By presenting the debate about educational evaluation and school inclusion in Brazil, evaluation processes are considered part of our educational and pedagogical culture since the beginning. A political, ideological and cultural component that marks, for better or for worse, school practices throughout Brazil Republic.
As we have warned in other works (PASSONE, 2014, 2015a, 2017), despite the unrestricted commitment of governments, educational authorities and specialists in the improvement of evaluation purposes and procedures in recent times, one could not fail to recognize that the use of “diagnostic” devices to guide educational policy was introduced in the country, based on the discriminatory and classification logic of readiness and intelligence tests, in the first half of the twentieth century (PATTO, 1981, 1999), that is, it presents itself as a trait of the past that is updated in the present pedagogical imaginary.
The lack of “sensitivity” of the tests regarding the socio-cultural issues and the psychosocial effects of educational ratings and diagnoses are some of the aspects that help to explain how it has been set up, in the country, a true “machine of producing repeaters that is still working in the public education system”2 (CAMPOS, 2008, own translation).
Throughout the construction and implementation process of teaching in the country, it can be said that Brazilian educational practices densified the processes of selection, classification, control and socio-educational stratification of different subjects and the popular classes that entered the school space.
[...] the history of Brazilian education is an arbitrary history that takes us back to our violent process of cultural and social colonization, constituting an extremely authoritarian society, filled by injustices, inequalities and psychosocial abysses. [...] An ethical reflection for those who research and work with psychosocial and socio-educational processes refers to the symbolic and concrete effects of discursive practices, that is, if they produce social bonds aimed at the formation and subjectification of subjects in overcoming the educational practices that have turned out to be a web of relationships that generate support for every single form of social stigmatization and discrimination in relation to the socio-cultural diversity present in socio-educational institutions.3 (PASSONE, 2017, p. 690-691, own translation)
As a result, in the twenty-first century, new and old challenges face the dream of creating an inclusive, free and quality public school, which is a right for all, without discrimination of social, racial and gender origin or biological and psychic differences, in short, a school that welcomes, respects and fully develops formative and humanizing ties with its diversity and which constitutes itself as the great public of the Brazilian school.
For that matter, from the discussion about evaluation policies as an educational management device (OLIVEIRA; DUARTE; CLEMENTINO, 2017; SOUZA, 2013; PASSONE, 2014, 2015, 2019), in the national context, and from the observation of studies that point to the exclusionary trend of management devices, such as large-scale evaluation in relation to students with disabilities (VOLTOLINI, 2019; SOUZA, 2009), it addresses the prescribed discourse through Ordinance No. 998 of 2013, from Ceará Secretariat of Education [Secretaria de Educação Estadual do Ceará] (CEARÁ, 2018a), whose text promotes the exclusion of special education students from the calculation of the results from the evaluations of the Permanent Evaluation System of Ceará Basic Education (Spaece) [Sistema Permanente de Avaliação da Educação Básica do Ceará] (ARAÚJO; LEITE; PASSONE, 2018). Ceará experience can be considered an example of this reality, one of the pioneering federal entities in the implementation of educational accountability that, since the early 1990s, has been consolidating the culture of evaluation and management by results in order to obtain greater control over the quality of local educational policies.
In public policy studies, regarding the consolidated democratic regimes, the term accountability implies the tendency of the representatives to “render accounts” of their activities to society (O’DONNELL, 1998). It is agreed that the relationship between ethics and accountability is not always obvious, although this portrays a movement of transition to democratic societies or new polyarchies. However, in Brazilian case, when it comes to public education policies, this notion gained certain business shape by being reinserted as a device of school and educational “responsibility” (PASSONE, 2014).
In this context, the notion of device gains importance as it shows the ways by which knowledge and power are inscribed in subjectivities, in such a way that “every device implies a process of subjectivation, without which the device cannot work as a government device but it is reduced to a mere exercise of violence”4 (AGAMBEN, 2009, p. 46, own translation). In short, an administrative machine, as far as “the device is, first of all, a machine that produces subjectivations and only as such it is also a governing machine”5 (AGAMBEN, 2009, p. 46, own translation).
Such an understanding of device was taken because it allows thinking broadly the material, symbolic and subjective effects, engendered through the policy of school accountability represented by the Escola Nota Dez Prize [Prêmio Escola Nota Dez] (Pend) and the educational evaluation policy of the state of Ceará. Based on the above, the main scope of this paper is taken up: the school inclusion paradox declared in terms of political discourse and the theme of (in)visibility of students with disabilities in the evaluation policy of educational results arising from not counting their results as a prerogative that schools would have fairer conditions to compete for school awards by excluding those students (ARAÚJO; LEITE; PASSONE, 2018).
