Los colegas del PREAL llaman nuestra atención hacia el siguiente libro recién aparecido:
Un nuevo libro del Banco Mundial, titulado Making Schools Work (Hacer que las escuelas funcionen) trata sobre las amenazas a la educación de calidad que no se pueden explicar por falta de recursos. El libro ofrece una reseña de una década de investigaciones enfocadas en cómo mejorar el desempeño de las escuelas en los países en vía de desarrollo, y afirma que la escasa rendición de cuentas de las escuelas y profesores hacia los supervisores, padres de familia y alumnos es una de las principales causas de la baja calidad de la educación y desigualdad en las escuelas públicas. Asimismo, examina evaluaciones de impacto realizadas en varias partes del mundo y usa las conclusiones para desarrollar una guía práctica para los responsables de hacer política.

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About the Authors
Barbara Bruns is lead economist in the Latin America and Caribbean region
of the World Bank, responsible for education. She is currently co-managing
several impact evaluations of teacher pay for performance reforms in Brazil
and is lead author of Achieving World Class Education in Brazil: The Next Agenda
(2010). As the fi rst manager of the $14 million Spanish Impact Evaluation
Fund (SIEF) at the World Bank from 2007 to 2009, Barbara oversaw the
launch of more than 50 rigorous impact evaluations of health, education,
and social protection programs. She has also served on the Education Task
Force appointed by the UN Secretary General in 2003, co-authored the
book A Chance for Every Child: Achieving Universal Primary Education by 2015
(2003), and headed the Secretariat of the global Education for All Fast Track
Initiative from 2002 to 2004. She holds degrees from the London School of
Economics and the University of Chicago.
Deon Filmer is lead economist in the Research Department of World Bank.
His research has spanned the areas of education, health, social protection,
and poverty, and he has published extensively in these areas. Recent
publications include papers on the impact of scholarship programs on
school participation in Cambodia; on the roles of poverty, orphanhood, and
disability in explaining education inequalities; and on the determinants of
fertility behavior. He was a core team member of the World Development
Reports in 1995 Workers in an Integrating World and 2004 Making Services
Work for Poor People. His current research focuses on measuring and
explaining inequalities in education and health outcomes and evaluating the impact of interventions that aim to increase and promote school
participation among the poor (such as conditional cash or food transfers)
and interventions that aim to improve education service provision (such as
policies to improve the quality of teachers in remote areas). He received his
Ph.D. in economics from Brown University.
Harry Anthony Patrinos is lead education economist in the Education
Department of the World Bank. He specializes in all areas of education,
especially school-based management, demand-side fi nancing, and publicprivate
partnerships. He manages the Benchmarking Education Systems
for Results program and leads the Indigenous Peoples, Poverty, and
Development research program. He manages impact evaluations in Latin
America focusing on school-based management, parental participation,
compensatory education, and savings programs. Previous books include
Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Human Development in Latin America (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006), Lifelong Learning in the Global Knowledge Economy (2003),
Policy Analysis of Child Labor: A Comparative Study (St. Martin’s, 1999),
Decentralization of Education: Demand-Side Financing (1997), and Indigenous
People and Poverty in Latin America: An Empirical Analysis (Ashgate, 1997). He
received a doctorate from the University of Sussex.

Foreword
Very few topics command as much attention in the development field as school effectiveness. Schooling is a basic service that most citizens expect from their governments, but the quality available is quite variable, and the results too often disappointing. What will it take for schools in developing
countries to deliver good quality education? Making Schools Work: New Evidence on Accountability Reforms seeks to answer this question.
The 2004 World Development Report developed a conceptual framework to analyze the kind of government and market failures in service delivery that exist in a large number of developing countries: weak accountability leading to poor motivation and inadequate incentives for performance. That report
proposed a set of approaches to remedy those failures that rely on stronger accountability mechanisms. But the empirical evidence supporting those approaches was limited—and uncomfortably so.
Over several years, World Bank researchers and project staff have worked with academic researchers and their counterparts in government and civil society to remedy this evidence gap. Their studies isolate and measure the impacts of reforms and expand the evidence base on the best methods for improving school effectiveness, especially through better information, devolution of authority, and stronger incentives for teachers.
This volume is a systematic stock-taking of the evidence on school accountability reforms in developing countries. It provides a measured and
insightful review and assessment of the results of a variety of approaches
that developing countries are experimenting with in their quest for better schools. It is not the fi nal word on the subject, but will hopefully contribute to better policy choices, grounded in the evidence currently available.
The Human Development Perspectives series presents research findings on issues of critical strategic importance for developing countries. Improving the effectiveness of social service delivery is clearly one such issue. Making Schools Work sets a standard for future efforts to assess the effectiveness of
policy reforms.
Ariel Fiszbein
Chief Economist for Human Development
Chair, Editorial Board, Human Development
Perspectives series
World Bank
Washington, D.C.
Elizabeth King
Director for Education
World Bank
Washington, D.C.