Effectively educating all citizens isdifficult in a geographically disperse and culturallyheterogeneous country such as Mexico. How should Mexicoeducate the type of students who speak no Spanish, live invillages inaccessible by roads, or come from families thatcannot afford school uniforms? Mexico began to address thischallenge as early as 1971 by creating the National Councilof Education Promotion (CONAFE), a division of Mexico'sSecretariat of Public Education (SEP). CONAFE provides extraresources to schools that enroll disadvantaged students.CONAFE's compensatory education (see Box 1) programsnow support more than three million students in pre-primaryand primary education, and about one million students intelesecundaria education, or secondary education deliveredvia satellite television to remote schools. A recentevaluation of the impact of CONAFE's compensatoryprograms finds that CONAFE is most effective in improvingprimary school math learning and secondary school Spanishlearning. Telesecundaria education and bilingual educationfor indigenous students are both shown to improve studentachievement. CONAFE is also shown to lower primary schoolrepetition and failure rates.
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