This scenario is paradoxical and, therefore, encourages reflection about the possible effects and impacts of large-scale evaluations linked to accountability policies or incentives with regard to the formative and inclusive purposes of education public policies. As Passone considers (2015a, p. 404, own translation),
Wouldn’t the purpose of schooling reduced to the imaginary homogenizing of the goals and results considered “adequate” be, at least, contradictory with regard to the educational inclusion discourse, which is based on respect for individual differences, for the different times and rhythms of students and for different forms of apprehension and elaboration of knowledge?6
Therefore, the relevance of problematizing the tendency of large-scale evaluation to reinforce inequalities and promote actions opposed to school inclusion and opposed to inclusive and special education policies is reiterated (ESTEBAN, 2008; SOUZA, 2018), especially when the absence of discussion about the evaluation of education systems with regard to people with disabilities involved in this process is noted (CARDOSO; MAGALHÃES, 2012).
In order to carry out the purpose of this study, we used literature review, documentary research, as well as taking questions via e-mail from professionals who work in the Secretariat of Education of the State of Ceará, aiming to understand how the participation of students with disabilities in cognitive tests occurs, what are the resources used for this work, how the cases of special education students are forwarded, which educational agents are involved in serving this public, and what is the role of school and the Secretariat of Education of the State in view of the norms established with Ordinance No. 998 (CEARÁ, 2013).
For this writing, critical readings of the educational policies of evaluation of the basic education together with the so-called school accountability policies, within the several educational reforms in the national context were carried out. Next, the device that involves Escola Nota Dez Prize program and its articulation with the Permanent Evaluation System of Ceará Basic Education (Spaece) is discussed. This program can be considered a representative action of the evaluation policy and sui generis incentives, as it serves state and municipal schools in the state, that is, the 184 municipalities of Ceará and more than 5,000 elementary schools (ARAÚJO; LEITE; PASSONE, 2018).
Finally, we consider the material and symbolic effects of this accounting device that centralizes standardized tests in relation to the educational process organization; that imposes views and ideologies that value performance, productivity and competitiveness; and that undermines social bonds and ethical values around solidarity, respect for diversity and the creation of a true inclusive culture.
LARGE-SCALE EDUCATIONAL EVALUATION: MANAGEMENT AND ACCOUNTABILITY: BRAZIL AND CEARÁ
Since the 1930s, the Brazilian state has predicted the creation of educational evaluation devices as a contribution to the planning and organization of education systems, although it was from the late 1980s that the state introduced systematic actions that would culminate in the implementation of an external and large-scale evaluation system of Brazilian basic education (SOUZA, 2018; BAUER et al., 2017).
The state of Ceará stands out for carrying out one of the first large-scale educational evaluation in Brazil, under the Basic Education Program for the Northeast of Brazil, through the Edurural project financed by the World Bank, in 1981, 1983 and 1985, covering the states of Pernambuco and Piauí. This project had a sample design and included cognitive tests of knowledge of 2nd and 4th grade students from Elementary School in 603 rural schools in that region (VIANNA, 2014).
At the national level, since the reforms of Brazilian education in 1990s, the federal government has organized a set of large-scale evaluations of basic education. Thus, it emerged in line with the international trend of valuing the efficiency and control of educational policies, the drafting and implementation of the National Basic Education Evaluation System [Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Básica] (Saeb) - Ordinance No. 1.795 (BRASIL, 1994) - and the National Secondary Education Examination [Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio] (Enem) - Ordinance No. 438 (BRASIL, 1998).
According to the changes decreed by Ministerial Ordinance No. 931 of March 21, 2005 (BRASIL, 2005), Saeb now consists of two evaluations: National Evaluation of Basic Education [Avaliação Nacional da Educação Básica] (Aneb), which remained similar to Saeb, with sampling of primary and secondary school students, and the National Evaluation of School Performance [Avaliação Nacional de Rendimento Escolar] (Anresc), also known as Brazil Exam [Prova Brasil]. This one maintained the same scope as Aneb, although it is census-based, and the results, disclosed by schools.
Besides these external evaluations to the education systems, Provinha Brasil and the National Literacy Evaluation [Avaliação Nacional de Alfabetização] (ANA) were created in 2007 and 2013, respectively - by Ministerial Ordinance No. 482 (BRASIL, 2007, 2013). ANA is part of the actions developed under the National Plan for Literacy at the Right Age (Pnaic), created by Ordinance No. 867 of July 4, 2012 (BRASIL, 2012). This evaluation is universal and census-based, and aims to diagnose the mastery of the skills of public schools students at the end of the third grade in Portuguese Language and Mathematics (BRASIL, 2012).
Recently, the promulgation of Ordinance No. 366 of April 29, 2019 (BRASIL, 2019), established the new guidelines for Saeb realization, in which external evaluations - ANA, Aneb and Anresc - will cease to exist with this designation, being identified only as Saeb, that is, as a set of evaluations of Brazilian education.
According to the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research Anísio Teixeira [Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira] (Inep), the main changes introduced through Ordinance No. 366 for Saeb realization were: inclusion of the early childhood education target public (nursery and pre-school); expansion of the group of students, classes and schools evaluated; anticipation of the assessment of literacy for the 2nd year, since the National Common Curriculum Base [Base Nacional Comum Curricular] (BNCC) foresees the end of the cycle in the 2nd year; biennial periodicity of application for all indications of the schooling stages; verification of the Nature Sciences and Human Sciences areas in the scope of 9th grade test in Elementary School; formulation of items from the National Common Curriculum Base (BNCC) document for the public of the nursery, pre-school of Early Childhood Education, as well as the 2nd year of Elementary School and 9th year of Elementary School in the Nature Sciences and Humanities areas (BRASIL, 2019).
