In short, talking about evaluation is not easy at all because it is a delicate issue, since today in Mexico, we do not have a culture that consciously accepts it as a reflective practice, not a tax one, and that leads us to continuous improvement.. This is due to the fact that many times it is difficult for us to get out of the comfort zone to analyze and reflect on the impact and deficiencies that exist in our educational centers, so the concepts of evaluation and management will be presented below according to the author's conception and then cover some aspects of the importance of self-evaluation of educational centers.
In this era in which the educational system is seeking to see schools as intelligent organizations, which can be accountable to the educational system and to society, the most recurrent issue to listen to is educational quality, which it is argued will be achieved if we have better teachers Therefore, the issue of evaluation for improvement is a constant in all educational practice.
Therefore, school management, which is the term used to name everyone that happens in school, is aimed at achieving student learning, it is assumed that when the activities of schools began to be called With the term of management it was because the school was empowered to make its decisions according to its characteristics, that is, they will focus their efforts on their immediate needs, specific to the context, however it has not been achieved because even if we wanted to do things responding more to what students demand, we would have to deviate from the content that the state imposes on us and at this timeTeachers are more concerned about the student learning what the program marks for when they are evaluated at the national level they obtain good results, even if some content becomes inconsequential for them, that is the importance and incoherence of evaluation today.
Likewise, since evaluation is such a current practice, at the same time so complex and difficult to detail, we propose that we review some definitions and then reach a conclusion about what the evaluation of educational management is for us.
"Evaluations are not an end but an instrument for accountability and improvement of educational quality" (Rodríguez)
"It is the moment in which each educational establishment collects, compiles, systematizes, analyzes and evaluates all the information related to the development of its actions and the results thereof." (Valderrama)
Based on the above, we can define evaluation as a data collection process in order to find areas of opportunity for continuous improvement, which strengthens institutional dynamics and the achievement of learning.
It is worth mentioning that the evaluation is not a process to which we can put an end to it, as there will always be things to improve within the school, itself, already placing ourselves in the concept in the management, remember that all the actors involved are always in Movement and this swing takes as its center the integral formation of the student, so there will always be new things to learn and we should not see the evaluation as a tool for measuring what has already been learned but in order to learn from what is being doing and what will be done to improve.
On the other hand, Soto makes a good analysis of what the evaluation implies when he objects:
“Evaluation has not been a practice that systematically reinforces the operation of the various educational services due, on the one hand, to the lack of a“ culture of evaluation ”that fosters conservative ideas that associate evaluation with control and punishment and not with its potential to identify achievements and deficiencies that allow reorienting actions. " (Soto)
We have always related the evaluation paradigm to feelings of fear and doubts, since it is the moment when they are going to tell us if we are giving approving results or not, so what Soto says when he mentions the lack of culture, since as much has been said, we lack maturity and honesty when evaluating ourselves, since it is easy for us to accept a change if it does not come from ourselves. For example, what we currently do every end of the month in the technical councils is to evaluate ourselves, although according to our experience many times we do not become so sincere about our practice and we do not achieve reflection, which is the essence in the evaluation. So much so that at the time of redirecting actions that would be the main purpose of evaluation, perhaps for convenience,We continue to do the same without accepting that we have not made progress with these strategies and that we must redirect in order to achieve the results we hope for.
However, self-evaluation may be the best option when an educational center wants to generate an intervention project that will lead to the achievement of the purposes that have been proposed, because the members will feel part of this process, they will look for purposeful alternatives and also the evaluation will come out of them, not as something forced and that I have to do because they were asked. Although in the self-assessment we may sin by omission, because generally we do not realize that there are things that are affected or that have become problems, since as they are so common we do not notice them, we can exemplify this in the following way:
If María goes to Juanita's house, and suddenly says to her, - there is something different here what you did, Juanita answers that nothing, but she does not remember that the last time María went to her house, it was painted a different color and the The curtains were different. After a few minutes, Maria noticed this and told Juanita.
Therefore, Maria, who is external to the dynamics of Juanita's house, soon realized the differences. With this analogy we seek to explain that self-assessment should be helped by actors who are not immersed in the daily dynamics, so that it is easier to find our areas of opportunity, but we also have to be aware of what we are told will not be for attacking us but they will be critical proposals and that we must question but with a view to reflecting.
For the above, Valderrama says that "management is a process that should be focused on taking advantage of the talents of the teaching team in order to find solutions to the problems that afflict us, " as already mentioned, it must be ensured that we are all immersed in the evaluation We are all part of the processes and identify what each one can contribute and know how to take advantage of it so that each of the members feels part of the evaluation and responsible for it.
It also mentions that in this process the strengths and opportunities to improve must be identified and a pertinent intervention plan to be made, to focus the evaluation on the management, that is why the indicators should be remembered, which should have been defined since the goals were raised or purposes of the improvement project, as they will dictate the aspects to be evaluated. When the indicators have already been remembered, it should be analyzed if they were achieved and to what extent, since we remember that the evaluation can be qualitative or quantifiable, in our experience it is easier to measure progress with percentages, so we recommend for accountability be done in a measurable way, since the advances and setbacks in the different aspects can be appreciated graphically.
On the other hand, Rodríguez mentions that in Cuba the method of joint methodological training is applied where the evaluation process is an accompaniment where management is evaluated and the teacher is prepared and taught, seeking to learn from their mistakes and the same happens with the The institution being evaluated is accompanied by them to achieve the objectives. We can consider that in Mexico we have needed to reorient the focus on evaluation so that it breaks the taboos that hold back growth, as we remember that evaluation will always have that purpose.
To conclude, and resuming the above, it would be better if the self-evaluation was an accompaniment process that will reorient the actions in a purposeful and co-responsible way, as it is supposed to be done in the council, however, in the absence of constant supervision, it has not been achieved then most of the time, at least from our experience, you don't act honestly.
Bibliographical sources.
RODRIGUEZ, Izquierdo J., Evaluate management an integrating process in educational management, 2007 educational management evaluation forum. Colombia
SOTO, Reyna C. 2004, The evaluation of educational management as an instrument that allows to continuously improve the service, providing quality education in each of the telesecundarias schools. La Salle de Pachuca University, VALDERRAMA James R. Subdirectorate of improvement. Base document for AL TABLERO.
