Give the Gift of Education to Children in Poverty

Our nine graduating Colegio (high school) students are heavily involved in classes, and, are anticipating graduation in December.  And, eight of those graduates are taking two more university admission entrance exams in October in addition to final Colegio exams before graduation.  The eight university applicants will face 2-3 months of uncertainty waiting for a January notification of scores and acceptance. In Costa Rica, each public university compiles a ranked list of eligible students by exam scores for available slots in each degree field. Some students will not rank high enough to get into their preferred career field, and decide to begin university in another field.  Although it may be disappointing not to be accepted into a student’s preferred field, some students starting university in another field can switch career fields – by earning excellent grades, but only if a slot opens in the preferred field.  

During this period of university acceptance uncertainty, students and their families must still complete financial aid applications and be prepared in the event the student gets the opportunity for admission.  Absent a government scholarship and housing/food support, none of these students are likely to be able to attend a public university.

CAA’s member volunteer and expert in university financial aid conducted a March workshop for our students to give them the admission and financial aid application deadlines and advice. We will continue to assist on a family- by- family basis with aid applications and the complexities of gaining a scholarship.

For those who are not accepted into a public university with a financial scholarship, the road ahead is to find a job that will pay enough for tuition at a private university, or just give up and take a low paying job.  Students may also try to attend the public technical/trade school (INA) while continuing to re-take entrance exams and hoping for admission to a public university.

How can these students overcome the academic losses of the past four years? The other 20 non-graduating students face the daily challenge of trying to keep their grades up despite having lost so much in-person class-time.

By official estimates, the “teacher strike & pandemic affected” students have lost as much as 2 years of subject mastery. We are told that the public schools have relaxed tests/grading in recognition of lower achievement expectations. However, this lower bar does not help with the university admission tests – those standardized tests are the same today as they were 4 years ago.  It is clearly disappointing for our students to realize that being a “good student” in high school isn’t enough to enter a public university in their preferred field - only the “best students” throughout the country get opportunity.  

These students desperately need after-class tutoring (primarily in math, Spanish, and English).  We learned first-hand how deficient most of our graduating scholarship students are in math during the 16 sessions of prep/refresher courses that CAA sponsored from July through mid-September.

 However, it appears that waiting until the year of graduation to participate in these university exam refresher courses is too late to significantly improve university admission prospects. Almost all of our students were below expected levels (by university standards) when they entered high school in the 7^th grade, and continued to lose ground until graduation.

These students desperately need ongoing tutoring beginning early in high school. Most of our students lack home academic support for school work—few have educated parents or older siblings who can help, and many lack adequate access to books, or Internet/computer support.  From parent feedback, our students’ public-school teachers are not very helpful when students ask help in locating tutoring resources. Now, CAA is being challenged to find ongoing tutoring for many of our high school students.    

 Arranging tutoring is a big challenge! We continue to search for tutoring options for our students, but the logistics, and costs present challenges. For example, it cost $1,000 for these special refresher courses for 8 students this year. Furthermore, our scholarship students are attending 5 Colegios around San Ramon, and many of the students are bused in from outlying barrios. The bus transport schedules, at an individual student level, dictate the student’s availability for after class-time tutoring. Colegio campus officials are reluctant to allow non-certified teachers/tutors to use classrooms or be on campus.   

Some of our scholarship students are lucky enough to live near a CAA member who agrees to assist as a tutor.  My wife and I provide English tutoring each Saturday for 2 young women in our rural pueblo; sixth and eighth grades. A few other CAA members provide tutoring in their homes for a student in their area.

 Despite the limitations and challenges, most of our scholarship students will be the first in their family to graduate high school, and some will master university studies. Achieving these important milestones would not be possible without the collective investment of our supportive GlobalGiving donors, and CAA’s resilient volunteers. On behalf of these San Ramon students, we are forever grateful to those help us alleviate poverty through education.  Together we can continue to make a difference, one student at a time. 

-All photos used with permission of subjects-

CAA has for many years awarded our top ranked students a special academic excellence award voucher, and about eight of our students are usually in the running for academic awards with all grades at 90+; and at least three to six of those have posted all grades at 94+. Historically, only young women have earned CAA’s Academic Excellence awards – it has been difficult for the young men to break into this elite group. Four of the five Academic Achievement Award winners, from 2019, are shown in the photo. These young women had a lock on the top spots for most of their high school years – and we proudly recognize them.

This year and last, CAA did not issue the academic excellence recognitions because the Education Ministry replaced numeric grades with a Pass/Fail system due to the pandemic disruptions. However, the Education Ministry resumed numeric grades for 2022, and our students just received their first of two report cards for the First Term. Alisson, CAA’s Program Administrative Intern, is now collecting the report cards, and we are hopeful that our students have been able to get their grades back on track, based again on a numeric grade scale. We will review the report cards in person with the students/parents in July in preparation for Second Term classes in August, and again after the 2022 classes end in December. In 2023, we hope we can again identify and recognize another group of academic excellence students for their work. 