What also marks this new composition of Saeb will be the possibility for interested private schools to join, even if they have not been contemplated in the samples, they will be able to participate, by signing the adhesion form and paying a fee based on the number of students registered in the Basic Education Census.
In addition, Ordinance No. 366 in the Article 6 details the population that will not be reference of Saeb 2019, (own translation)
I - schools with less than 10 students enrolled in the evaluated stages; II - the multi-seried classes; III - the flow correction classes; IV - the Youth and Adult Education classes; V - the Normal/Magisterium High School classes; VI - the classes, schools or specialized Special Education services that are not part of regular education; and VII - the indigenous schools that do not teach Portuguese as a first language7.
However, the new Saeb guideline states, in its Article 12, that students with disabilities, global developmental disorders and high skills or over-gifted may participate in Saeb 2019, as long as they are duly registered in the Basic Education Census 2019 and make up the target population of Saeb 2019. It is worth adding that professionals who accompany special education students routinely may be present during the application of the instruments.
In short, the referred legislation establishes new criteria for selection and participation of schools; it ratifies the diversity of instruments that compose the basic education evaluation system, based on census and sampling; it proposes to select public and private schools, urban and rural, from several education networks per federated unit and regions aiming to deepen the diagnosis of Brazilian basic education. Therewith, the quality of education as a multidimensional attribute is highlighted.
In the context of the organization of Brazilian education, the evaluation of teaching and education is foreseen in the complementary educational legislation known as Laws and Guidelines of National Education (LDB) - Law 9.394/1996 (BRASIL, 2018). Article 9 of the LDB states that the Union shall “ensure a national process of evaluation of school performance in primary, secondary and higher education in collaboration with the education systems, aiming at defining priorities and improving the quality of education”8 (BRASIL, 2018, p. 12, own translation).
It is also worth noting, with regard to the purposes and criteria that guide the evaluation of school performance, as laid down in section V from Article 24 of the LDB, that the evaluation must be “continuous and cumulative [...], with qualitative aspects prevailing over quantitative aspects and results throughout the period over those of any final tests” (BRASIL, 2018, p. 18, own translation9).
The gradual structuring and consolidation of educational evaluation policies involved different goals and levels of application of evaluation, in which the following stand out: the evaluation of education systems, the evaluation of schools and school networks and the evaluation of learning or school performance (LIBÂNEO; OLIVEIRA; TOSCHI, 2012).
Despite the relevance of the educational evaluation devices for subsidy of the set that make up the federated education systems as a guarantee of the rights of a quality education for all, one can wonder how the implementation of these proposals has been reinstated through the imaginary of the “new public management” or the business model applied to school management (SOUZA; OLIVEIRA, 2003; SOUZA, 2009; OLIVEIRA; DUARTE; CLEMENTINO, 2017). As Libâneo, Oliveira and Toschi explain, the conditioning that educational evaluation assumed in educational reforms would leave “little space for a conception of diagnostic, democratic and emancipatory evaluation, focused on school development and the improvement of pedagogical work”10 (2012, p. 263, own translation).
It is important to emphasize that, although the implementation of the basic education evaluation policy is administratively assigned to the Union, in the last three decades the federated states and more than one third of the municipalities have spared no effort and public resources to develop their own evaluation systems (BAUER et al., 2017).
As Souza (2018) points out, although the implementation of the evaluation system was originally foreseen in collaboration and complementarity with state and municipal systems, what followed was the centralization and federalization of educational evaluation of basic education.
In practice, what is observed is the spread of very similar evaluative actions about their purposes; overlapping actions that are not characterized as complementary, but only portray the spread of “systems” that propose more of the same, namely, the improvement of school performance indicators based on the homogenization of pedagogical practices and the control of school results.
Recent studies show that, out of all the state education secretariats, 23 federated units have their own performance evaluation processes (PERBONI, 2016; SOUZA; KOSLINSKI, 2017). In the Northeast region, which has the largest number of states in the federation, the states of Ceará, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Piauí, Rio Grande do Norte, Bahia, Sergipe and Alagoas stand out, with the first three having experiences in programs of “awarding” and “bonus” teachers, that is, the educational secretariats use the results of student performance in external evaluations to bonus schools, teachers and students, “either by the criterion of student performance, or the results achieved by schools in achieving goals set by the secretariats themselves”11 (NOGUEIRA; CRUZ; JESUS, 2013, p. 29, own translation).
