Francisco Antonio Mazo Salazar English 9B, Leng 1160-11

201814198 April 12, 2019.

Encouraging critical reading in the youth of Chocó

I am Francisco Mazo and my field of study is Government and Public Affairs. I was born

and grew up in Chocó, the westernmost department of Colombia. During my childhood I

was surrounded by people with a hard life conditions such as poverty, hunger and no access

to schools. Given that, I have always been interested in social issues. Education, inequality

and childhood and adolescence are my favorites topics. The following information is

addressed to all who cares about children and their development in academic scenarios.

The problem identified is low performance of children in “critical reading” in the test Saber

11, the standardized Colombian test, in the principal municipalities in Chocó, Colombia. In

2015, the average score for critical reading in Chocó was 43, this is 10 points under

Bogotá´s score. In 2018 this score was 45, while Bogota´s score was 58. This only shows

that young people in Chocó are not improving their performance significantly. That low

performance is due to, basically, social determinants and structural problems. Some of

these are: students motivation, teachers who do not have advanced degrees in their field,

parents with no education and no good paid jobs, among other important determinants. It is

demonstrated that this type of determinants are directly related to the performance that

children might have in different exams.

As a solution, I propose a cost-effective intervention for academic reinforcement in the

critical reading component. The target population is children in 9th, 10th and 11th grade from

Tadó, Istmina, Condoto and El Carmen de Atrato and their respective villages and rural

areas. These are municipalities with easy access, safe in terms of public order and with high

potential in the State tests. This intervention will be executed by local actors who have

direct access to the educational community: rectors, coordinators and teachers of local

schools. Foundations, which are already established in the area, are a good example of

actors. Also, it will last six months: two hours per day, three days a week. In addition, it is

imperative to mention that the way to work with children must be didactic, creative and

interesting for them. Finally, at the end of the intervention it is expected students to have

solidified their reading comprehension.

In order to evaluate this intervention, there is going to be realized an evaluation of impact.

Evaluation of impact consist in taking to groups of people and apply the intervention to one

of them. The group to which the intervention is applied must be the same age, grade, and

selected randomly but with very similar context. The other group is the contrafactual and

will not have any kind of intervention. At the beginning and as soon as the intervention

finishes, the students will be tested. This will allow to compare the two groups and

evaluate, using econometric models, how the intervention influenced the critical reading

component in students. Thus, it will be known if this intervention works or not in Chocó´s

context.