The PTA arrives in Mexico's schools

Parent-teacher associations are the face of the US public school system, but it is only recently that parents are starting to penetrate the hallways of Mexico's schools.

When Karina Salda?a enrolled her first child in elementary school, she hoped for the kind of parent participation that didn't exist when she was growing up. Her own school director was ?untouchable? to both teachers and students alike, Ms. Salda?a says.

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But what she found was the same impenetrable wall that has long kept parents locked out of the public education system in Mexico ? where in some schools teachers don't show up to class or are woefully underqualified, and where students drop out at high rates.

A decade later, however, with her second child now in sixth grade at the same school, Salda?a is busy most weeks at the Fray Matias de Cordova elementary school.? Located on a busy block in central Tuxtla Gutierrez, the capital of Chiapas, Salda?a is the parents' representative on the official parent teacher council. ?There has been a cultural shift,? she says. ?They have involved us.?

Parents associations are the face of the US public school system. But in Mexico, although by law they have existed for years, it is only recently that parents are starting to penetrate the hallways of Mexico's schools, not only helping to build infrastructure or raise money, but to demand that teachers show up to class and equip pupils with the basic skills they need to advance. And new research shows that such participation is having a positive impact on dropout rates and even test scores.

?Societal consciousness has grown about the necessity of including parents,? says Dolores Ramirez, the head of a program called School Management Support (AGE) under Mexico's Ministry of Education that funds rural parents associations. ?Before, parents dropped their kids off and handed the responsibility of education to the school.?

For decades, parents in Mexico were disregarded. Many accepted a secondary role, deferring to teachers and principals. This is especially true in rural communities, where the schoolteacher is often the most educated member of the community and parents work long days, often with the help of their children. Many teachers once reckoned that schools were better off without parental interference.

Mexico's efforts to reinforce parental roles in schools was part of the school decentralization movement that gained traction across the globe in the 1990s from New Zealand to the Netherlands, and Honduras to Hong Kong. After decentralizing its system in 1992, Mexico's Ministry of Education gave new support to programs to help parents in rural and marginalized schools and later instituted councils of teachers, parents, and directors to help oversee compensatory funds.

?We thought it was better to keep them far away from the school,? says Marilu Sarmiento, the director of Fray Matias de Cordova, who was a teacher for 16 years before moving into administration. ?[Now], each day parents participate more.?

Ms. Sarmiento?s school bustles on a recent morning. One class is doing calisthenics, not far from the new tables Ms. Salda?a's PTA constructed in December. They remodeled a cafeteria in August. Now they are planning to build a bigger boys' bathroom and launch a general cleaning campaign. They also began a program in February called ?Return to School,? where parents lead the Monday school ritual of singing national and state hymns, and raising the Mexican flag.

Their work is voluntary and unpaid. In rural schools, parent participation has grown with the help of AGE, which began in 1996 in 5,200 schools, and has since expanded to 45,000 programs throughout Mexico today, says Ms. Ramirez.

Particularly active in large, rural states such as Chiapas, the AGE program gives small amounts of money, anywhere from $300 to $700 a year, to the school's parent association, to plan projects like constructing bathrooms, painting buildings, or buying vital school supplies such as pencils. The program is an important resource, as school spending in the budget, which is generous 22 percent of total government expenditure, goes almost entirely to salaries, says Harry Patrinos, the lead education economist at the World Bank.

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