It is worth noting, therefore, that the interest of researchers on the consequences of external evaluation of education in the country has correlated with the emergence of this series of experiences of state governments with the implementation of policies for improving the quality of primary education and “accountability policies”, in which the external evaluation of basic education was established as a tool for management and accountability of teachers in relation to educational results. In parallel, with the expansion of the scope of research and studies on educational evaluation, there is an expansion movement that extends from traditional studies on the evaluation of the educational system to research related to the evaluation of objectives, behaviors and responsibilities (SILVA; FERREIRA; ANDRADE, 2017).
In a retrospective analysis of the implementation and use of educational evaluation in the national context, Bonamino and Sousa (2012) highlights “three generations of evaluations” that characterize the evaluation of basic education in the country. The first generation would correspond to Saeb’s original proposal, that is, it is characterized by the emphasis on the diagnostic character of education systems, having as a starting point to produce information to monitor and subsidize educational policies. The “second generation” would be characterized by publishing and disseminating its results publicly and addressing them directly to schools, at which time when evaluations were increased as to the information produced and the objectives pursued. As an example, there is Prova Brasil and the creation of the Basic Education Development Index [Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica] (IDEB), when the measurement of results with proposition of goals and accountability of schools was added to the diagnostic perspective. In this sense, the evaluation presupposes accountability with “symbolic consequences”, that is, it is postulated that public knowledge of the results by family members and society would imply the mobilization of schools in order to induce the search for better results and recognition of the school community in the territory and among its peers. What underlies such a model is that competition for itself would promote an increase in educational quality (SOUZA; OLIVEIRA, 2003).
The so-called “third generation” evaluations, on the other hand, would involve institutional consequences whose operation would entail the adoption of positive or negative sanctions, such as evaluation policies linked to “variable remuneration” mechanisms or monetary incentives for education professionals according to the results obtained by students and schools. Based on the understanding given by Carnoy and Loeb (2004) about the consequences of accountability policies, researchers note that the third generation of evaluation is associated with so-called high stakes policies, whose objective is a “strong accountability” of schools and school agents, as opposed to low stakes, or accountability policies known as “soft” or “symbolic”, such as second generation evaluations.
The use of outcome evaluation as a subsidy to “strong consequence” policies, as a concrete or material measure focused on school and teaching accountability, would gain prominence at the expense of a more formative, subsidiary and procedural view of learning evaluation, highlighting the debate between the relationship of evaluation policies and the ideal of accountability, as well as the implications for school management and the reorganization of teaching work and practices (AFONSO, 2003, 2009; BONAMINO; SOUZA, 2012; BROOKE; CUNHA, 2011; SILVA; FERREIRA; ANDRADE, 2017; FREITAS, 2014).
Still in relation to educational reform and the administration of education systems, Afonso emphasizes that
[...] one of the changes that has been increasingly discussed is the attempt to transplant forms of ‘business type’ management to the public school, that is, forms of management more suited to industrial or service organisations, which operate in a market economy and are profit oriented. This trend, managerialist, which acquires certain specificities when adopted in institutions and services of the State, has been called new public management. In the case of schools [...], it is revealed, for example, in the neo-taylorisation of teaching work, in other words, in the growing separation between those at school who “conceive” (manage or decide) and those at school who “execute” (are managed and have no decision-making power). In the case of teachers, this means their reduction to mere technicians of transmission and recontextualisation of knowledge, but knowledge that others produce and that they should only (efficiently) reproduce. These knowledges, of a predominantly cognitive and instrumental nature, must still be measurable through aseptic instruments, that is, valid, reliable and politically neutral.12 (AFONSO, 2003, p. 21, own translation)
In this context, Brazilian researchers have been engaged in investigating the effects of the New Public Management [Nova Gestão Pública] (NGP) related to the regulation, organization and management of public education policies (OLIVEIRA; DUARTE; CLEMENTINO, 2017), from the confluence between the evaluation educational policies of basic education and the so-called policies of school accountability, in the scope of national and international educational reforms, also proclaimed by the discourse of multilateral agencies as policies of educational quality improvement (BROOKE; CUNHA, 2011; AGUILAR, 2013; ARAÚJO; LEITE; PASSONE, 2018; FREITAS, 2014; PASSONE, 2014, 2015b).
As Aguilar (2013, p. 31) states, based on the comparative paradigm of satisfactory analysis of educational policies, the institutionalization of evaluation policies linked to the processes of educational improvement, from the incentives for results - such as prizes or bonuses - and the articulation between incentives and comparative performance evaluation, turns out to be an unsatisfactory policy, as it would end up degrading the conditions of the teaching career, undermining the dignity and motivation of teachers, in addition to “distorting the relationships between students and teachers and among teachers,” even worsening educational inequalities.
The experience of Ceará state can be considered an example of this reality, one of the pioneering federated entities in the implementation of accountability policy which, since the early 1990s, has been consolidating the culture of evaluation and management by results in order to obtain greater monitoring and control of local educational policies.
