A key objective of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is to assist its member countries in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). UNDP pursues this objective in various ways, including through analysis and advice to governments on the progress towards the MDGs (such as support for the preparation and monitoring Poverty Reduction Strategies, or PRSs, in poor countries), assistance for capacity building, and financial and technical support for the preparation and implementation of development programs.

The challenge of achieving the MDGs remains daunting in many countries, including Tajikistan. To do so will require that all development partners, i.e., the government, civil society, private business and donors, make every effort to scale up successful development interventions. Scaling up refers to “expanding, adapting and sustaining successful policies, programs and projects on different places and over time to reach a greater number of people.” Interventions that are successful as pilots but are not scaled up will create localized benefits for a small number of beneficiaries, but they will fail to contribute significantly to close the MDG gap.

This paper aims to assess whether and how well UNDP is supporting scaling up in its development programs in Tajikistan. While the principal purpose of this assessment was to assist the UNDP country program director and his team in Tajikistan in their scaling up efforts, it also contributes to the overall growing body of evidence on the scaling up of development interventions worldwide.

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Editor's Note: The "Scaling up in Agriculture, Rural Development and Nutrition" publication is a series of 20 briefs published by the International Food Policy Research Institute. To read the full publication, click here.

Taking successful development interventions to scale is critical if the world is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and make essential gains in the fight for improved agricultural productivity, rural incomes, and nutrition. How to support scaling up in these three areas, however, is a major challenge. This collection of policy briefs is designed to contribute to a better understanding of the experience to date and the lessons for the future.

Scaling up means expanding, replicating, adapting, and sustaining successful policies, programs, or projects to reach a greater number of people; it is part of a broader process of innovation and learning. A new idea, model, or approach is typically embodied in a pilot project of limited impact; with monitoring and evaluation, the knowledge acquired from the pilot experience can be used to scale up the model to create larger impacts. The process generally occurs in an iterative and interactive cycle, as the experience from scaling up feeds back into new ideas and learning.

The authors of the 20 policy briefs included here explore the experience of scaling up successful interventions in agriculture, rural development, and nutrition under five broad headings: (1) the role of rural community engagement, (2) the importance of value chains, (3) the intricacies of scaling up nutrition interventions, (4) the lessons learned from institutional approaches, and (5) the experience of international aid donors.

There is no blueprint for when and how to take an intervention to scale, but the examples and experiences described in this series of policy briefs offer important insights into how to address the key global issues of agricultural productivity, food insecurity, and rural poverty.

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Editor's Note: Johannes Linn discusses the potential of multilateral development banks in the latest G-20 Research Group briefing book on the St. Petersburg G-20 Summit. Read the full collection here.

The origins of the multilateral development banks (MDBs) lie with the creation of the World Bank at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its initial purpose, as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, was the reconstruction of wartorn countries after the Second World War. 

As Europe and Japan recovered in the 1950s, the World Bank turned to providing financial assistance to the developing world. Then came the foundation of the InterAmerican Development Bank (IADB) in 1959, of the African Development Bank (AfDB) in 1964 and of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 1966, each to assist the development of countries in their respective regions. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) was set up in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to assist with the transition of countries in the former Soviet sphere. 

The MDBs are thus rooted in two key aspects of the geopolitical reality of the postwar 20th century: the Cold War between capitalist ‘West’ and communist ‘East’, and the division of the world into the industrial ‘North’ and the developing ‘South’. The former aspect was mirrored in the MDBs for many years by the absence of countries from the Eastern Bloc. This was only remedied after the fall of the Bamboo and Iron curtains. The latter aspect remains deeply embedded even today in the mandate, financing pattern and governance structures of the MDBs. 

Changing global financial architecture 

From the 1950s to the 1990s, the international financial architecture consisted of only three pillars: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the MDBs represented the multilateral official pillar; the aid agencies of the industrial countries represented bilateral official pillar; and the commercial banks and investors from industrial countries made up the private pillar. 

Today, the picture is dramatically different. Private commercial flows vastly exceed official flows, except during global financial crises. New channels of development assistance have multiplied, as foundations and religious and non-governmental organisations rival the official assistance flows in size. 

The multilateral assistance architecture, previously dominated by the MDBs, is now a maze of multilateral development agencies, with a slew of sub-regional development banks, some exceeding the traditional MDBs in size. For example, the European Investment Bank lends more than the World Bank, and the Caja Andina de Fomento (CAF, the Latin American Development Bank) more than the IADB. There are also a number of large ‘vertical funds’ for specific purposes, such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. There are  specialized trust funds, attached to MDBs, but often with their own governance structures.

End of the North-South divide 

Finally, the traditional North-South divide is breaking down, as emerging markets have started to close the development gap, as global poverty has dropped and as many developing countries have large domestic capacities. This means that the new power houses in the South need little financial and technical assistance and are now providing official financial and technical support to their less fortunate neighbors. China’s assistance to Africa outstrips that of the World Bank.

The future for MDBs 

In this changed environment is there a future for MDBs? Three options might be considered: 

1. Do away with the MDBs as a relic of the past. Some more radical market ideologues might argue that, if there ever was a justification for the MDBs, that time is now well past. In 2000, a US congressional commission recommended the less radical solution of shifting the World Bank’s loan business to the regional MDBs. Even if shutting down MDBs were the right option, it is highly unlikely to happen. No multilateral financial institution created after the Second World War has ever been closed. Indeed, recently the Nordic Development Fund was to be shut down, but its owners reversed their decision and it will carry on, albeit with a focus on climate change. 

