Improvement

Next Monday, Mexico will apply a test in order to fill 7,000 teaching positions at public schools around the nation. The prevailing custom is to sell positions or pass them to a friend or family member. While such practices will most likely remain quite common, this is a step in the right direction. A pure teaching meritocracy would eat into the influence of the super-powerful union boss Elba Esther Gordillo, so the process will only move in fits and starts. In a long interview with Excelsior, Secretary of Public Education Josefina Vázquez Mota said that she trusted Gordillo, after which she was presumably not given a polygraph test, because none was necessary. 

Another interesting nugget: 

Q: Are you familiar with the test [to be taken on Monday]?

A: No I'm not.

Q: Shouldn't the secretary of education be familiar with the test?

A: I prefer not to; otherwise, one gets suspicious. It's better like this, because it's a great responsibility. A letter was made up from Transparency Mexico, and they have agreed to accompany us in the process of confidentiality.

Such is Mexico's all-encompassing distrust of officials that the Secretary of Education doesn't feel comfortable even glancing over one of her greatest accomplishments in office. Nice.