directly with SEP in Mexico City all about teacherssalary and salary increments. Other issues like hiring, placements of teachers andwhat have to do with teachers colleges are often negotiated by the SNTE factions inthe states and local authorities (idem).

B. Literature review

The review presented here is based on the perspective of effective schools. Severalauthors (Fernndez, 2004; Goldstein, 2000; Muoz, et al, 2004; Sammons, 2001)coincide in that the formal birth of this school of thought can be traced to the late

sixties, and arose as a reaction against the political pessimism generated by thepublication of a celebrated report written by Coleman and his colleagues in 1966.


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From then to now, school effectiveness research has became one of the mostimportant and specialized fields of the sociology of education; mainly because of itsdirect contribution to the central issues of the educational agenda: improvement ofquality and diminishment of inequalities in the distribution of opportunities that would

guarantee an adequate academic performance for all the population, independentlyof the social class, ethnicity or gender (Fernandez, Banegas, et al, 2004).

In general, most of the studies in the school effectiveness field are focused onestimating the magnitude of the school effects and the analysis of its scientificproperties, and / or in studying the classroom, school and context factors thatcharacterize an effective school (Murillo, 2004). Nevertheless, some authors haveproposed some more detailed classifications.

Effectiveness-related areas of educational researchAccording with their characteristics, objectives and methodologies, these studies

have been classified into different areas of research. The next table shows three ofthe most cited proposals of classification.

Purkey and Smith, 1983 Scheerens and Bosker,1997

Reynolds, Teddlie, et al,2000

Outliers studies

Case studies

Program evaluations

Other studies

Research on equality ofopportunities ineducation and thesignificance of school inthis.

Economic studies oneducation productionfunctions.

The evaluation ofcompensatoryprograms.

Studies on effectiveschools and the

evaluation of schoolimprovement programs.

Studies on theeffectiveness ofteachers, classes andinstructional procedures.

School effects research.Studies of the scientificproperties of schooleffects.

Effective schoolresearch. Researchconcerned with theprocess of effectiveschooling.

School improvementresearch. Examining theprocess wherebyschools can bechanged.

Even when the three proposals shown are very different from each other, in all ofthem can be found descriptive and evaluative studies; quantitative and qualitative;

and studies utilizing big and small samples. A deeper analysis of this table revels thatschool effectiveness research has technically, if not theoretically changed, evolved


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and improved in the past 30 years. It has moved from the simple input outputstudies to the current research utilizing multilevel models; form case studies of outlierschools to contemporary studies merging qualitative and qualitative techniques in thesimultaneous study of classrooms and schools; and from the simple application ofschool effectiveness knowledge to sophisticated multiple lever models (Reynolds,

Teddlie, et al, 2000).

Models of educational effectivenessFor more than three decades, interest in identifying and determining the importanceof school-related factors that influence educational achievement has produced agreat number of publications showing a list of factors that characterize an effectiveschool. This approach may be seen as comprising the first phase in the developmentof a more sophisticated approach to modelling school effectiveness.

The first phase models of educational effectiveness show the relations between thefactors and the role they play in the explanation of the school outcomes. Even though

in the School Effectiveness Research there are not one but several statisticalmodels, from the simple ones with five or six components to those which identifymore than a thousand (Fernandez, Banegas, et al, 2004). The next table shows a -non-exhaustive - list of authors and their models of educational effectiveness.

Date Authors Name

1979 Edmonds Five-factor theory

1984 Walberg Educational productivity model

1985 Murphy, Hallinger and Mesa School effectiveness model

1987 Slavin Quality of Appropriateness, Instruction,Incentives, Time Model (QUAIT Model)

1990 Scheerens and Creemers Integrated model of school effectiveness

1992 Stater and Teddlie Dynamic theory of school effectiveness andleadership

1992 Stringfield and Slavin Hierarchical longitudinal model forelementary school effects

1993 Lee, Bryk and Smith Heuristic Model of the Organization ofSecondary Schools

1994 Stringfield Hierarchical model for elementary schooleffects

1994 Creemers Model of School Learning

1994 Creemers and Scheerens Comprehensive Model of SchoolEffectiveness

1997 Sammons, Thomas andMortimore

Model of Academic Effectiveness at theSecondary Level

These lists of school-related factors and models of educational effectiveness aremainly result of literature reviews and represent the basis on which most of theempirical research in the field is done. That is to say that empirical research in thisfield has been developed mainly on inductive approaches and that there is an evidentlack of theory driven enquiry.

