One of President Medina's Goals in his upcoming term in office is to reduce poverty and increase opportunities for Dominicans to develop their skills and abilities. Reducing illiteracy is one key aspect or objective towards reaching such an opportunity richer environment: How are other nations tacking this difficult challenging job


A withering verdict on Venezuela’s flagship literacy program



Posted By Francisco Toro Friday, May 25, 2012 - 2:53 PM Share

What's a reasonable price for teaching an illiterate adult in a poor country how to read? It might seem a callous question, but in a world of limited resources, where adult literacy programs have to compete with a thousand other public policy priorities, it's one question that developing country leaders need to answer.

After studying adult literacy programs in 29 countries, UNESCO advises that a cost in the range of $50-$100 per learner is reasonable. In Asia, costs tend to be lower -- just $30 per learner. In the Americas, they stand at $61 per learner. But some computer-based literacy programs in Brazil have managed to cut the cost massively, to just $2.50 per adult learner, by leveraging pre-existing classroom and computer infrastructure in children's schools.

So how does $543 to $977 per learner sound? If you ran an adult literacy program in the developing world at that cost, would you brag about it?

Only if you were Hugo Chávez.

According to research by Venezuelan economists Daniel Ortega, of the Caracas based IESA graduate school, and Francisco Rodríguez, formely of Wesleyan University - - that was the cost per learner of Misión Robinson, Chávez's flagship adult literacy program.

After scrutinizing the results of the government's own Household Survey, Ortega and Rodríguez struggled to find evidence that Misión Robinson had actually taught anyone to read at all in its first two years of operation in 2004 and 2005. Even using the most favorable estimate, they could identify no more than 92,000 people who were taught to read and write by the program, a shocking number considering the Education Ministry claimed to have hired over 210,000 literacy trainers in that time.

What's really remarkable is the complete disconnect between these realities and the sprawling chavista propaganda effort around Misión Robinson. In 2005, president Chávez pronounced the program a success, and declared Venezuela a country free of illiteracy -- a propaganda line trotted out again and again to underline the social advances of the Bolivarian revolution. (That was also the year, incidentally, that U.S. politician Jesse Jackson visited a Misión Robinson classroom, shown above.) By October 2005, the government was claiming that the program had taught more than 1.4 million Venezuelan adults how to read -- even though its own statistical agency's household survey could find no more than 1.1 million illiterate adults in the country before Misión Robinson had even started.

This propaganda onslaught was happening at the same time as the household survey yielded estimates of over a million Venezuelan adults unable to read or write at the end of 2005, after the bulk of the money had been spent. Ortega and Rodríguez found that during the heyday of Misión Robinson, the speed at which the illiteracy rate was falling remained consistent with long-term demographic trends -- falling, in other words, as older illiterate adults died out and were replaced by a younger, better schooled cohort. Those facts, alas, were not trumpeted in government propaganda, but squirreled away in the fine print of official reports or buried in a pile of survey data, where only a handful of inoffensive nerds like Ortega and Rodríguez were likely to notice them.

What really gives the game away is that Misión Robinson was rolled out in the absence of any clear performance targets, implemented by bureaucrats who didn't see improving cost-effectiveness as part of their job, and therefore instituted no systematic monitoring and evaluation mechanism. That the result is a hugely expensive and not-particularly-effective program can't really surprise anyone.

What's clear is that Misión Robinson was always more concerned with the propaganda needs of the Chávez Regime than the educational needs of illiterate Venezuelans. Because if the government had invested a fraction of the effort it devoted to publicizing Misión Robinson's supposed achievements to optimizing the program's efficiency, Venezuela would have eradicated illiteracy long ago.

"After scrutinizing the results of the government's own Household Survey, Ortega and Rodríguez struggled to find evidence that Misión Robinson had actually taught anyone to read at all in its first two years of operation in 2004 and 2005. Even using the most favorable estimate, they could identify no more than 92,000 people who were taught to read and write by the program, a shocking number considering the Education Ministry claimed to have hired over 210,000 literacy trainers in that time.

What's really remarkable is the complete disconnect between these realities and the sprawling chavista propaganda effort around Misión Robinson. In 2005, president Chávez pronounced the program a success, and declared Venezuela a country free of illiteracy -- a propaganda line trotted out again and again to underline the social advances of the Bolivarian revolution. (That was also the year, incidentally, that U.S. politician Jesse Jackson visited a Misión Robinson classroom, shown above.) By October 2005, the government was claiming that the program had taught more than 1.4 million Venezuelan adults how to read -- even though its own statistical agency's household survey could find no more than 1.1 million illiterate adults in the country before Misión Robinson had even started.

This propaganda onslaught was happening at the same time as the household survey yielded estimates of over a million Venezuelan adults unable to read or write at the end of 2005, after the bulk of the money had been spent. Ortega and Rodríguez found that during the heyday of Misión Robinson, the speed at which the illiteracy rate was falling remained consistent with long-term demographic trends -- falling, in other words, as older illiterate adults died out and were replaced by a younger, better schooled cohort. Those facts, alas, were not trumpeted in government propaganda, but squirreled away in the fine print of official reports or buried in a pile of survey data, where only a handful of inoffensive nerds like Ortega and Rodríguez were likely to notice them."

With limited financial resources the answer is NOTHING. Money should be used to educate the youth. The Adults had their chance and squandered it.

The Republic May 27, 2012

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EDUCATIONAL PROJECT
Exclusion due Adolescents


The education center is overcome initial educational exclusion being experienced by teenage mothers.

Apolinar Bethania
Santo Domingo

At 17 years old Batista Jocasta says that the main reason why you want to go to college is to be an example for your child. "I do not want him to ask if my mom did not study why must I," he adds.

Like her, Daribel Paredes, 18, is determined to make the effort to achieve a university degree, as it is aware that parents are the model children.

"Is that value education example of what I leave to my daughter, she can say when I grow up I want to be like my mom. So I will fight with all my strength to be someone in life to make you feel very proud of me, "said Daribel.

Both girls live the Los Guaricanos in Santo Domingo Norte Municipality, and are part of a group of teenage mothers to be inserted at the higher education system to study civil engineering and architecture, the project "Your future is in the School. "

The program's main objective is to meet the girls and youth at early adult, and is promoted by "Aide et Action International", sponsored by Orange Dominicana Foundation and the academic support of the Universidad Iberoamericana (UNIBE).

Amaury Perez Vargas, project coordinator, explained that this includes a shelter to house the children and siblings of adolescents who leave as he had nowhere left school.

Here are cared for 61 children from one to five years, to which it imparts teaching in the area of ??early childhood education. Leaving their children in this space, mothers and sisters are forced to go to school.

With an average of 108 per 1000 youth, the Dominican Republic has the second highest teenage pregnancy in Latin America, according to the Office of Sexual and Reproductive Population Fund UN 2010.

Of this, only 3% of these young go on to the country's universities, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

"After studying adult literacy programs in 29 countries, UNESCO advises that a cost in the range of $50-$100 per learner is reasonable. In Asia, costs tend to be lower -- just $30 per learner. In the Americas, they stand at $61 per learner. But some computer-based literacy programs in Brazil have managed to cut the cost massively, to just $2.50 per adult learner, by leveraging pre-existing classroom and computer infrastructure in children's schools."


$2.50 per head sounds very good indeed. If DR has 40% illiteracy among its adult population and just for a hypothetical case result, let's also state that this number is around 2 million people.

2 mil * 2.50= 5 million dollars