The conviction of Ceará state in the effectiveness of prizes as incentives for teachers has [more than] a decade of history that, for regular schools, begins with the creation of the New Millennium School prize [Escola do Novo Milênio] by Law 13.203 of February 2002. Amended in 2004, when the state instituted the Program for Modernization and Improvement of Basic Education [Programa de Modernização e Melhoria da Educação Básica] and created the Highlight-School of the Year Seal [Selo Escola Destaque do Ano], the prize continues uninterrupted until 2007. [...] the new governor gives continuity to incentive policies by creating the Municipal Index of Educational Quality [Índice Municipal de Qualidade Educacional] as the basis for the distribution of the 25% of ICMS belonging to the municipalities and establishes the basis for the resumption of school awards in 2008 through Escola Nota 10 (BROOKE; CUNHA, 2011, p. 49, own translation13)
Currently, Ceará has two major programs of this nature: Escola Nota Dez Prize, directed to the 2nd, 5th and 9th grades of elementary school (CEARÁ, 2015); and Aprender pra Valer Prize, focused on high school articulated with professional and technological education (CEARÁ, 2008, p. 12). Although the programs have different target audiences, characteristics and standards, these versions of incentives and school accountability are developed into similar procedures, which are organised through external evaluation via Spaece, aimed at the publicization of results, the creation of the rankings panel of educational institutions and school award and bonus programs.
ESCOLA NOTA DEZ PRIZE: NOT EVERYTHING THAT COUNTS IN EDUCATION CAN BE MEASURED
The literature review and document analysis show how Ceará state has been instituting its educational evaluation policies linked to policies for improving the quality of basic education and school accountability, in which two financing mechanisms aimed at prioritizing literacy stand out; namely, the reformulation of the allocation of the state ICMS share to municipalities according to the results measured by educational and social indicators (SALES; SEQUEIRA, 2011) and the creation of the Escola Nota Dez Prize, as an operationalization mechanism for school accountability (ARAÚJO, 2016).
According to the studies, the differential point of the public educational policy of this state lies in the emphasis on instituting a “collaboration pact” around literacy among state and municipal entities and, according to the documentation, in the structural goal of the project to induce the actions of technical-pedagogical collaboration among the awarded schools (FONSECA, 2013; CALDERÓN; RAQUEL; CABRAL, 2015; ARAÚJO, 2016; SOARES; WERLE, 2016; KOSLINSKI; RIBEIRO; OLIVEIRA, 2017; ARAÚJO; LEITE; PASSONE, 2018).
Concomitantly, the educational policy of Ceará stands out at the national level through the experience of technical collaboration promoted by the National Plan for Literacy at the Right Age [Programa Alfabetização na Idade Certa] (Paic), which was taken as a model for the creation of Pnaic, when it was institutionalized by the federal government in 2012 (FONSECA, 2013).
Since 1992, the government of Ceará has been implementing Spaece, through the Ceará Secretariat of Education (Seduc). Spaece is characterized as a large-scale external evaluation that assesses the competencies and skills of elementary and high school students in Portuguese Language and Mathematics (CEARÁ, 2013a). Recently, the state of Ceará has been betting on the “school accountability” policy, using Spaece to issue rankings, ratings and awards. One of the main evidences of this policy was the implementation of the Pend, ruled by the State Law No. 15.923/2015, regulated by Decree No. 32.079/2016 (CEARÁ, 2015) and by Ordinance No. 998/2013GAB (CEARÁ, 2018b).
According to the legislation, that program works as:
An inducing policy for schools to improve their results; As a supporting policy for schools with lower results; It is subsidized in an institutional learning model focused on the dissemination of good management and pedagogical practices; To strengthen quality improvement in the learning of 2nd, 5th and 9th grade students in the public school. (CEARÁ, 2013b14)
The PEND has public financing through the State Fund for Combating Poverty (Fecop) and is managed by Seduc.
The prize foreseen in Pend is given based on the analysis of the Spaece-Alfa, Spaece-5º and Spaece-9º results, in order to verify the effectiveness of student learning and to classify to reward school institutions. Each year, the 150 best-performing schools with a School Performance Index (IDE-Alfa) between 8.5 and 10.0 and a School Performance Index (IDE-5 and IDE-9) between 7.5 and 10.0 are awarded. The minimum required student participation is 90% (ARAÚJO, 2016).
The program also offers a financial contribution to the 150 schools with the lowest performances in Spaece-5º and Spaece-9º. These schools are called “supported schools” insofar as the award payment is conditional on the elaboration of a support plan among those with the best performances and those with the lowest performances.
Another aspect established in Law No. 15,923/15 consists in the fact that once the schools awarded or supported have been contemplated, they are prevented from competing, in the following year, for the same awards or financial contributions with which they had already been contemplated. There is also a requirement that the school, in order to receive the prize, in the municipality where it is located, must present at least 70% of the 2nd year students with the “desirable” level on the Spaece literacy scale and 30% of the students with the “adequate” level on the Portuguese Language and Mathematics scales of 5th and 9th grades.
