# ABC and precision literacy: an ecosystem where context and AI's technological capabilities are the keys to success

Author: Harvey Sánchez-Restrepo
Original publication: 2026-01-28
Spanish original: https://estrategiabyaleph.substack.com/p/estrategia-122-la-evaluacion-educativa
English URL: https://elcontemplador.github.io/estrategia-english/essays/122/
Status: Published translation

This is a translation of the original Spanish essay published on 28 January 2026. Its claims, examples and forecasts retain that historical context.

English publication: 2026-09-29

> This issue's main article is by Harvey Sánchez-Restrepo. He describes a very specific educational use of AI and advances an idea for literacy that is as simple as it is disruptive: before measuring, understand the context.

>

> Harvey specialises in educational assessment, public policy and complex systems. He founded and was the first executive director of Ecuador's National Institute for Educational Evaluation, Ineval, and has helped establish assessment and admissions systems in several countries. He now heads the [Latin American Agency for Evaluation and Public Policy (ALEPH)](https://www.aleph.la/)—its shared acronym with ALEPH Educational Institution is purely coincidental—and advises organisations including UNESCO's LLECE, the World Bank, the United Nations and the Inter-American Development Bank. Pablo Martín, estrategIA's editor and academic director of “our” ALEPH, met him in Mexico at the Third National Congress on Education, CONAED, “Artificial Intelligence: the Challenges of Education in Relation to the Human Condition”, organised by CONACAM, [which we discussed in issue 114](https://open.substack.com/pub/estrategiabyaleph/p/estrategia-114-renacer-o-fin-del?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web). We invited him to explain this concrete application of AI in education, within a particularly interesting broader framework.



In most countries, education faces complex challenges in making literacy more than an academic target with political impact. Literacy has become a bottleneck for social mobility and sustainable economic development. Ensuring that every child enjoys this right without discrimination requires assessing its exercise wherever education is provided. Traditional assessment methods, however, are slow both to implement and to deliver results. They also often lack the classroom context and student profiles needed to understand and adjust teaching strategies so that each learner can fulfil their potential.



To address this longstanding challenge, the Latin American Agency for Evaluation and Public Policy, Aleph, developed ABC—*Assessment Beyond the Classroom*—for Latin America and the Caribbean. This ecosystem is designed to create an *avatar of each student's literacy development* through adaptive assessment processes. After years of refinement, it is redefining how learning is understood and evaluated, and how it can be strengthened and improved. At the heart of this large-scale project is the aim of turning the classroom into a learning environment in which teaching activities emerge from purposeful, guided interactions, rather than from systematically imposing uniform individual behaviours.



[![Diagnostic, formative and summative assessment along the school year.](https://elcontemplador.github.io/estrategia-english/assets/images/8422c01d-4ea8-4f19-969b-90280a3534a4_1251x727.png)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!awGp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8422c01d-4ea8-4f19-969b-90280a3534a4_1251x727.png)



*“Families of assessment”: diagnostic assessment at the beginning of the school year helps design educational pathways; formative assessment gradually and continuously strengthens the educational process; summative assessment at the end of the year identifies educational achievements. The diagram connects these stages as pieces of a learning pathway under Assessment Beyond the Classroom (ABC).*



ABC therefore follows a disruptive workflow, not simply because it uses AI to improve the scope, accuracy and speed of assessing writing, reading fluency and comprehension. Above all, it seeks to understand the student as a dynamic, adaptable person in development. It recognises that knowledge, skills and attitudes arise from past, present and future exposure to a finite set of social, emotional and behavioural dimensions that constrain, inhibit or promote learning and its effective use in challenging environments.



[![Scientific and technological architecture of the ABC assessment process.](https://elcontemplador.github.io/estrategia-english/assets/images/999de1cf-b1f5-45c7-ab4d-08924fc087cc_1458x824.png)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DNvO!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F999de1cf-b1f5-45c7-ab4d-08924fc087cc_1458x824.png)



*“Flexible architecture based on scientific assessment methods and agile technological development processes”, from the Latin American Agency for Evaluation and Public Policy. The four stages are instrument design, data collection, results analysis and dissemination. The connected components are assessment models and content; item development and validation; instrument management and assembly; an instrument bank; data management; logistics and territorial coverage; high-level executive information; psychometric analysis; an information dataset; educational research; statistical analysis; a geographic information system; official indicators; and institutional records.*



## Understanding before assessing



Unlike systems that measure only final performance, ABC centres its model on a vital diagnostic component: the *Educational Landscape Map*. One of the project's most innovative pillars, this contextual component comprises instruments that gather information before literacy assessment begins. They cover socioeconomic, territorial, cultural and cognitive factors, study habits, and family and school support for learning. This information underpins the intervention system, connecting directly to the assessment, interpretation and support of each student's development. By combining environmental data with academic performance, the management platform opens up a range of teaching strategies and learning activities designed by teachers themselves to draw on each student's identified potential and mitigate environmental obstacles to literacy.