It is with the concerns raised by the lack of theory or rather an implicitunacknowledged theory (Lauder, Jamieson and Wikeley, 1998) that forms the


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methodological starting point for this research. Pupil level variables such as socio-economic status, prior achievement and ethnicity have been included as proxies forfar more complex social processes both within the family and the community. Theapproach taken in including these variables is one of common sense but there hasbeen little theoretical understanding or justification for their inclusion or for what they

represent in the results of multi-level models. However, more theoretically informedstudies of school effectiveness are being developed (Thrupp, Lauder, Robinson andGoldstein, 2004). It is on the basis of this kind of work that the variables identifiedbelow are discussed and will be included in the study.

C. Recent studies in the field developed with Mexican data

For the Mexican case, there are a growing number of studies that have beendeveloped recently enabling a list of the principal variables or factors than have been

used as part of statistical models to explain the variance in school outcomes.

The dependent variables in all the cases are defined as a measurement of cognitiveperformance of the students in a standardized test, usually in the language ormathematics areas.

The next table shows the independent variables that have been considered in recentstudies developed with data of the Mexicos education system at the basic educationlevel and whether if they establish a positive or a negative correlation with schooloutcomes. Due this studies applied the Multi-level Modeling (ML) technique toanalyse the data, the variables are grouped into students and schools levels.

Variables Fuente + -

Independent variables at students level

Parents level of education (Cervini 2003a) +

Didactic material in thehousehold

(Cervini 2003a); (Trevio and Trevio 2004)+

Soicio-economic level (Cervini 2003a) +

Family global capital (Fernndez 2003a) +

Educational practicesbetween the family

(Cervini 2003a)+

Gender (Cervini 2003a); (Trevio and Trevio 2004);(Fernndez 2003a) *

Pre-school (Cervini 2003a); (Trevio and Trevio 2004) +

Repetition of an scholar year (Cervini 2003a) -

Age (Cervini 2003a) -

Family involvement in theschool activities

(Trevio and Trevio 2004)+

Expectations (Trevio and Trevio 2004); (Fernndez2003a)

+

Absenteeism for economicalrehaznos

(Trevio and Trevio 2004)-

Parents expectations (Trevio and Trevio 2004) +

School stability (Trevio and Trevio 2004) +


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Variables Fuente + -

Independet variables at schools level

Socio-economic composition (Cervini 2003a);(Trevio and Trevio 2004) +Socio-cultural contex (Fernndez 2003a) +

School Climate (Cervini 2003a); (Trevio and Trevio 2004);(Fernndez 2003a)

+

School management (Cervini 2003a) +

Pedagogic practice (Cervini 2003a) +

Shift (Trevio and Trevio 2004) **

Indigenous language (Trevio and Trevio 2004) -

Teachers level of education (Trevio and Trevio 2004) +

School type (Trevio and Trevio 2004) ***

Repetition rate (Trevio and Trevio 2004) -

Mothers level of education (Trevio and Trevio 2004) +

Teacher motivation towarsstudents

(Trevio and Trevio 2004)+

Indigenous school (Fernndez 2003a) -

Marginalization indexlocalidad (Fernndez 2003a) -

D. Proposed variables and its theoretical underpinnings

The following literature review identifies different approaches that can work as

theoretical underpinnings to explain the variability of the school outcomes. One wayto organize them is according to the level of analysis in which this approaches can beapplied: students, schools and states.

Students levelAt the students level, three approaches are considered in this work: the culturalreproduction theory, the rational choice theory and the social capital theory.

Reproduction theory has been commonly used to explain social inequality ineducational systems. This theory was originally developed by Pierre Bourdieu(Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977; Bourdieu, 1983). According to Bourdieu, the

differences in students attainment are the result of non-deliberated reproductionprocesses of the class position hold by the families. From the vast theory developedby Bourdieu, the types of capital are the concepts of interest for this work.

Bourdieu define capital as accumulated labour (in its materialised form or in itsincorporated, embodied form), which, when appropriated on a private, i.e., exclusive,basis by agents or groups of agents, enables them to appropriate social energy in thefor of reified or living labour (Bourdieu, 1983)

Given this definition, Bourdieu distinguishes between three types of capital: economiccapital, cultural capital and social capital.

Economic capital: command over economic resources. Even when the author doesnot specify what is considered as resources, is common to find in the literature that


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the economic capital is commonly understood as exchange values, like income andassets that can be easily transformed into cash. In this sense, variables referring tothe possession of comfort goods in the household will be used as a measurement ofthe familys economic capital.

Cultural capital: cultural products which are embedded in the human mind and body,as well as in objects. Cultural capital thus can appear in three states. In its objectifiedstate, cultural capital consists of humanly created objects such as pictures, books,didactic materials, instruments and machines such as a PC, or even the access tointernet. In its institutionalised state, cultural capital consists of educationalqualifications such as academic degrees hold by the family members. Finally, in itsembodied state, cultural capital consists of permanent dispositions in the individualperson, is both the acquired and inherited properties of a person from the familythrough socialisation (Bourdieu, 1983), an example could be how much do thestudents like to read and how much time do they spend reading for pleasure.

