O Sistema Permanente de Avaliação da Educação Básica do Ceará: uma análise sob a ótica do ciclo de políticas

Abstract

The debate on public educational policies regarding assessment is necessary, complex, and multifaceted, as it involves a set of influences, interests, and pressures that establish complex, dynamic, and interdependent processes. The Permanent System for the Evaluation of Basic Education in Ceará (SPAECE) is a state public policy for assessment, intertwined with issues of power, discourse, and strategies, which consolidates itself as a privileged object of study for understanding the logics of regulation and performativity that permeate education in Ceará. The starting question is: how did the development of SPAECE, as a public policy for assessment in the state of Ceará, occur, considering its conception, legitimation, its implications in practice, its results, effects, and unfolding in favor of the development of education in Ceará? The hypothesis is that SPAECE (the Ceará State Assessment System) was conceived under multiple influences that accompanied it throughout its trajectory, legitimizing itself through legal and discursive devices that reflect a technical-managerial rationality, bringing within its scope conceptions that impact school practices, highlighting problems in student proficiency and, in teaching practice, converting assessment into an instrument of regulation and accountability. The objective is to analyze SPAECE as a public policy of assessment throughout its trajectory, using the Policy Cycle approach as an analytical framework to understand the structuring of this public policy, its legitimacy, and its effects on school culture, as perceived by teachers in the public school system of the state of Ceará. The research is basic in nature, qualitative in approach, and exploratory and descriptive in character, articulating bibliographic, documentary, and field research procedures. It was developed in four stages: theoretical review, documentary analysis, empirical data collection, and interpretive analysis. The research was conducted as an extension course offered on the AVA/G-TERCOA platform, and the participants were 44 teachers from the Ceará state public school system who took part in the course, entitled “Public Policies of Evaluation: Effects and Implications,” with a workload of 80 hours, held from April to July 2024. Data collection techniques and instruments included analysis of legislation, questionnaires, and discussion forums, based on Content Analysis, in the following phases: pre-analysis; material analysis; treatment of results, inference, and interpretation. The results point to effects of intensified accountability and curricular reorganization guided by evaluation, as well as a double movement of recontextualization. They also reveal the transition from a diagnostic instrument to a mechanism of regulation and control, in addition to multiple teacher interpretations that highlight tensions between what is prescribed and what is practiced. It is concluded that SPAECE operates through sophisticated mechanisms of power and performativity that, under the lens of neutrality, reconfigure school practices and make inequalities visible, fostering logics of competition and the valorization of performance. In parallel, a critical reading guided by the Policy Cycle reveals weaknesses that highlight the need for studies committed to emancipation and social justice.