Lessons from Sobral

There are few things as powerful as a classroom visit for anyone committed to improving educational outcomes.

As president of the Amgen Foundation , I often visited high school science labs across the U.S. and globally. I witnessed teachers help students do real-life biotechnology, transforming bacterial cells into protein factories. The results were compelling, even for students who thought science was not for them.

Earlier this month, I joined a group of global education funders in Sobral, a city of 200,000 in the Brazilian northern state of Ceará. Centro Lemann and the International Education Funders Group (IEFG) partnered to create a comprehensive agenda to help us understand the city’s journey to eliminate illiteracy. Over four days, we visited three schools to see the renowned foundational learning model at work. The highlight was seeing twenty-some second graders proudly practicing ”qu” vs. “c” words. The teacher’s methods made learning fun and active.

While the science lab and Portuguese class experiences were very different, their essence was similar: strong support for well-prepared teachers is critical to effective learning. Seems simple, but it seldom is.

In a country as unequal as ours (GINI coefficient = 52,9), a stifling sense of impossibility for improvements reigns. Mistrust is everywhere, and the word accountability is not even on the dictionary. The Sobral story is inspiring and needs not be unique.

Here are my takeaways from this visit:

• Face reality as it is: after significant investments in school infrastructure, political leaders realized kids still could not read and write. Instead of shying away from the lousy performance, they engaged civil society to face the hard truth. Together they decided this was unacceptable.
• Have a clear, non-negotiable, north: once they decided that all kids would learn to read and write, the conversation shifted to the how’s. And here one must be flexible to overcome obstacles of every kind, aligning limited resources, systematizing choices, and building supportive ecosystems, which include inventing institutions responsible for overall assessments and professional development for educators.
• Use assessments to inform actions: while being #1 on the national school rankings (IDEB ) is a terrific achievement, the commitment for assessments to serve a concrete purpose for teachers and students is much more important. In Sobral, assessments support personalized efforts to meet students where they are, providing multiple and complementary avenues for learning, all rooted in the core belief that every child can learn.
• Pride can be a catalyst for dreaming higher: the pride in delivering compelling results for children is palpable across the dozens of professionals we met and spoke with. The transformation of the building that housed a high society club in the 1920’s into a school of foreign languages and science for kids in the public school system shows yet another facet of the efforts it takes to help kids dream big and have the runway to get there.
• Success in Sobral is real, but we still have a lot of work to do: it is worrisome that we are still working on literacy while most of the northern hemisphere has national education policies geared to preparing youth for the realities of the 21st century. In Sobral, 80% of the workforce earns the minimum wage (R$1,300, or $250 a month), and economic challenges abound. Figuring out ways schools at the municipality- and state-levels help students become both informed citizens and qualified professionals for well-paying jobs is a formidable challenge.

As we prepared to leave Sobral, I reflected on a conversation with three middle school students at Aracatia?u, a rural community with a population of 10,000, 60 km from Sobral. They said “we want to get good grades because that is our passport to the best high schools in Sobral. You need straight ‘As’ to get in, but once you do, the city offers a bus to take you to school and back, feeds you every day, and provides all materials. No need to pay.” ?They were connecting their actions with results – causes and consequences. Seems straightforward but it is a big deal in a country still plagued by political cronyism. It’s not anyone’s favor that will get them there. It is their right to get there if they work hard. And they have the support of a thoughtful and effective education ecosystem, built to help everyone. That is a revolution.

PS: check out these three resources on Sobral’s education journey:

1. Article from fellow visit participants at Global Partnership for Education
2. “Building Tomorrows” , a 30-minute documentary film
3. Case study from the World Bank