Educational reforms to expand educational opportunities in Mexico. The power of policy and the challenges of its implementation

Abstract

This article examines the dynamics of implementing large-scale reforms to provide meaningful educational opportunities for disadvantaged students. To effectively reduce social inequality and exclusion, educational policies must combine system-wide efforts and specific, targeted efforts on a large scale and sustain them for long enough for them to become institutionalised. The impact of these policies depends on how well system-wide and targeted efforts are able to converge and complement each other, and the degree of alignment between federal and state initiatives, as well as supporting policies. However, system-wide reform policies are more controversial than those involving targeted efforts, as such changes are more disruptive to interests vested in the status quo, making the sustainability of such efforts precarious. Furthermore, selective, targeted policies reinforce the segregation of students into different quality strata.