2. Carry on with business as usual. Currently, MDBs are on a track that, if continued, would mean a weakened mandate, loss of clients, hollowed-out financial strength and diluted technical capacity. Given their tight focus on the fight against poverty, the MDBs will work themselves out of a job as global poverty, according to traditional metrics, is on a dramatic downward trend. 

Many middle-income country borrowers are drifting away from the MDBs, since they find other sources of finance and technical advice more attractive. These include the sub-regional development banks, which are more nimble in disbursing their loans and whose governance is not dominated by the industrial countries. These countries, now facing major long-term budget constraints, will be unable to continue supporting the growth of the MDBs’ capital base. But they are also unwilling to let the emerging market economies provide relatively more funding and acquire a greater voice in these institutions.

Finally, while the MDBs retain professional staff that represents a valuable global asset, their technical strength relative to other sources of advice – and by some measures, even their absolute strength – has been waning. 

If left unattended, this would mean that MDBs 10 years from now, while still limping along, are likely to have lost their ability to provide effective financial and technical services on a scale and with a quality that matter globally or regionally. 

3. Give the MDBs a new mandate, new governance and new financing. If one starts from the proposition that a globalised 21st-century world needs capable global institutions that can provide long-term finance to meet critical physical and social infrastructure needs regionally and globally, and that can serve as critical knowledge hubs in an increasingly interconnected world, then it would be folly to let the currently still considerable institutional and financial strengths of the MDBs wither away.

• The mandate of the MDBs should be adapted to move beyond preoccupation with poverty eradication to focus explicitly on global and regional public goods as a way to help sustain global economic growth and human welfare. Moreover, the MDBs should be able to provide assistance to all their members, not only developing country members. 

• The governance of the MDBs should be changed to give the South a voice commensurate with the greater global role it now plays in economic and political terms. MDB leaders should be selected on merit without consideration of nationality. 

• The financing structure should be matched to give more space to capital contributions from the South and to significantly expand the MDBs’ capital resources in the face of the current severe capital constraints.

In addition, MDB management should be guided by banks’ membership to streamline their operational practices in line with those widely used by sub-regional development banks, and they should be supported in preserving and, where possible, strengthening their professional capacity so that they can serve as international knowledge hubs. 

A new MDB agenda for the G20 

The G20 has taken on a vast development agenda. This is fine, but it risks getting bogged down in the minutiae of development policy design and implementation that go far beyond what global leaders can and should deal with. What is missing is a serious preoccupation of the G20 with that issue on which it is uniquely well equipped to lead: reform of the global financial institutional architecture. 

What better place than to start with than the MDBs? The G20 should review the trends, strengths and weaknesses of MDBs in recent decades and endeavour to create new mandates, governance and financing structures that make them serve as effective pillars of the global institutional system in the 21st century. If done correctly, this would also mean no more need for new institutions, such as the BRICS development bank currently being created by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It would be far better to fix the existing institutions than to create new ones that mostly add to the already overwhelming fragmentation of the global institutional system.

Event Information

The year 2015 will be a milestone year, with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the post-2015 development agenda by world leaders in September; the Addis Ababa Accord on financing for development in July; and the conclusion of climate negotiations at COP21 in Paris in December. The draft Addis Ababa Accord, which focuses on the actions needed to attain the SDGs, highlights the key role envisaged for the multilateral development banks (MDBs) in the post-2015 agenda. Paragraph 65 of the draft accord notes: “We call on the international finance institutions to establish a process to examine the role, scale, and functioning of the multilateral and regional development finance institutions to make them more responsive to the sustainable development agenda.”          

Against this backdrop, on April 18, 2015, the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings held a private roundtable with the leaders of the MDBs and other key stakeholders to discuss the role of the MDBs in supporting the post-2015 development agenda.

The meeting focused on four questions:

1. What does the post-2015 development agenda and the ambitions of the Addis and Paris conferences imply for the MDBs?


Given the ability of the MDBs to leverage shareholder resources, they can be efficient and effective mechanisms for scaling up development cooperation, particularly with respect to the agenda on investing in people and to the financing of sustainable infrastructure. New roles, instruments and partnerships might be needed.

2. How can MDBs best take advantage of the political attention that is being paid to the various conferences in 2015?   


The World Bank and selected regional development banks have launched a series of initiatives to optimize their balance sheets, address other constraints and enhance their catalytic role in crowding in private finance. And new institutions and mechanisms are coming to the fore. But the responses are not coordinated to best take advantage of each MDB’s comparative advantage.

3. What are the key impediments to scaling up the role and engagement of the MDBs?


Views on constraints are likely to differ but discussions should cover policy dialogue, capacity building, capital, leverage, shareholder backing on volume, instruments on leverage and risk mitigation, safeguards, and governance. 

4. How should the MDBs respond to the proposal to establish a process to examine the role, scale and functioning of the multilateral and regional development finance institutions to make them more responsive to the sustainable development agenda?   


A proactive response and engagement on the part of the MDBs would facilitate a better understanding of the contribution that the MDBs can make and greater support among shareholders for a coherent and stepped-up role.

