ABSTRACT
Participation by families, mass organizations, and the community at large in the life of Cuban schools predates the state-building of the 1970s and 1980s. Access and the quality of participation together determined the meaning of participation in the Cuban schools, and both were affected by central policy and its acceptance by the community. Educational policy in Cuba established transformational tasks for the schools, defining new standards of conduct that required active cooperation among schools, families, and the organized community. Participation in the Cuban schools in the 1970s and 1980s was more than a ritual implementation of central policy. In Cuba, evaluation activity reflected attitudes about education, about participation, and about the existing limits on the local agenda. The reforms of education instituted in the mid-1980s reveal much about the official Cuban view of centralization at the time. The reforms in education that accompanied the project of improving socialism shed light on the Cuban verdict as to the results of state-building.