The amount of the prize is calculated by the total number of students enrolled and evaluated at the school. Thus, the awarded schools receive, through their executing units, an amount corresponding to the multiplication of the value of two thousand reais by the number of students enrolled in the 2nd, 5th or 9th grade. And, also according to what is established in law regarding the financial contribution destined to the supported schools, those ones receive an amount corresponding to multiplication of the value of a thousand reais by the number of students evaluated of 5th or 9th grades of regular elementary education. In both cases of awarded and supported schools, the financial resources are transferred in proportion to the number of students enrolled and evaluated at Spaece. In particular, as far as teacher bonuses are concerned, the awarded schools allocate 20% of the first installment to bonus 2nd, 5th or 9th grade teachers, school management professionals and other professionals assigned to the school in the reference year of the award. For the supported schools, the financial support of the first installment does not include the bonus for education professionals (CEARÁ, 2015).
As regards the second installment of the awarded schools, 25% of the total prize can be applied to reward teachers and promote physical, structural and educational material improvements in order to give quality to the children’s teaching and learning. For the supported schools, the second installment, which represents 50% of the total amount, is destined for up to 30%, obligatorily, for the bonus of elementary school teachers, school management nucleus professionals and other professionals assigned to the school identified as responsible for contributing to the learning of 5th or 9th grade students of elementary school in the reference year of the Spaece evaluation (CEARÁ, 2015).
According to the studies, Pend is part of the meritocratic action plan that stimulates school performance through competition and the bonus of schools that achieve the best results. Despite the “collaborative” character foreseen in the desire of the program, that is, the awarded schools are “obliged” to support others that have shown low performance through assistance and technical-pedagogical cooperation actions (CALDERÓN; RAQUEL; CABRAL, 2015), as well as the positive evidence related to the performance and participation rate of the awarded schools in the tests (KOSLINSKI; RIBEIRO; OLIVEIRA, 2017), one can also question the exclusionary and discriminatory nature of Ordinance 998, as presented below.
ORDINANCE NO. 998: THE LEGALISATION OF DISCRIMINATION OF STUDENTS IN INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
Another legal contribution that determines the school accountability mechanism created by the administrative discourse, in the state of Ceará, was Ordinance No. 998/2013-GAB (CEARÁ, 2018b), whose attribution is to complement and regulate the procedures related to Spaece and Pend.
This ordinance establishes the students who will not be counted in the “calculation of participation and proficiency”, as long as they fit in the following conditions: a) students with disabilities; b) students fulfilling a measure involving deprivation of liberty or in institutional care; among other specific cases (CEARÁ, 2018b).
For these subjects to be “deducted” from the calculation of participation and the results of external evaluations at the state education secretariat, the ordinance establishes the submission of supporting documents, such as medical reports, certificates or declarations duly issued by professionals in the qualified area.
According to the ordinance, paragraph one of section I, “prescriptions and medical exams or reports from teachers, psychologists, social workers, occupational therapists, speech therapists, among others who are not medical professionals will not be accepted” (CEARÁ, 2018b, own translation15).
For Moysés and Collares (2013, p. 13, own translation), the increasing transposition into the medical field of social and political issues inherent to life would transform collective issues into individual and biological issues, exempting from “responsibility those instances of authority in whose bowels such problems are generated and perpetuated”.16
In accordance with the specifications of Ordinance No. 998, in its article 2, paragraph 2, students with disabilities will have differentiated attention. Thus, the aforementioned legislation lists the circumstances in which students may be exempt from taking part in Spaece examination, as well as declines which supporting documents must be handed over to Seduc to justify the student’s absence.
According to the information taken with the Secretariat agents, the documentation proving the student’s disability will only be accepted when it fulfills the requirements of Ordinance No. 998/2013-GAB concerning (I) Medical documentation; (II) a letter forwarding such documentation; and (III) information about the student’s disability in the Educacenso 2017; which must be forwarded by the school manager (Chart 1).
THE STUDENT ANSWER THE TEST | |
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION ACCEPTED | The student will be deducted from: • Number of students expected and the number of students evaluated from the school (reported in Educacenso 2017); •Average proficiency calculation (class, school, municipality, regional/districts of Fortaleza, Crede/Sefor, state). |
THE STUDENT ANSWER THE TEST | |
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTATION NOT ACCEPTED | The student will be: • Considered participant of the evaluation at the school informed in Educacenso 2017; •Included in the participation calculations, average proficiencies and other results (school, municipality, regional/districts of Fortaleza, Crede/Sefor, state). |
Source: Ceará (2018b).
According to the information obtained from the Education Evaluation and Monitoring Coordination and the Inclusive Education Coordination, Spaece is considered a universal evaluation system, that is, it establishes that both students from the state and municipal networks, enrolled in the 2nd, 5th and 9th grades of elementary school, must be evaluated.
The regulation of Ordinance No. 998/2013-GAB disciplines that students with some type of disability, even with a medical report, must be present at the time of application of the Spaece evaluation, since a percentage of at least 90% attendance of students registered in the Basic Education Census at the time of the said test is required per school as a prerequisite for the composition of the proficiency calculation of Spaece results and, therefore, for the receipt of the Escola Nota Dez Prize.