Event Materials

• Participant List
• MDB PostEvent Summary

The replenishment process for concessional resources of the multilateral development banks is broken. We have come to this conclusion after a review of the experience with recent replenishments of multilateral development funds. We also base it on first-hand observation, since one of us was responsible for the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) replenishment consultations 20 years ago and recently served as the external chair for the last two replenishment consultations of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), which closely follow the common multilateral development bank (MDB) practice. As many of the banks and their donors are preparing for midterm reviews as a first step toward the next round of replenishment consultations, this is a good time to take stock and consider what needs to be done to fix the replenishment process.

So what’s the problem?

Most of all, the replenishment process does not serve its key intended function of setting overall operational strategy for the development funds and holding the institutions accountable for effectively implementing the strategy. Instead, the replenishment consultations have turned into a time-consuming and costly process in which donor representatives from their capitals get bogged down in the minutiae of institutional management that are better left to the boards of directors and the managements of the MDBs. There are other problems, including lack of adequate engagement of recipient countries in donors’ deliberations, the lack of full participation of the donors’ representatives on the boards of the institutions in the process, and inflexible governance structures that serve as a disincentive for non-traditional donors (from emerging countries and from private foundations) to contribute.

But let’s focus on the consultation process. What does it look like? Typically, donor representatives from capitals assemble every three years (or four, in the case of the Asian Development Bank) for a year-long consultation round, consisting of four two-day meetings (including the meeting devoted to the midterm review of the ongoing replenishment and to setting the agenda for the next consultation process). For these meetings, MDB staff prepare, per consultation round, some 20 substantive documents that are intended to delve into operational and institutional performance in great detail. Each consultation round produces a long list of specific commitments (around 40 commitments is not uncommon), which management is required to implement and monitor, and report on in the midterm review. In effect, however, this review covers only half the replenishment cycle, which leads to the reporting, monitoring, and accountability being limited to the delivery of committed outputs (e.g., a specific sector strategy) with little attention paid to implementation, let alone outcomes.

The process is eerily reminiscent of the much maligned “Christmas tree” approach of the World Bank’s structural adjustment loans in the 1980s and 1990s, with their detailed matrixes of conditionality; lack of strategic selectivity and country ownership; focus on inputs rather than outcomes; and lack of consideration of the borrowers’ capacity and costs of implementing the Bank-imposed measures. Ironically, the donors successfully pushed the MDBs to give up on such conditionality (without ownership of the recipient countries) in their loans, but they impose the same kind of conditionality (without full ownership of the recipient countries and institutions) on the MDBs themselves—replenishment after replenishment.

Aside from lack of selectivity, strategic focus, and ownership of the commitments, the consultation process is also burdensome and costly in terms of the MDBs’ senior management and staff time as well as time spent by ministerial staff in donor capitals, with literally thousands of management and staff hours spent on producing and reviewing documentation. And the recent innovation of having donor representatives meet between consultation rounds as working groups dealing with long-term strategic issues, while welcome in principle, has imposed further costs on the MDBs and capitals in terms of preparing documentation and meetings.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Twenty years ago the process was much simpler and less costly. Even today, recent MDB capital increases, which mobilized resources for the non-concessional windows of the MDBs, were achieved with much simpler processes, and the replenishment consultations for special purpose funds, such as the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria and for the GAVI Alliance, are more streamlined than those of the MDBs.

So what’s to be done?

We recommend the following measures to fix the replenishment consultation process:

1. Focus on a few strategic issues and reduce the number of commitments with an explicit consideration of the costs and capacity requirements they imply. Shift the balance of monitoring and accountability from delivery of outputs to implementation and outcomes.
2. Prepare no more than five documents for the consultation process: (i) a midterm review on the implementation of the previous replenishment and key issues for the future; (ii) a corporate strategy or strategy update; (iii) the substantive report on how the replenishment resources will contribute to achieve the strategy; (iv) a financial outlook and strategy document; and (v) the legal document of the replenishment resolution.
3. Reduce the number of meetings for each replenishment round to no more than three and lengthen the replenishment period from three to four years or more.
4. Use the newly established working group meetings between replenishment consultation rounds to focus on one or two long-term, strategic issues, including how to fix the replenishment process.

The initiative for such changes lies with the donor representatives in the capitals, and from our interviews with donor representatives we understand that many of them broadly share our concerns. So this is a good time—indeed it is high time!—for them to act.

Event Information

In 2015, 193 countries adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a new global agenda that is more ambitious than the preceding Millennium Development Goals and aims to make progress on some of the most pressing issues of our time. Goal 4, "To ensure inclusive and quality education for all, with relevant and effective learning outcomes," challenges the international education community to meet universal access plus learning by 2030. We know that access to primary schooling has scaled up rapidly over previous decades, but what can be learned from places where transformational changes in learning have occurred? What can governments, civil society, and the private sector do to more actively scale up quality learning?

On April 18-19, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings launched "Millions Learning: Scaling Up Quality Education in Developing Countries," a comprehensive study that examines where learning has improved around the world and what factors have contributed to that process. This two-day event included two sessions. Monday, April 18 focused on the role of global actors in accelerating progress to meeting the SDGs. The second session on Tuesday, April 19 included a presentation of the Millions Learning report followed by panel discussions on the role of financing and technology in scaling education in developing countries.

 Join the conversation on Twitter #MillionsLearning

Video

• Getting millions to learn: What will it take to accelerate progress on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals?
• Scaling quality education: The launch of the Millions Learning report
• Do funders help or hinder scaling in education?
• What role can technology play in scaling education?