What are the other challenges faced by these 2018-2022 students?  According to UNICEF, 37% of children in Costa Rica now live below the poverty line (Swissinfo.ch/UNICEF, May 4, 2022). And, the Education Ministry reported in local news that public school students over the past 4 years have lost almost 2 years of instruction due to the two teacher’s strikes of 2018-2019, followed by the Covid pandemic disruptions of 2020-2021. Although the system has tried to add a few months of additional classes, it remains to be seen how much ground these 2018-2022 students have recovered, especially the most disadvantaged. 

In fact, the President of Costa Rica just decreed that the standardized “FARO” tests should not be required for students in 2022, and the Education Ministry is considering the elimination.  A student’s score on this standardized test in selected subjects was to represent 40% of the weighted test scores used to determine a student’s final grade; and a low score would jeopardize university eligibility which caused protests by students and their parents. Will another standardized national test be substituted to measure learning across campuses and years? The public university faculty association insists that Costa Rica continue annual standardized testing of achievement in the last years of elementary and of high school. Time will tell how this local testing issue will be resolved, and how Costa Rica will measure academic proficiency going forward.  

Fortunately, Costa Rica as a member of the 38 OECD countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), participated among 600,000 other students from OCED and non-OECD countries (79 participating countries-economies) in the OECD’s PISA  standardized tests in 2018 (Programme for International Student Assessment). These tests focused on age 15 students in reading, math, and science proficiency. The most recent OECD PISA  was focused on reading proficiency and the results were reported December, 2019. The next math focused PISA test, originally scheduled for 2021, was rescheduled for 2022 due to Covid and results should be available next year. (Source-https://gpseducation.oecd.org)

Costa Rica’s 2018 PISA reading proficiency results demonstrated that only half, 50%, of Costa Rica’s students scored at or above the minimum level for reading proficiency, behind Chile’s 60% among PISA's participating Latin America countries.  Mexico, Brazil, Columbia scored close behind Costa Rica, and Argentina ranked the lowest at about 38%. Costa Rica’s average score was 426 compared to the 487 average of all PISA participating countries. And, in the math portion, Costa Rica’s proportion of students scoring at or above the minimum level of proficiency was only about 40%. China led in overall scores.

PISA 2018 reflected the need for improvement in reading comprehension, math and science even before the impact of Costa Rica’s 2018-2022 educational disruptions. This PISA report indicated:

• " A large share, over 10%, of advantaged CR students had to repeat a grade"; (emphasis added on "advantaged");
• “ Socio-economic status explains 16% of the variance in reading performance in Costa Rica (OECD average: 12%)”;
• " 27% of children in Costa Rica live below OECD's defined relative income poverty line";
• “ However,10% of disadvantaged students (in Costa Rica) are academically resilient (OECD average:11%)". 

We are optimistic that CAA’s socio-economically disadvantaged scholarship students will demonstrate that very important trait of “academic resilience”. Two other PISA 2018 findings could also be very significant:

• Costa Rica students “average level of life satisfaction is one of the highest of all the countries and economies participating...”, and
• Costa Rica students “strongly believe in their own ability to perform, especially facing adversity, compared with other PISA participating countries…” 

These PISA 2018 captured beliefs may very well account for individual academic success despite poverty. We are hopeful that the disruptions of 2018-2022 have not shaken these incredibly important drivers of life satisfaction and academic success.

CAA’s eight 2022 graduating students that endured the 2018-2022 disruptions may be able to avoid the FARO final tests, but all of these students are facing the challenge of standardized university entrance exams – these tests are at the same level of difficulty as pre-pandemic. CAA funded the cost of those exams, and we hope to locate pre-exam prep/tutoring resources to get these students ready for the tests. Our scholarship students must do their very, very best work if they hope to qualify for public university admission given the limited number of openings available, fierce competition from private school students, and our students' absolute dependence on government scholarships. That PISA 2018 reported “strong belief in their own ability to perform…” is now of critical importance if our students are to achieve the dream of university education.

And, speaking of university and graduates, CAA’s hard-working Scholarship Program Administrative Intern, Alisson, received her Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work, with Honors, from UCR last week.  She is continuing her classes in preparation for her required thesis necessary to be licensed; all done while responding to the needs of twenty-nine CAA scholarship students and program administration demands.  Alisson will continue in her role as CAA Scholarship Program Administrative Intern for the next year or two until she is licensed. She is an important role model for our students, and we congratulate Alisson on this important Bachelor’s Degree milestone!

We send our heartfelt thanks to all of the generous supporters of these students through GlobalGiving, and to the many volunteers who donate their time and money to help turn the dreams of these students into reality.  Without these combined efforts, the last ten years of CAA educational scholarship support for these students would not have been possible.  Please help us continue to keep these dreams alive, one student at a time.

[all photos used with written permission of the subject(s)]