## AI and adaptive testing: classroom efficiency



Once the individual, family, school and contextual profile has been established, assessment focuses on functional literacy through five critical components: 1) reading speed, 2) reading accuracy, 3) prosody, 4) reading comprehension and 5) written communication.



ABC's technological implementation addresses one of teachers' biggest headaches: time and administrative records. Through AI-driven adaptive tests, the system adjusts the difficulty of assessment items in real time in response to the student's answers. In just a few minutes, a teacher can obtain an accurate diagnosis that previously would have taken weeks of individual observation. In classrooms with more than 20 pupils, that speed can make the difference between intervening in time and allowing learning gaps to accumulate until the end of the school year.



[![Saber+ administration dashboard with archived activity, process and item counts.](https://elcontemplador.github.io/estrategia-english/assets/images/519189ee-2035-45e3-a4cd-d3ead36da29b_1458x823.png)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!MXwU!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F519189ee-2035-45e3-a4cd-d3ead36da29b_1458x823.png)



*The preserved Saber+ administration dashboard illustrates operational monitoring. Its navigation covers Home, My Profile, Messages, Institutional Profile, Projects, Item Assignment, Item Bank, My Assignments, Assigned Items, Review Configuration, an abbreviated session-management entry, Item Review and My Review Sessions. Panels show login activity from 22 December 2025 to 21 January 2026, assessment starts from 7 May to 23 September 2025, and zero candidates currently being assessed out of a displayed total of 1,428. There are 63 administrator users, 14 active (22.2%), and 1,052 items, all approved (100.0%). These are archived interface values, not a current service report.*



| Process shown | Displayed status codes and counts | Total |

| --- | --- | --- |

| Nuevo León Aprende 2025 | 1: 3; 2: 1; 10: 477; C: 285405; G: 3438; P: 651 | 289975 |

| ERCE 2025 | 2: 36034; C: 14469; P: 33 | 50536 |

| Demo | FT: 1; P: 19 | 20 |

| OCJ 2025 | C: 240; P: 3 | 243 |

| NLE2025 rescheduling — open questions | F: 10; P: 2 | 12 |



*The screenshot does not expand the status codes. Its action buttons read “View candidates”, “View administrators” and “View item bank”.*



## A project for Latin America and the Caribbean



Since 2021, the tool has undergone rigorous expansion and calibration: first in 14 Mexican states, then in pilot countries, and now on a continental scale. This year it will incorporate data and parameters from 18 countries in the region. The project's three pillars are 1) extensive linguistic adaptability, 2) computational efficiency and 3) high scalability. Together, these allow AI algorithms and hierarchical sequences to be integrated with spatial data infrastructure in a large-scale geostatistical information system. It does more than record results: it offers a comprehensive platform for managing the education system, using tools that help establish teaching activities and learning rhythms suited to each student's needs and potential within a given context.



Unlike platforms developed elsewhere, ABC originates in and draws on the region's realities. It combines accurate diagnosis of reading and writing skills with in-depth analysis of their precursors, current state and potential pathways in a particular environment, in order to assess and nurture each student's potential. As datasets are integrated, teachers can develop a family of personalised activities to use and consolidate what has been learnt. This is especially valuable in the most vulnerable communities, or those with limited family participation or support.



## Equity in addressing marginalisation



The project's greatest social potential lies in schools in highly marginalised areas, where teachers often lack support tools to address learning gaps requiring individual attention and differentiated teaching. Although this opportunity is not recognised as such and therefore goes unused, it is precisely here that the link between the *Educational Landscape Map* and fluency results allows education authorities to identify classrooms or schools needing targeted, cross-sector strategies. For example, if an area has low prosody scores and high migration rates, groups are very likely to share sources of vulnerability. That is where public policy must stop being generic and become precisely targeted, in time to make a difference.



[![Data architecture combined with strategic intervention in a student’s educational pathway.](https://elcontemplador.github.io/estrategia-english/assets/images/fa8eb487-0bcc-4c5e-8b6a-8e5c22f15935_1460x672.png)](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!5Ver!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffa8eb487-0bcc-4c5e-8b6a-8e5c22f15935_1460x672.png)



*“We design architectures”: data sources feed ETL—extract, transform, load—and an organisational database/data warehouse containing external and user data. Data mining supports analysis, reports, decision-making and information queries. Alongside this, the image states: “We intervene strategically” and “We are present at the most significant moments in every student's life.”*



Through its strengths and the speed with which it can be implemented, ABC represents a distinctive point on the path from traditional assessment to pedagogical intelligence. Because it is readily scalable and distributable, it is already beginning to show other Latin American education systems how to make evidence and technology driving forces in their management, rather than ornaments or a “necessary evil”. Understanding a pupil's context before measuring their learning enables timely, scientifically grounded and, above all, human-centred teaching. It reminds us that a person's literacy begins with a letter and is sustained by words shared in society—something that happens every day beyond the classroom walls.



**Harvey Sánchez-Restrepo**



Executive President of the [Latin American Agency for Evaluation and Public Policy](https://www.aleph.la/)



[harvey@aleph.la](mailto:harvey@aleph.la)