Audio

• Getting millions to learn: What will it take to accelerate progress on meeting the Sustainable Development Goals?

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript - Day 1 (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript - Day 2 (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160418_millions_learning_transcript
• 20160419_millions_learning_transcript

To achieve the desired outcomes of the Sustainable Development Goals as well as the global targets from the Paris COP21 Climate Summit by 2030, governments will have to find ways to meet the top-down objectives with bottom-up approaches. A systematic focus on scaling up successful development interventions could serve to bridge this gap, or what’s been called the “missing middle.” However, the question remains how to actually address the challenge of scaling up.

When Arna Hartmann, adjunct professor of international development, and I first looked at the scaling up agenda in development work in the mid-2000s, we concluded that development agencies were insufficiently focused on supporting the scaling up of successful development interventions. The pervasive focus on one-off projects all too often resulted in what I’ve come to refer to as “pilots to nowhere.” As a first step to fix this, we recommended that each aid organization carry out a review to be sure to focus effectively on scaling up. 

The institutional dimension is critical, given their role in developing and implementing scaling up pathways. Of course, individuals serve as champions, designers, and implementers, but experience illustrates that if individuals lack a strong link to a supportive institution, scaling up is most likely to be short-lived and unsustainable. “Institutions” include many different types of organizations, such as government ministries and departments, private firms and social enterprises, civil society organizations, and both public and private external donors and financiers.

The Brookings book “Getting to Scale: How to Bring Development Solutions to Millions of Poor People” explores the opportunities and challenges that such organizations face, on their own or, better yet, partnering with each other, in scaling up the development impact of their successful interventions.

Over the past decade I have worked with 10 foreign aid institutions—multilateral and bilateral agencies, as well as big global non-governmental organizations—helping them to focus systematically on scaling up operational work and developing approaches to do so. There are common lessons that apply across the board to these agencies, with one salutary example being the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) which has tackled the scaling up agenda systematically and persistently.

Following are eight takeaway lessons I gleaned from my work with IFAD:

1. Look into the “black box” of institutions. It is not enough to decide that an institution should focus on and support scaling up of successful development interventions. You actually need to look at how institutions function in terms of their mission statement and corporate strategy, their policies and processes, their operational instruments, their budgets, management and staff incentives, and their monitoring and evaluation practices. Check out the Brookings working paper that summarizes the results of a scaling up review of the IFAD.
2. Scaling needs to be pursued institution-wide. Tasking one unit in an organization with innovation and scaling up, or creating special outside entities (like the Global Innovation Fund set up jointly by a number of donor agencies) is a good first step. But ultimately, a comprehensive approach must be mainstreamed so that all operational activities are geared toward scaling up.
3. Scaling up must be championed from the top. The governing boards and leadership of the institutions need to commit to scaling up and persistently stay on message, since, like any fundamental institutional change, effectively scaling up takes time, perhaps a decade or more as with IFAD.
4. The scaling up process must be grown within the institution. External analysis and advice from consultants can play an important role in institutional reviews. But for lasting institutional change, the leadership must come from within and involve broad participation from managers and staff in developing operational policies and processes that are tailored to an institution’s specific culture, tasks, and organizational structure.
5. A well-articulated operational approach for scaling up needs to be put in place. For more on this, take a look at a recent paper by Larry Cooley and I that reviews two helpful operational approaches, which are also covered in Cooley’s blog. For the education sector, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings just published its report “Millions Learning,” which provides a useful scaling up approach specifically tailored to the education sector.
6. Operational staffs need to receive practical guidance and training. It is not enough to tell staff that they have to focus on scaling up and then give them a general framework. They also need practical guidance and training, ideally tailored to the specific business lines they are engaged in. IFAD, for example, developed overall operational guidelines for scaling up, as well as guidance notes for specific area of engagement, including livestock development, agricultural value chains, land tenure security, etc.  This guidance and training ideally should also be extended to consultants working with the agency on project preparation, implementation, and evaluation, as well as to the agency’s local counterpart organizations.
7. New approaches to monitoring and evaluation (M&E) have to be crafted. Typically the M&E for development projects is backward looking and focused on accountability, narrow issues of implementation, and short-term results. Scaling up requires continuous learning, structured experimentation, and innovation based on evidence, including whether the enabling conditions for scaling up are being established. And it is important to monitor and evaluate the institutional mainstreaming process of scaling up to ensure that it is effectively pursued. I’d recommend looking at how the German Agency for International Development (GIZ) carried out a corporate-wide evaluation of its scaling up experience.
8. Scaling up helps aid organizations mobilize financial resources. Scaling up leverages limited institutional resources in two ways: First, an organization can multiply the impact of its own financial capacity by linking up with public and private agencies and building multi-stakeholder coalitions in support of scaling up. Second, when an organization demonstrates that it is pursuing not only one-off results but also scaled up impact, funders or shareholders of the organization tend to be more motivated to support the organization. This certainly was one of the drivers of IFAD’s successful financial replenishment consultation rounds over the last decade.

By adopting these lessons, development organizations can actually begin to scale up to the level necessary to bridge the missing middle. The key will be to assure that a focus on scaling up is not the exception but instead becomes ingrained in the institutional DNA. Simply put, in designing and implementing development programs and projects, the question needs to be answered, “What’s next, if this intervention works?”