In this sense, the protocol states that no student must be absent on the day of Spaece evaluation, but the decision to perform the test always belongs to the student; however Ordinance No. 998 ratifies that Spaece results for students with disabilities will not be counted! Granting, thus, a situation of exclusion of this public’s data from the educational system of Ceará State.
Hence, the question that arises does not imply the right to participate or not in cognitive tests, but the consequences involved in the relationship between evaluation and incentives, insofar as it may induce schools to direct students, who may have difficulties in learning, to specialists, potentiating the production of reports of those who may threaten the average performance of the school.
One can infer that the diagnostic and report process in the educational field presents high reception and functionality, as it assuages the anguish of the teachers and transfers the axis of concerns from the collective to the particular.
The teachers who should also be responsible for analyzing and solving educational problems assume an uncritical and permeable attitude to everything; they become mediators, only sorting and directing the children to Health specialists. [...]What should be object of reflection and change - the pedagogical process - is masked, hidden by singular diagnosis and treatment, since the “evil” is always placed in the student. And the end of the process is the victim’s guilt and the persistence of a perverse educational system with high ideological efficiency. (COLLARES; MOYSÉS, 1994, p. 30, own translation17)
The lack of data informed by the education secretariat makes it impossible to analyze such a hypothesis more thoroughly, which reveals itself as an ethical question of great importance for the field of research, namely, wouldn’t the normative foreseen in Ordinance No. 998 be an inducing device for the production of reports of students with disabilities or with learning difficulties as they start to be seen as a threat to the good performance of the system?
After all, this device makes official certain situations that, even if the student with some type of disability performs the Spaece evaluation, with a supporting medical report, his/her evaluation will not be counted so as not to cause damage and affect negatively the participation rate of the schools in the data calculation for receiving the Escola Nota Dez Prize. In other words, he will be able to participate in the evaluation rite, but his result will be hidden from the system.
In the case of Spaece application to students with some type of disability, the guidance of Ordinance No. 998 is that municipal coordinators contact the school principals who attend students with the disability duly identified in the Education Census in order to agree in advance if
I- the student needs specialized assistance to take the test; II- the school has the qualified professional to offer specialized assistance to this student during the test; II- the school has an appropriate place to take the specialized assistance to the student during the test; III- the student will require the additional regulatory time (up to 1 hour more) to take the test. (CEARÁ, 2018b, own translation18)
If the school has the professional and provides the appropriate location, an extra applicator will be sent to assist that student with specific educational needs. Until the 2019 edition, the tests adapted for Braille (5th and 9th grades of Elementary School) and for deafness (2nd, 5th and 9th grades of Elementary School) were used, as well as the expanded and super amplified tests for students with low vision. The other deficiencies are treated according to the school possibilities, reflecting the daily life of the students in their educational unit. Hardly, a school that does not regularly assist a student can provide the appropriate professional (reader, transcriber, Libras Interpreter) to carry out the test.
We emphasize that the adapted tests are made available by correctly inserting the student’s needs in the educational census until the reference date (last Wednesday of May in the year the Spaece edition was held). Students whose needs change throughout the year (low vision that evolves into blindness, for example) are not attended by adapted tests.
According to information provided by Seduc, the applicators are qualified to deal with this reality. Along with the adapted tests, students with disabilities or disorders may be assisted by support professionals: reader/transcriber, transcriber and Libras interpreter/lip-reading. These professionals will be made available by the school, according to its possibility. The training materials for all Spaece agents (coordinators, supervisors and applicators) feature specific instructions for applying Spaece in schools that have students with specific educational needs. The training material also provides instructions for specialized professionals who will assist students with specific educational needs. Students with other educational needs that require individualized attention must perform the test in another room of the school, accompanied by an additional applicator. These students will have up to one hour of additional time to perform the test. As previously mentioned, the school will be responsible for providing the support professional to assist the student.
In face of all the measures listed by Seduc for the application of Spaece to students with some type of disability, such as training and qualification, information material for specialized professionals, differentiated tests, appropriate place and extended time for the test, it makes us surprised that, when the said test is taken, the results of this public are not taken into account; on the contrary, they are obscured and excreted from the results of the educational institutions and, consequently, from Ceará educational system itself.
Such episode reveals a paradox generated by the school accountability evaluation policy, represented by the Escola Nota Dez Prize in Ceará, in which it sometimes advocates for universalization, inclusion, and equity; it sometimes stigmatizes, discards, and excludes students who do not correspond to the standard student.
Even though such regulation is conceived by Seduc as a “benefit” for students with some kind of disability, it is understandable that this prerogative of the law works more as a mechanism of defense and precaution of the educational system in relation to the low performance of these cases. An institutional artifice not to measure, compare and use Spaece results of students with disabilities in the average proficiency calculation of Ceará education system.
It should also be noted that, from Spaece 2013 onwards, in order for students with disabilities to be “deduced from the participation calculation and average proficiency calculations”, in addition to presenting supporting documentation, they must have this information recorded in the School Census (CEARÁ, 2018b).