The data available for this work includes three sets of variables that have never been

used in the school effectiveness literature; the first one is related to the ways in whichcultural capital is transmitted within the family2. These variables include informationregarding to who the students speak with about what they have learned at school orabout what they would like to study in the future, how often the family is involved intheir homework and what kind of help related with school is obtained from the family.These variables could help to give an explanation about how the different familystructures and the different characteristics of the family members (level of studies,occupational status, age, gender) are related with the transmission of cultural capitalwithin the family.

Social capital: the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked topossession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of

mutual acquaintance and recognition (Bourdieu, 1983). Since the introduction of theterm in the sociological debate, multiple conceptualisations of social capital havebeen developed by several authors. Nevertheless, the most common interpretationsare, in chronological order, linked to the developments of Bourdieu (1983), Coleman(1988) and Putnam (1995). According to Haase (2000), whereas Bourdieu seessocial capital as a mean to reproduce individuals and groups interests, Colemanand Putman focus on social capital as reciprocal obligations and expectationsbetween people to achieve social outcomes.

About the measurement of the social capital, Bourdieu does not specify what kind ofvariables can be used to measure it. Coleman has characterized the effort put intothe childrens academic attainment and the number of moves (changes of school) asproxy measurements for the social capital. In this sense, Putman proposes measuresregarding to the community organisational life, the engagement in public affairs, thecommunity volunteerism, the informal sociability and the social trust. For this study,the variables that will be used regards to how many times the family has moved sincethe student was in primary school, if the students are enrolled in extra-schoolactivities such as sports and if the family participate in school activities.

A general hypothesis for the different types of capital could be that the greater thevolume of economic, cultural and social capital in the family and community, thegreater the level of the students outcomes.

2The second and the third ones are describe later in this section.


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There is another approach, originally created by Boudon (1974) and later developedby Goldthorpe (1996), for explaining the persistent class differences in educationalattainment consistent in a rational choice model which is used by the families tomake educational decisions for their members based on the subjective probabilities

of academic success and the usefulness of the academic certificates to keep orimprove the class position. Related to this approach, variables regarding theacademic expectation of parents and students expectations about themselves canbe used to test whether there is a relationship between the social class of familiesand students with higher academic expectations and academic outcomes or not.

To finish with the variables at the students level, as it has been said above, theinformation available also includes a second set of variables never considered beforein the literature in the field. These variables areconcerned with the non educationalactivities of students, like if the student has a job outside the household (what kind ofjob is it and if it is a paid job or not) or if he/she helps with the housework, if he/shehas free time to do whatever he/she likes to do, how much time is devoted to these

activities. These variables would enable this research to explain how the economicstructure of some kinds of Mexican households is related with the studentsattainment, as it is expected that professional middle class families will have adifferent family economy to that of those in greater poverty. It may be that theseeconomic activities can also be related to social capital. Further analysis is needed inthis point in order to operationalise these variables into theoretical basis that can betested through statistical analysis.

The School levelAt the school level, although there are no solid theories to explain the differences inschool outcomes, a systematized analysis of the available literature allows identifying

three main approaches (Fernandez, 2003d). The first one assumes that schoolsadapt their structures and processes to the geographic, social or cultural environmentand thus, develop isomorphic structures and similar results. The school can be alsounderstood as a functional structure of different and specialized roles adopted by themembers. More recently, a third approach focused on the links between structures,processes and environment has became stronger, and has identified, first throughqualitative and later using quantitative techniques, a group a key features that,according to a literature review made by Posner (2004), characterizes efficientschools such as: the presence of a strong and shared leadership (Gray, 1990); thedevelopment of a shared vision and purposes (Lee, et. al., 1993); the development ofa positive learning environment (Mortimore, et. al., 1988); the adoption of anapproach that focuses on teaching and learning processes (Creemers, 1994); thedevelopment of suitable teaching practices (Mortimore, 1993); the promotion of highexpectations in students performance (Tizard, et. al., 1988); the development of apositive reinforcement culture (Wahlberg, 1984); the creation of a system forsupervising students progress (Levine and Lezotte, 1990); the empowerment ofstudents through greater responsibilities (Lipsitz, 1984); the development of asuitable school-home association (Coleman, et al., 1993); and the definition of schoolas a learning organization (Hopkins, 1994). In the data set available for this work,variables to measure the existence of the most of these characteristics in schoolscan be found.