With just over six months to go until the Iowa caucuses, news organizations are already speculating about what the Bush or Clinton or Trump Sanders administrations might look like. Though it might seem premature, their impulse is the right one. After the winner of the 2016 presidential race is announced in November of that year, the new President-elect will have just under three months to build his or her new government. From choosing cabinet members and key White House staff to setting the policy agenda and dealing with unanticipated crises, the presidential transition process is a huge undertaking, and one that requires much more advance planning than it is usually given.

Acknowledging the short timetable that surrounds the presidential transition process, on July 31 the Senate passed the “Edward ‘Ted’ Kaufman and Michael Leavitt Presidential Transitions Improvements Act of 2015.” If passed by the House and signed into law, this bill would require the president to establish a “White House Transition Coordinating Council” six months prior to the presidential election. This council would work with transition representatives for both candidates to prepare for the challenges that will lie ahead.

Under the new bill, the President would also be tasked to create an “Agency Transition Director’s Council.” This council would ensure that federal agencies function effectively through the transition. Again, transition representatives for each candidate would work with a group of senior representatives from the agencies, planning leadership changes and identifying potential obstacles.

Additionally, agency directors would designate “acting officers” for all essential non-career positions. In the event that these positions become vacant during the transition, a career civil servant from the agency will take over as “acting officer” until a replacement is appointed.

The Bush to Obama transition was one of the smoothest in history, and this bill reflects the best practices learned from that experience. (Full disclosure: one of the co-authors of this blog, Eisen, was the deputy general counsel of the Obama transition.) The Bush administration was ready early to work with the transition teams for both major party candidates. It offered a model of organization and cooperation with both campaigns well before Election Day. Once the election was decided, that engagement intensified, with constant contact and seamless teamwork between President-elect and his team and President Bush and his. Indeed, even after Election Day, many Bush appointees were asked to and did stay on longer in order to give the administration more time to find suitable replacements (See, e.g. Burke, p.594).

The Obama administration will undoubtedly "pay it forward" and meet those same high standards in addressing the upcoming transition. Nevertheless, codifying recent best practices as law makes eminent sense now, while we are all paying attention to the upcoming election—and knowing a future administration may not be as cooperative unless required by law. Although Inauguration Day 2017 may seem far off, there is actually not a moment to spare for this important legislation to proceed.

A curriculum controversy is roiling schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.  In the past few months, parents in the San Mateo-Foster City School District, located just south of San Francisco International Airport, voiced concerns over changes to the middle school math program. The changes were brought about by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  Under previous policies, most eighth graders in the district took algebra I.  Some very sharp math students, who had already completed algebra I in seventh grade, took geometry in eighth grade. The new CCSS-aligned math program will reduce eighth grade enrollments in algebra I and eliminate geometry altogether as a middle school course. 

A little background information will clarify the controversy.  Eighth grade mathematics may be the single grade-subject combination most profoundly affected by the CCSS.  In California, the push for most students to complete algebra I by the end of eighth grade has been a centerpiece of state policy, as it has been in several states influenced by the “Algebra for All” movement that began in the 1990s.  Nationwide, in 1990, about 16 percent of all eighth graders reported that they were taking an algebra or geometry course.  In 2013, the number was three times larger, and nearly half of all eighth graders (48 percent) were taking algebra or geometry.^[i]  When that percentage goes down, as it is sure to under the CCSS, what happens to high achieving math students?

The parents who are expressing the most concern have kids who excel at math.  One parent in San Mateo-Foster City told The San Mateo Daily Journal, “This is really holding the advanced kids back.”^[ii] The CCSS math standards recommend a single math course for seventh grade, integrating several math topics, followed by a similarly integrated math course in eighth grade.  Algebra I won’t be offered until ninth grade.  The San Mateo-Foster City School District decided to adopt a “three years into two” accelerated option.  This strategy is suggested on the Common Core website as an option that districts may consider for advanced students.  It combines the curriculum from grades seven through nine (including algebra I) into a two year offering that students can take in seventh and eighth grades.^[iii]  The district will also provide—at one school site—a sequence beginning in sixth grade that compacts four years of math into three.  Both accelerated options culminate in the completion of algebra I in eighth grade.

The San Mateo-Foster City School District is home to many well-educated, high-powered professionals who work in Silicon Valley.  They are unrelentingly liberal in their politics.  Equity is a value they hold dear.^[iv]  They also know that completing at least one high school math course in middle school is essential for students who wish to take AP Calculus in their senior year of high school.  As CCSS is implemented across the nation, administrators in districts with demographic profiles similar to San Mateo-Foster City will face parents of mathematically precocious kids asking whether the “common” in Common Core mandates that all students take the same math course.  Many of those districts will respond to their constituents and provide accelerated pathways (“pathway” is CCSS jargon for course sequence). 

But other districts will not.  Data show that urban schools, schools with large numbers of black and Hispanic students, and schools located in impoverished neighborhoods are reluctant to differentiate curriculum.  It is unlikely that gifted math students in those districts will be offered an accelerated option under CCSS.  The reason why can be summed up in one word: tracking.

Tracking in eighth grade math means providing different courses to students based on their prior math achievement.  The term “tracking” has been stigmatized, coming under fire for being inequitable.  Historically, where tracking existed, black, Hispanic, and disadvantaged students were often underrepresented in high-level math classes; white, Asian, and middle-class students were often over-represented.  An anti-tracking movement gained a full head of steam in the 1980s.  Tracking reformers knew that persuading high schools to de-track was hopeless.  Consequently, tracking’s critics focused reform efforts on middle schools, urging that they group students heterogeneously with all students studying a common curriculum.  That approach took hold in urban districts, but not in the suburbs.