According to data from the Statistics Synopsis of Basic Education [Sinopse Estatística da Educação Básica] (BRASIL, 2016a, 2016b, 2016c, 2017), when observing the proportion of special education enrollment in relation to the total number of enrollments in basic education among the federated units, one can affirm that Ceará state was one of the states with the highest number of enrollments, proportionally, regardless of the administrative unit. In 2015, the state registered 1.9% of the total basic education enrollment in special education, second only to Minas Gerais, with 2.4%; Paraná, with 3.2%; and Rio Grande do Sul, with 3.3%.
To some extent, official data show an increase in the number of enrollments in special education in Ceará, especially in the following years after the promulgation of Ordinance No. 998. Without establishing a direct relationship between the data and such a law provision, one can observe that the historical series of the percentage increase in enrollment of special education students in Ceará state reveals such a trend, with an abrupt increase since the promulgation of Ordinance No. 998, in which there was an increase of more than 15% in enrollment of students in regular classes in special education, while the national average for the same period the increase was 7.68% (Graph 1).
After this abrupt increase in enrollment between the years 2014 and 2015, a gradual reduction can be observed from 2016 onwards, which brought the annual increase in special education students closer to the national average, although still with an above average growth. What can really be said about these data is that students with disabilities are enrolled and registered in the school census; they exist and they are part of the educational community. It would not be because of a supporting report of disability that their data must be excluded from the system, and their results from the Spaece evaluation, deduced from the average proficiency count of the state, as if these students did not exist in the system.
The reflection about the ethical principles that support the idea of educational inclusion proposed by Voltolini (2019, p. 2, own translation) reveals that the “very need of creating inclusion policies attests to the lack of an inclusion culture”19, insofar as the simple enrollment of all students would not be enough to guarantee that they are included. The proposition of specific laws for inclusive education is necessary, but insufficient to create an inclusive culture able to generate a collective engagement towards a new type of social bond aimed at achieving the right to quality education for all. As the author attests,
[...] inclusive education risks being reduced to an institutional routine, composed of more or less standardized procedures, whose only aim is to serve management and to provide a cynical response to inclusive social demands, without truly leading to the construction of an inclusive culture. If we talk about inclusive culture, we talk about a dynamic that relates to the social bond. (VOLTOLINI, 2019, p. 3, own translation20)
The use of the terms “ethics”, “inclusion” and “citizenship” has become commonplace in speeches that address the theme of education and human rights; however, we increasingly observe the meaning and practical consolidation of these terms emptying out (PLAISANCE, 2010). The phenomenon of “insignificance”21 or loss of meaning of these constructs becomes more explicit when facts are found that deny or inflict the rights of people with disabilities to participate in situations inherent to their historical, political and socio-cultural contexts.
Thereby, it can be inferred that such a device subjectively produces an anonymous agency of the subjects around the results that would render it some value, creating the (in)visibility of these students with disabilities in the evaluation process of this education system.
In this sense, how can one not remember the words of the educator and psychoanalyst Maud Mannoni, when she warns about the force of the administrative monopoly and the economic dimension that, embodied in other knowledge, will become a source of all kinds of abuses of power? In her words, “once the concern for income is paramount, the human interest of the undertaking disappears” (MANNONI, 1973, p. 20, own translation22).
A political-pedagogical perspective that aims to submit the subject to the logic of performance profitability, in which nothing else in school depends on another sense than the one produced as exchange value, implies thinking about certain highly valued social aspects, such as individualism, competition and productivity, to the detriment of other values, even within school daily life. Such a conception catches school agents in a desire to classify, evaluate and count the school production of students. Certainly a mark of the pedagogy of control and excesses, which has nothing connected with the “humanizing” educational act and the right to education.
Even more, as could be inferred from such a reading, the effect of this device would appease the anguish that comes from this competitive school routine, with regard to the helplessness of the subject faced with needs for recognition that it promotes, and it would end up by “removing subjectivity” and, consequently, by “removing responsibility” from the subjects-agents with regard to the ethical condition that an adult assumes in the duty of educating and instructing the youngest.
Therefore, we would increasingly see the deliberate refusal of subjective autonomy, the denial of recognition via the right to education, as well as the recrudescence of normative devices and the irrational adherence to the status quo of a social discourse that aims at the competitive and segregationist logic, besides an effective indifference to the social bonds that are sought in an inclusive school. And this works very well to the extent that the offer of the educational evaluation linked to the award device creates its own demand, that is, such a company is made with the consent of the evaluated person, establishing a trust “contract” by which the subject commits himself, without knowing it, in the process of his own exclusion.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
As a result of the presented considerations, one can conclude that the accounting spirit of this device falls on classrooms, teacher rooms, libraries, school management, in short, on all school space and time. In face of this school ambience, how do the students with disabilities stand? A significant proportion of students are made invisible to the evaluation system, a kind of “technocratic hygienism” that aims at cleaning up or hiding undesirable data that would maculate the institutional performance framework? For now, for such a device, these students do not exist, they do not count. In short, such a management accounting device reveals a dangerous mechanism of disaffiliation and symbolic degradation of the social bond that is intended to build from an inclusive culture and quality education for all.