Latin American Educational Services is a Florida corporation with activities throughout Latin America. We are specialists in project management and market development in the education sector in Latin America, with emphasis on public-sector ministries. We help institutions maximize return on investment in education, and we develop human resources. We provide customized and integrated solutions for education, often including bespoke print or digital content and courseware, professional development for teachers as well as top-quality measurement and certification services.
We understand that education is the engine of social development. An educated population is an employable population, and our mission is to assist and facilitate the evolution of education in the emerging world, and help close the gap of social inequality.
Latin American Educational Services works closely with federal and state level Ministry of Education leaders in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and most countries in Latin America. We love to work with US non-profits and for-profits working in the education space, and help them overseas. And we love to create integrated, contextualized solutions to real problems in Latin American public-sector and private-sector education, and share best practices to implement positive change in the region.
Our projects have included:
- Management of a large-scale, three-year project under contract with the Mexican Ministry of Education (Secretaria de Educación Pública or SEP) 2009-2012, in which we assessed progress in English-language acquisition and proficiency in all 32 states among 64,000 public school students and 630 teachers using custom English-language measurement instruments we developed for the project at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Contracted and coordinated over 100 freelance collaborators associated with US and Mexican universities for development of materials, planning, field validation of the instruments, logistical implementation and data collection, data analysis and annual formal reporting to the Ministry of Education. Lead investigator: Dr. Peter Sayer, now of Ohio State.
- Development of new, proprietary professional development courses for English teachers in the Mexican Ministry of Education teaching in the PRONI (Programa Nacional de Ingles) program, together with accompanying print materials, a service now used by the SEP in 14 states. https://latinamericaneducationalservices.com/publications/
- Business development and operationalization for the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) in the Mexican ministry of education (SEP), 2013-2015. CAL products and professional development services are now used by state governments in half of the states in Mexico.
- Worked with the Education Relief Foundation (Geneva) to produce in Panama an international conference of Ministers of Education from across Latin America in October 2017, resulting in a position paper, and formed part of a corresponding delegation to the UNESCO to present the paper in December of that year. The ERF is dedicated to promoting and funding balanced and inclusive education in the developing world.
- Developed custom evaluation instruments (exams) under contract for the Inter-American Development Bank (part of the World Bank) in 2012-2014 to use in the assessment of English proficiency in 700 public school teachers and 3,000 students in the state of Puebla, Mexico. Project was run by the Inter-American Partnership for Education (IAPE), based at Dartmouth University and funded through the WorldFund (now called Educando).
- Organized for Jolly Learning, a UK-based publisher of best-selling phonics materials for children aged 3-8, free pilots in 2012-2013 of their ‘synthetic phonics’ program in 22 states in Mexico, involving 70 schools and 200 teachers. Teachers received free materials and professional development adequate to implement, for the first time, an English phonics curriculum to 7,500 public school students. Improvement in students’ English language proficiency and reading levels was remarkable. Early phonics instruction has remained a part of many states’ English curriculum and a growing number of Mexican public-school teachers have become expert in teaching phonics.
- Worked with the Committee for Children, a non-profit dedicated to socio-emotional learning, to bring their products and services to Mexico, in particular the state of Nuevo Leon (SEP).
- Developed for the private school market new ESL textbooks from scratch, grades PreK-6 under contract with various Mexican and American educational publishers, including student and teacher materials, workbooks and readers, with accompanying curriculum development, writing, editing, page design and audio recordings. Example: https://porrua.mx/libro/GEN:9786074987102/on-your-marks-reading-book-6-grade-primary/steve-marban/9786074987102
- Licensing, translation and publication of proprietary Spanish-language study manuals for certification in computer proficiency (CompTIA certifications: Computer Technology Industry Association) for young adults in vocational-technical programs and workforce development initiatives. These localized test-prep materials were translated and sold in e-book format to several states at the ‘bachillerato’ or high-school level, such the COBAEV, or Colegio de Bachilleres de Veracruz in Mexico. With the program, hundreds of students graduated from these institutions armed with a world-class certification in computer technology, from a non-profit, vendor-neutral IT certifying agency, CompTIA.
- Development of test items for ELPA21, a new series of language proficiency assessments for the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO, an education-centered NGO) to be used by English-language learners in public schools in an 11-state consortium (USA; 2013-2014). http://www.elpa21.org/assessment-system
- Start-up under contract of a new educational software distribution company in Mexico. Placed innovative educational software in all 25,000 public middle schools (SEP) and led teacher professional development and training on the implementation of this product in all 32 states. Also opened the private school market for this platform by building a sales and marketing staff, working with resellers (distributors) and developing new ESL courseware.
- Business development in Latin America for several American and British K-12 educational publishers (i.e. Scholastic, Rourke Educational Media), opening new markets, set up pilots.