Now the Common Core and de-tracking are linked.  Providing an accelerated math track for high achievers has become a flashpoint throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.  An October 2014 article in The San Jose Mercury News named Palo Alto, Saratoga, Cupertino, Pleasanton, and Los Gatos as districts that have announced, in response to parent pressure, that they are maintaining an accelerated math track in middle schools.  These are high-achieving, suburban districts.  Los Gatos parents took to the internet with a petition drive when a rumor spread that advanced courses would end.  Ed Source reports that 900 parents signed a petition opposing the move and board meetings on the issue were packed with opponents. The accelerated track was kept.  Piedmont established a single track for everyone, but allowed parents to apply for an accelerated option.  About twenty five percent did so.  The Mercury News story underscores the demographic pattern that is unfolding and asks whether CCSS “could cement a two-tier system, with accelerated math being the norm in wealthy areas and the exception elsewhere.”

What is CCSS’s real role here?  Does the Common Core take an explicit stand on tracking?  Not really.  But de-tracking advocates can interpret the “common” in Common Core as license to eliminate accelerated tracks for high achievers.  As a noted CCSS supporter (and tracking critic), William H. Schmidt, has stated, “By insisting on common content for all students at each grade level and in every community, the Common Core mathematics standards are in direct conflict with the concept of tracking.”^[v]  Thus, tracking joins other controversial curricular ideas—e.g., integrated math courses instead of courses organized by content domains such as algebra and geometry; an emphasis on “deep,” conceptual mathematics over learning procedures and basic skills—as “dog whistles” embedded in the Common Core.  Controversial positions aren’t explicitly stated, but they can be heard by those who want to hear them.    

CCSS doesn’t have to take an outright stand on these debates in order to have an effect on policy.  For the practical questions that local grouping policies resolve—who takes what courses and when do they take them—CCSS wipes the slate clean.  There are plenty of people ready to write on that blank slate, particularly administrators frustrated by unsuccessful efforts to de-track in the past

Suburban parents are mobilized in defense of accelerated options for advantaged students.  What about kids who are outstanding math students but also happen to be poor, black, or Hispanic?  What happens to them, especially if they attend schools in which the top institutional concern is meeting the needs of kids functioning several years below grade level?  I presented a paper on this question at a December 2014 conference held by the Fordham Institute in Washington, DC.  I proposed a pilot program of “tracking for equity.”  By that term, I mean offering black, Hispanic, and poor high achievers the same opportunity that the suburban districts in the Bay Area are offering.  High achieving middle school students in poor neighborhoods would be able to take three years of math in two years and proceed on a path toward AP Calculus as high school seniors.

It is true that tracking must be done carefully.  Tracking can be conducted unfairly and has been used unjustly in the past.  One of the worst consequences of earlier forms of tracking was that low-skilled students were tracked into dead end courses that did nothing to help them academically.  These low-skilled students were disproportionately from disadvantaged communities or communities of color.  That’s not a danger in the proposal I am making.  The default curriculum, the one every student would take if not taking the advanced track, would be the Common Core.  If that’s a dead end for low achievers, Common Core supporters need to start being more honest in how they are selling the CCSS.  Moreover, to ensure that the policy gets to the students for whom it is intended, I have proposed running the pilot program in schools predominantly populated by poor, black, or Hispanic students.  The pilot won’t promote segregation within schools because the sad reality is that participating schools are already segregated.

Since I presented the paper, I have privately received negative feedback from both Algebra for All advocates and Common Core supporters.  That’s disappointing.  Because of their animus toward tracking, some critics seem to support a severe policy swing from Algebra for All, which was pursued for equity, to Algebra for None, which will be pursued for equity.  It’s as if either everyone or no one should be allowed to take algebra in eighth grade.  The argument is that allowing only some eighth graders to enroll in algebra is elitist, even if the students in question are poor students of color who are prepared for the course and likely to benefit from taking it.

The controversy raises crucial questions about the Common Core.  What’s common in the common core?  Is it the curriculum?  And does that mean the same curriculum for all?  Will CCSS serve as a curricular floor, ensuring all students are exposed to a common body of knowledge and skills?  Or will it serve as a ceiling, limiting the progress of bright students so that their achievement looks more like that of their peers?  These questions will be answered differently in different communities, and as they are, the inequities that Common Core supporters think they’re addressing may surface again in a profound form.   

Last week’s Seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama will be remembered for the historic handshakes and broad smiles shared by Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro—the first sit-down meeting of leaders from the two nations since Fidel Castro marched triumphantly into Havana in early 1959. But this memorable encounter was merely the most visible piece of a much broader Cuban strategy at the Panama Summit.

The large Cuban delegation took full advantage of the several forums that comprise the complex Summit process. These periodic inter-American conclaves feature meetings among heads of state and foreign ministers, a CEO Summit for corporate executives, and a Civil Society Forum for representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The Cubans seized all three opportunities and fielded strong teams to advance their interests: to engage with the multi-level inter-American system, and to send clear signals back home of where government policy is headed.

