ABSTRACT

Cuba is a rather low-income country even by Latin American standards. The Cuban economy is run by the state and the Cuban bureaucracy does a mediocre job of it, even taking into account the 50 plus years of a United States economic blockade. Cuba's literacy campaign set the stage for ongoing public investment in education, investment that has led to high achievement and a capable, professionalized teacher labor force. The average Panamanian, Chilean, Costa Rican, and southern Brazilian is probably better off than the average Cuban in those terms. The curriculum that a national school system, a provincial system, or a municipality uses can be coherent and integrative, considered "good" by experts in the field, or can be fairly incoherent and below standard. One key to explaining the variation in applying curricula among different classrooms is the variation in teacher capacity in each country.