School context and educational indicators: unequal conditions for the implementation of an education assessment policy

Abstract

The introduction by the federal government of the Basic Education Development Index (Ideb in the Portuguese acronym for Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica) represented a significant change in the way in which education is followed in Brazil. Ideb is the quality indicator developed to evaluate the education offered in this country and by each unit of the Federation, municipality, and public school. It also allows following the improvement in the quality of education according to preestablished goals. Its use for these purposes has been fuelling debates about the kind of policy of accountability that the indicator creates. It is argued in this article that Ideb puts focus on end results, without taking into account the conditions that have contributed to obtaining such results. The work analyzes the relations between this indicator and the school context, considering the profile of the pupils and the characteristics of the teaching institution. The empirical study makes use of data from the Prova Brasil, from the School Census and from Ideb itself through models of multiple linear regression. The results show that the schools that cater for pupils of a less privileged socioeconomic background exhibit, as expected, poorer results even when controlled for other features. These schools find it much more difficult to elevate the value of the indicator. Besides, infrastructure conditions and the complexity of the institutions are also correlated with Ideb. Lastly, the results indicate that there is a need for policies to overcome these limitations and that these conditions cannot be ignored in the analysis of the Ideb.