Face-to-face diplomacy

In addition to the Obama-Castro encounter, foreign ministers John Kerry and Bruno Rodriguez held a lengthy bilateral. Since Obama and Castro publicly announced their intention to renew relations on December 17 of last year, negotiations have dragged on. Cuba is reluctant to grant American diplomats unrestricted travel throughout the island to engage with Cuban citizens, including political dissidents. This is the norm in international diplomacy, the United States argues, whereas the Cubans remain fearful that U.S. diplomats will provide encouragement and assistance to activists advocating for political pluralism. The Cubans want to be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, a designation which automatically invokes economic sanctions. The White House is withholding that relief as a bargaining chip in the negotiations.

In his opening plenary remarks, President Castro spoke passionately and at length, impressing the audience with his heartfelt remarks even as he came across as an elder statesman indulging in the memories and glories of his youth. Yet, Castro was also sending signals to the stalwarts in the Communist Party back home that he had not forgotten their sacrifices and was not abandoning their values. His engagement with the United States would not be allowed to endanger their tight control of Cuban society. Still, most significantly, Castro kept the door open to engagement with the United States by dramatically addressing President Obama, tossing him compliments: “President Obama is an honest man…I have read his two memoirs and I believe he is a man who has remained faithful to his humble origins.”

By lauding Obama, holding a private bilateral, and appearing with a broad smile at a press opportunity, Castro reaffirmed his commitment to improving relations with the United States. He also may have been nudging his negotiators to wrap up the talks to allow the mutual re-opening of embassies. The Cubans are aware that not all of Washington favors improved relations, and that they must consolidate the process of diplomatic normalization while Obama commands the White House.

The CEO and Civil Society Forums

Presumably, the main Cuban motivation for engaging the United States is economic: to attract more tourists, financial remittances, and eventually productive investments from the United States and the rest of the world, and to extract a relaxation of sanctions, particularly those impeding international financial transactions. Cuban Minister of Trade and Investment Rodrigo Malmierca led a commercial delegation that included top executives from state-owned enterprises, as well as leadership from the new Mariel Development Zone. At the CEO Summit, Malmierca was granted one of the few time slots for a keynote address. But rather than take advantage of this unique opportunity, the Cuban minister rushed through an uninspired text, offering nothing that could not be found in previous government press releases and official documents. More than two years after the passage of a much-heralded foreign investment law and over a year after the official opening of the Mariel Development Zone, very few new investments have earned official authorization.  

While potentially interested in Cuban markets, executives I spoke with remain cautious, skeptical that the government has yet created a sufficiently business-friendly environment to warrant the risk. They speculate as to why so few new foreign ventures are underway: is it opposition from well-placed hard-liners, bureaucratic inertia, or lack of financing or other necessary business inputs? In private conversations, Malmierca hinted at a political obstacle: many Cubans identify the revolution with nationalizations of private property, so it will be difficult to explain to them why foreign investment is now so welcome.

The Cubans also fielded a significant presence at the Civil Society Forum. The dominant group represented government-affiliated “non-governmental” organizations (GONGOS) such as the official trade union or Confederation of Cuban Women, while opposition NGOs marshalled about a dozen persons. At a pre-Summit speech in Caracas, Castro had ominously labelled these opposition NGOs “mercenaries” in the pay of foreign intelligence services. Following that lead, the government-affiliated group staged aggressive, noisy demonstrations denouncing the opposition representatives and accusing them of harboring infamous terrorists. The GONGOS threatened to boycott the Forum (although some did eventually participate), and disrupted the Forum’s working group on democratic governance. Here again, the message being telegraphed back home was clear: the Cuban government does not consider these opposition voices to be legitimate actors and loyal Cuban citizens should not associate with them.

Discernable signals

Altogether, at the three forums the Cubans demonstrated their strong interest in participating actively in hemispheric affairs and institutions. The Cubans are capable of fielding smart, disciplined delegations with well-scripted strategies and messages. Once again, the high-quality Cuban diplomacy demonstrated that it has few peers in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The messages transmitted at the Panama Summit were subtle but decodable. In the diplomatic sphere, Castro wants to move forward, to take advantage of Obama’s tenure to relax U.S.-Cuban tensions and gain some economic advantages. In the business sphere, Malmierca reaffirmed Castro’s oft-repeated admonitions that economic change on the island will be very gradual and socialist planning will not be discarded under his watch. In the political sphere, the Cuban Communist Party intends to maintain its absolute hegemony—political pluralism outside the Party is definitely not yet on the policy agenda.

Read more about the Summit with Richard Feinberg's post on how the United States came out of the Panama Summit of the Americas.

Event Information

Para Español, hacer clic aquí

On December 17, 2014, President Barack Obama and President Raúl Castro announced that the United States and Cuba would seek to reestablish diplomatic relations. Since then, the two countries have engaged in bilateral negotiations in Havana and Washington, the United States has made several unilateral policy changes to facilitate greater trade and travel between the two countries, and bipartisan legislation has been introduced in the U.S. Congress to lift the travel ban. Meanwhile, conversations are ongoing about ending the 50-plus-year embargo and Cuba has continued the process of updating its economic system, including establishing new rules for foreign investment and the emerging private sector.

