Raise consciousness about the importance of increasing the participation, both quantitatively and qualitatively, of civil society in the country’s various pressing issues and debates.  This objective will be pursued through activities aimed at raising civil society’s self esteem and awareness of its potential.

1.Name of Project:
Trial for Performance based compensation in public schools

2.What will it do?
It consists of creating a pilot project of three to five public schools (to grow as it is successful) that have been “adopted” by the private sector.  We would administer standarized tests to two or three key grades in each school and reward monetarily those teachers, directors and the school (the kids would be compensated some other way) involved in improving the children's scores from year to year.

3.Who/What will it benefit?
Panama historically has suffered from a system which foments / compensates union participation, protests and politacl connections, but not performance.  Therefore, all raises, bonuses, etc. are not obtained by the best teachers or by the performance of the teachers. 

This pilot project aims to show that if one compensates for performance, one gets it (statistically over time).  If successful, this project aims to spread to more public schools until the professors themselves see the benefit of this sort of additional compensation.  Both the teachers and the students in the public school system would benefit.

4.How will it be implemented?
The companies which are already adopting these schools, would create a private fund to pay the bonuses to the teachers, the directors and the schools.  An independent testing organization would administer the tests every year for five years to the participating grades in the participating schools.  The test the first year would be only to set the base line.  From then on, the bonus paid would be based on the improvement against the previous year.  The tests would be in three basic subjects, Math, Spanish and English.

5.What is my role?
My role is to identify the schools and donors, and get the latter  to contribute funds to the project; identify an institution to select and administer the tests. Finally, and most importantly to get the Ministry of Education to follow the program and evaluate its results over time, so they may expand it with public funds inasmuch as it proves successful in the trial.

6. How will it be measured?
First, if it gets off the ground.
Second, if the grades improve in the standarized tests over time.
Third, if it gets implemented in more and more schools over time.

7. Does it meet the criteria for projects laid out in the project descriptor?
I believe so.

8. Why is it worthy of CALI?
It is a project that takes advantage of the connections I have developed over time in the Business World and Civil Society to bring benefits, not only to society as a whole (since education is the basis of long term development), but also the business world by creating a more educated citizenship and work force in the long run.