Besides, the traditional variables, the information available contains a third set of

variables (never used before in the literature) regarding to the teachers and headteachers economic, social and cultural capital, that can be also interpreted using the


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Bourdieus theory. Some examples are: availability of comfort goods in thehousehold, level of education, parents level of education, how many and what kindof books have they read in the last year, mother tongue, if they have any other jobbesides being a teacher, how many hours do they sped in that job and how manychildren they have.

The State levelFinally, in the states level, the availability of theories is even scarcer, according toFernandez (2003d), the best settled approach is the one proposed by Heyneman andLoxley (1982, 1983). The authors state that, in the one hand, the level of economicdevelopment of a society is associated to the level of school attainment of itsstudents, and, in the other, that the size of the class reproduction processes over thestudents attainment (social inequities of the educational system) depends on thelevel of economic development as well. In line with this approach, information as theGross Domestic Product of states or even municipalities could be used to test the

Heyneman and Loxleys theory in the Mexican context.

3. Objectives and key research questions

This study aims to determine and compare the inequity patterns of the lower-secondary education in Mexico. Special interest is given to the differences betweenschools regarding to their capacity to achieve equitable distributions of theeducational results among their students and to the inclusion of new sets of proxyvariables to model context characteristics that may have an important influence in the

schools outcomes and that have not been used before in the school effectivenessresearch. Consequently, key research questions will include the following:

What proportion of the variation in the school outcomes depends on i)students, ii) schools and iii) states characteristics?

Which other variables that have not been considered before in the literatureare likely to add to the explanatory power of the ML Models?

Does the effect of each model on students outcomes vary for differentschools context characteristics? (school composition: family economic, social

and cultural capital, and school modality)

4. Methodology

Data

The data required for carrying out this work will be obtained from the databasespublished yearly by the SEP about the results of the application of standardized

tests. The specific information will be taken from the test applied to a representativesample of the students registered in the last year of the lower-secondary education in


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Mexico at the end of the academic year 2003-2004, and considers 37,973 studentsand 1,119 schools. This information includes: i) the results of measuring academicachievement of the National Standards Evaluation Program, ii) the results ofmeasuring school and socio-economic characteristics.

These instruments measure the basic skills that, according to the lower secondaryschool curriculum, students should develop in the areas of Spanish and Mathematics(among other subjects) and not the distance that each one has with respect to thepopulation mean. Test design was based on an analysis of the Spanish andMathematics curricula, which allowed the subsequent classification of the skillsrequired for developing reading comprehension and problem solving (Martnez andSchmelkes, 1999).

The questionnaires on socio-educational characteristics provide information on thevarious factors associated with schools and students families. In terms of the factorsregarding to the students families, information about the economic, social andcultural context is included. School factors provide general information on the

infrastructure of school facilities and on aspects related to supervision, managementand teaching activities.

The analysis of information

The multi-level (ML) modelling technique will be used to analyse the information. Thistechnique involves variables measured at more than one level of a hierarchy. In thiswork, hierarchy consists of students nested into schools, and schools nested intostates. Measurements will be obtained for student characteristics, school and statescharacteristics.

The multi-level technique recognizes in a explicit way the clustering of students withinschools as well as the clustering of schools between states and allows simultaneousconsideration of the effects of the variables considered in the model, not only onaverage school achievement but also on structural relationships within schools orstates. The ML technique permits a separation of within-school from between-schoolphenomena, and allows the decomposition of students-level effects andcompositional or contextual effects (Goldstein, 1987 and 1995; Bryk andRaudenbush, 1992; Raudenbush and Bryk 1986; Lee and Bryk 1989).

In addition, According to Bryk and Raudenbush (1992) the use of ML modellingmakes it possible to deal with the technical problems that arise when working withdata of multilevel nature: (i) aggregation biases, which result from variables that havedifferent meanings at the different levels at which the data are generated; (ii)underestimated standard errors, which reflect the failure to take into account thedependence among students responses within the same school; and (iii)heterogeneity of regression, which occurs when the relationships between individualcharacteristics and outcomes vary across schools.

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The results of a research with these characteristics will permit to make a contribution

towards:

- Providing a basis for building a theory applicable to school effectiveness

studies, through formulating and testing hypotheses, about different kinds of

households economic structures and the way in which cultural capital is

transmitted or not within the families. The theorisation and justification of the

inclusion of this kind of variables in the school effectiveness future works (if

the results show that) would certainly take the field forward.

- Providing a sound basis for the design of a new generation of public policies

that may help to narrow the disparities affecting educational opportunities in

Mexico.

More specifically, gaining insight on the factors that have greater incidence on

the academic performance of students, in each one of the three analysis

levels proposed, will help educational authorities to make better informed

decisions.

Moreover, the design of public policy programs could be adjusted accordingto the specific context of the lower secondary schools (characteristics ofstudents and schools, socio-economic levels of the Mexican states in whichthe schools


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The equity of education in Mexico