In light of the significant shifts underway in the U.S.-Cuba relationship, new questions arise about Cuba’s development model, and its economic relations with the region and the world. On Tuesday, June 2, the Latin America Initiative at Brookings hosted a series of panel discussions with various experts including economists, lawyers, academics, and practitioners to examine opportunities and challenges facing Cuba in this new context. Panels examined macroeconomic changes underway in Cuba, how to finance Cuba’s growth, the emerging private sector, and themes related to much-needed foreign investment.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #CubaGrowth

Video

• Panel 1: Trends in the Cuban economy in light of the new U.S.-Cuba context
• Panel 2: Financing Cuba’s growth, development, and trade
• Panel 3: Next steps for Cuba’s emerging private Sector–Cuentapropistas and cooperatives
• Panel 4: A New stage in foreign direct investment

Audio

• Rethinking Cuba: New opportunities for development - Part 1 (English)
• Rethinking Cuba: New opportunities for development - Part 2 (English)
• Rethinking Cuba: New opportunities for development - Part 1 (español)
• Rethinking Cuba: New opportunities for development - Part 2 (español)

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20150602_rethinking_cuba_transcript

The global consumer products company Unilever Plc announced on Monday a $35 million investment in Cuba’s Special Development Zone at Mariel. Late last year, Brascuba, a joint venture with a Brazilian firm, Souza Cruz, owned by the mega-conglomerate British American Tobacco (BAT), confirmed it would built a $120 million facility in the same location.

So far, these are the two biggest investments in the much-trumpeted Cuban effort to attract foreign investment, outside of traditional tourism. Yet, neither investment is really new. Unilever had been operating in Cuba since the mid-1990s, only to exit a few years ago in a contract dispute with the Cuban authorities. Brascuba will be moving its operations from an existing factory to the ZED Mariel site.

What is new is the willingness of Cuban authorities to accede to the corporate requirements of foreign investors. Finally, the Cubans appear to grasp that Cuba is a price-taker, and that it must fit into the global strategies of their international business partners. Certainly, Cuban negotiators can strike smart deals, but they cannot dictate the over-arching rules of the game.

Cuba still has a long way to go before it reaches the officially proclaimed goal of $2.5 billion in foreign investment inflows per year. Total approvals last year for ZED Mariel reached only some $200 million, and this year are officially projected to reach about $400 million. For many potential investors, the business climate remains too uncertain, and the project approval process too opaque and cumbersome. But the Brascuba and Unilever projects are definitely movements in the right direction.

But Unilever feared that granting its Cuban partner 51% would yield too much management control and could jeopardize brand quality. Unilever also balked at exporting products made in Cuba, where product costs were as much as one-third higher than in bigger Unilever plants in other Latin American countries.

The 2012 collapse of the Unilever contract renewal negotiations adversely affected investor perceptions of the business climate. If the Cuban government could not sustain a good working relationship with Unilever—a highly regarded, marquée multinational corporation with a global footprint—what international investor (at least one operating in the domestic consumer goods markets) could be confident of its ability to sustain a profitable long-term operation in Cuba?

In the design of the new joint venture, Cuba has allowed Unilever a majority 60% stake. Furthermore, in the old joint venture, Unilever executives complained that low salaries, as set by the government, contributed to low labor productivity. In ZED Mariel, worker salaries will be significantly higher: firms like Unilever will continue to pay the same wages to the government employment entity, but the entity’s tax will be significantly smaller, leaving a higher take-home pay for the workers. Hiring and firing will remain the domain of the official entity, however, not the joint venture.

Unilever is also looking forward to currency unification, widely anticipated for 2016. Previously, Unilever had enjoyed comfortable market shares in the hard-currency Cuban convertible currency (CUC) market, but had been largely excluded from the national currency markets, which state-owned firms had reserved for themselves. With currency unification, Unilever will be able to compete head-to-head with state-owned enterprises in a single national market.

Similarly, Brascuba will benefit from the new wage regime at Mariel and, as a consumer products firm, from currency unification. At its old location, Brascuba considered motivating and retaining talent to be among the firm’s key challenges; the higher wages in ZED Mariel will help to attract and retain high-quality labor.

Brascuba believes this is a good time for expansion. Better-paid workers at Mariel will be well motivated, and the expansion of the private sector is putting more money into consumer pockets. The joint venture will close its old facility in downtown Havana, in favor of the new facility at Mariel, sharply expanding production for both the domestic and international markets (primarily, Brazil).

A further incentive for investment today is the prospect of the lifting of U.S. economic sanctions, even if the precise timing is impossible to predict. Brascuba estimated that U.S. economic sanctions have raised its costs of doing business by some 20%. Inputs such as cigarette filters, manufacturing equipment and spare parts, and infrastructure such as information technology, must be sourced from more distant and often less cost-efficient sources.

Another sign of enhanced Cuban flexibility: neither investment is in a high technology sector, the loudly touted goal of ZED Mariel. A manufacturer of personal hygiene and home care product lines, Unilever will churn out toothpaste and soap, among other items. Brascuba will produce cigarettes. Cuban authorities now seem to accept that basic consumer products remain the bread-and-butter of any modern economy. An added benefit: international visitors will find a more ready supply of shampoo!

The Unilever and Brascuba renewals suggest a new realism in the Cuban camp. At ZED Mariel, Cuba is allowing their foreign partners to exert management control, to hire a higher-paid, better motivated workforce, and it is anticipated, to compete in a single currency market. And thanks to the forward-looking diplomacy of Raúl Castro and Barack Obama, international investors are also looking forward to the eventual lifting of U.S. economic sanctions.

This piece was originally published in Cuba Standard.