Commentary: Assessing Strategies for Combatting Discrimination in Education

• Author: Otto Granados
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12709
• Published date: 01 January 2017
• Date: 01 January 2017

90 Public Administration Review • January | February 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 1, pp. 90. © 2016 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12709.

Assessing Strategies for Combatting

Discrimination in Education

Otto Granados has been Mexico ’ s

deputy secretary of education since 2015.

He has written extensively on education

and served as chief of staff for Jesús Reyes

Heroles, Mexican secretary of education,

from 1982 to 1985.

E-mail: otto.granados@nube.sep.gob.mx

Commentary

S ergio Cárdenas and Edgar E. Ramírez de la

Cruz have made important and cutting-edge

contributions to the knowledge of public

administration among Mexican scholars and the

public, especially regarding education policy.

Problems of inequality have been a constant topic

during recent years, for good reason, as demonstrated

in seminal work such as Thomas Piketty ’ s Capital in

the Twenty-First Century or The Spirit Level: Why More

Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard

Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Piketty ’ s magisterial

work documented the constant growth of inequality

in the world during recent decades, while Pickett

and Wilkinson showed why physical health, mental

health, drug abuse, education, imprisonment, obesity,

social mobility, trust and community life, violence,

teenage pregnancies, and child well-being outcomes

are worse in societies with higher inequality levels.

Cárdenas and Ramírez, especially in their latest

publication, “Controlling Administrative Discretion

Promotes Social Equity? Evidence from a National

Experiment,” are part of this important worldwide

research trend.

The article reflects the authors’ characteristic

technical accuracy and seriousness of analytical

method. Their regressions offer strong support for

their conclusions; their data are consistent with their

assumptions.

The limitation of their research base—their sample of

schools to which students are allocated by lottery—to

a single state, however, suggests avenues for further

research. It is difficult to generalize to a large and

diverse country such as Mexico on the basis of such

results. Nationwide, discrimination in double-shift

schools may or may not result from the lottery; other

variables may have played a role. Within the teachers’

union, for example, behavior varies depending

on geographic region. Teachers and principals in

modern, urban areas such as the industrialized city

of Monterrey perform differently than they do in the

mountains of Oaxaca. Such factors may be a larger

influence in generating unacceptably discriminatory

conduct than in the region under study.

Clearly, a lottery seems a rather unusual basis for a

policy aspiring to be scientifically based. Whatever

the outcomes of the lottery in the cases the authors

studied, sometimes the lottery system might help

combat open discrimination against students by

principals. In other cases, however, chance outcomes

of the lottery system can increase inequity. Better and

more sophisticated methods of assigning shifts must

be available to ensure that discrimination against

those less economically privileged will not be a part of

the procedure. The authors might consider additional

research in this regard.

The possibility of major cultural change, rather

than merely palliative administrative measures, to

eradicate discrimination in education offers a yet

broader avenue for future inquiry. It should not be

impossible to create an intellectual environment for

the teachers and principals that heightens awareness of

the need for greater equity in selection procedures in

allocating students to each shift. Finland, for example,

promotes this kind of social consciousness when

prospective teachers begin their study of pedagogy.

In addition, or alternatively, such issues could be

included in standardized tests they must pass to obtain

certification as teachers.

Cárdenas and Ramírez should be encouraged

to continue their research in more states so that

eventually we can have a scientific base for the whole

country as strong as the one they have provided here.

Otto Granados

Secretariat of Public Education , Mexico