Vicky Colbert's journey as an educational reformer began in the lowliest of places. With a freshly minted master's degree from Stanford's School of Education, Colbert traveled to remote villages in her native Colombia to see exactly what she needed to change. She found spare, concrete buildings where children had no books.
Three decades later, Colbert can claim that the innovations she spearheaded through Escuela Nueva (new school) have made their way into classrooms in 14 countries, mostly in Latin America, changing the educational picture for at least 5 million students. Now, she says, those same rural schools have classrooms with splashes of color, small tables for students to gather around, and improved textbooks. Her work has been noticed by dozens of organizations, and last fall she was among the awardees for the first Clinton Global Citizen awards.
Colbert was lucky. Under the guidance of a mother who felt strongly about education reform, she earned an undergraduate degree in sociology in Colombia and was imbued with a passion to work against inequity. Colbert's Stanford degree, funded by a Ford Foundation scholarship, gave her background in the most up-to-date education research. “You either become a revolutionary or start a silent revolution,” she said during a visit to the Bay Area in November. “My goal is changing minds and systems through education.” Colbert says the children not only show stronger academic skills, but also develop measurably better self-esteem and social skills. When Colbert returned to Colombia, she took a job in the ministry of education as the project coordinator for rural schools. The problems were daunting: no learning materials, high dropout rates and one teacher often responsible simultaneously for kindergartners and adolescents. Colbert worked with local teachers and encouraged schools to move to cooperative learning methods and self-paced instruction. Instead of lecturing at the front of the classroom, teachers—who Colbert says were eager to help improve the schools—work with small groups of students. Under Colbert's direction, schools also got textbooks designed to last as long as 10 years, essential in impoverished environments. By 1982, she was vice minister of education, and by the end of the decade, Colbert's Escuela Nueva approach had become national policy. A 1998 study of the program in its pilot urban setting showed a 40 percent improvement in language skills and a 69 percent improvement in math skills.
One challenge is keeping the momentum going. “Innovations fade,” Colbert acknowledges. In the 1990s, Colombia decentralized its education ministry and Colbert's work seemed threatened. She changed course—just slightly—to her Escuela Nueva Foundation, a nonprofit started in 1987 to continue the mission of improving education in challenging environments. One effort is Escuela Nueva Learning Circles, which serves children who are migrants or displaced within their countries. A study of the effort showed a 36 percent improvement in language skills and a 30 percent improvement in math skills. “This demonstrates that it can be done,” Colbert says. “We can change mindsets and learning paradigms.”
