"A brief narrative description of the journal article, document, or resource. This report summarizes what is known about educational improvement in Latin America and provides objectives and strategies to guide the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in supporting primary and secondary education in Latin America and the Caribbean over the next decade. It is based on six background papers as well as a review of the lessons learned from recent regional and country experience."--ERIC website

"Myth, Reality, and Reform bridges these critiques by balancing the importance of the four key functions of higher education: academic leadership, professional development, technological training and development, and general higher education. The book suggests how to consolidate the strengths of higher education systems while fundamentally reforming their weaker features.

Over the past decade, most countries in the Latin America and Caribbean Region have stabilized their economies and lowered barriers to international trade. Many of the policies aimed at reducing poverty and tackling inequality in the 1960-1980 period were well intentioned, but the region made little or no progress in improving income distribution. With the recent shift toward market orientation and openness to international trade, these countries will need a new approach to labor policy as well as different instruments for addressing income distribution goals. This report gives special attention to four areas of labor policy: 1) change from direct government intervention in wage determination and strict seniority rules to a system that rewards effort, high productivity, and good management within a framework that relies on voluntary negotiation of working conditions between workers and firms; 2) replacement of job security legislation by a more effective mechanism that protects workers when they change jobs; 3) careful design of mandatory contributions to social security and other programs in order to minimize the distortionary effect of labor taxes; and 4) redirecting of government subsidies for training and education to the demand side and targeting to those who cannot afford to pay.

Latin America suffered a profound state crisis in the 1980s, which prompted not only the wave of macroeconomic and deregulation reforms known as the Washington Consensus, but also a wide variety of institutional or 'second generation' reforms. 'The State of State Reform in Latin America' reviews and assesses the outcomes of these less studied institutional reforms. This book examines four major areas of institutional reform: a. political institutions and the state organization; b. fiscal institutions, such as budget, tax and decentralization institutions; c. public institutions in charge of sectoral economic policies (financial, industrial, and infrastructure); and d. social sector institutions (pensions, social protection, and education). In each of these areas, the authors summarize the reform objectives, describe and measure their scope, assess the main outcomes, and identify the obstacles for implementation, especially those of an institutional nature.

"Proceedings of a World Bank conference."--T.p.

"Higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean has expanded dramatically in the past 15 years, as the average gross enrollment rate has more than doubled, and many new institutions and programs have been opened. Although higher education access has become more equitable, and higher education supply has become more varied, many of the 'new' students in the system are, on average, less academically ready than are their more advantaged counterparts. Furthermore, only half of higher education students, on average, complete their degree, and labor market returns to higher education vary greatly across institutions and programs. Thus, higher education is at a crossroads today. Given the region's urgency to raise productivity in a low-growth, fiscally constrained environment, going past this crossroads requires the formation of skilled human capital fast and efficiently. 'At a Crossroads: Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean' contributes to the discussion by studying quality, variety, and equity of higher education in Latin America and the Caribbean. The book presents comprehensive evidence on the recent higher education expansion and evolution of higher education labor market returns. Using novel data and state-of-the-art methods, it studies demand and supply drivers of the recent expansion. It investigates the behavior of institutions and students and explores the unintended consequences of large-scale higher education policies. Framing the analysis are the singular characteristics of the higher education market and the market segmentation induced by the variety of students and institutions in the system. At this crossroads, a role emerges for incentives, information, accountability, and choice."

This collection of papers was presented at the World Bank Conference on 'Civil service reform in Latin America and the Caribbean', held in 1993. The goal of the conference was to promote the flow of ideas among researchers and practitioners in the civil s