Using report cards to promote better education policy in Latin America: PREAL's experience

This paper details the experience of an innovative method of communicating school progress. In 2001, PREAL published the first report card on education in Latin America. It provided reliable country-level data on key education indicators, in addition to regional aggregates. Since then, PREAL has substantially expanded and diversified its report card program in response to demand from local counterparts. It now includes a regional report card, a Central American report card, national level report cards in 10 countries (produced in cooperation with local counterparts), and pilot provincial level report cards in six departamentos in Colombia. PREAL's report card initiative is, at its core, an effort provide users of education with independent, reliable information on how their education system is doing on aspects of education crucial to improving learning. The goal is to experiment with and refine a new approach to promoting transparency and accountability in education that encourages broad-based participation.