Reform in Mexico Forces Debate on Sale of Teaching Positions

By Jeffrey Puryear
Published in the Dialogue’s Latin America Advisor, November 24, 2008

Reform in Mexico Forces Debate on Sale of Teaching Positions

Originally published in Jeffrey Puryear’s monthly “Human Capital” column for the Dialogue's daily Latin America Advisor.

WASHINGTON—Teaching positions are for sale in Mexico, and have been for decades. Although seldom discussed, the practice—established by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) to reward party loyalists—is apparently widespread. The going price for a teaching position in a public primary school is reported to be between $5,000 and $12,000, depending on locale. Teachers who resign can either sell their positions or pass them on to their children. In at least some cases, local governments and the teachers' union supervise the buying and selling process.

However, a recent reform effort—the "Alliance for Education Quality" (ACE)—is calling this unsavory practice into question. The ACE, signed by the government and the national teachers' union in May, would base new teacher appointments on merit, via an examination administered by an independent body. Not surprisingly, it has generated a vociferous response at the grass-roots level by teachers determined to protect what they see as one of their most important rights. They have gone on strike in many states, marching on government offices, closing schools and blocking streets.

The teachers' arguments are straightforward. The right to sell their teaching position or pass it on to one of their children when they retire has become a property right that has been earned over the years and should not, in their view, be taken away. Moreover, the practice has been supported—actively or tacitly—by the teachers' union and local governments for some time. A placard in the state of Morelos speaks for many: "Let my daughter inherit my job. No to the Alliance!" They feel betrayed.

Their anger is easy to understand. Many have purchased their positions in good faith, and count on selling them to help fund their retirement. They have invested their own good money and understandably want a return on that investment. This is grass-roots capitalism in action. From any other viewpoint, of course, it's outrageous.

Teachers have been joined by others who oppose the ACE for technical, political or ideological reasons. And the fact that rank-and-file union members were not consulted in advance has angered many. Yet the basic economic interests of the teachers appear to have generated the greatest resistance. Ultimately the government will almost certainly have to find some way to compensate those teachers who have invested in their positions. At least one state, Quintana Roo, has begun to do so.

But two lessons are particularly interesting. The first is that the practice of letting politicians use the education system for their own partisan purposes creates entrenched interests that obstruct reform, harm students and cost the public large sums of money. Mexico has found this historical legacy hard to shake. The second is that radical reforms like the ACE can force people to address publicly issues that heretofore largely remained below the surface. The ACE is shining a bright light on a dark side of the country's school system. Whatever the outcome, it has changed the terms of the debate, made hiring teachers according to merit an issue, and gotten civil society and the private sector involved in discussing it.

Jeffrey Puryear is Vice President for Social Policy at the Inter-American Dialogue and Co-Director of the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL).