Escola Nota Dez Award in the state of Ceará: concession, adjustments and accountability

Abstract

Educational accountability policies have been adopted worldwide, based on processes of evaluation, account and accountability. There are still questions around this instruments’ efficiency, and criticism over their effects on schools based on managerial logic. This article aims to investigate Escola Nota Dez Award, an initiative of Programa Alfabetização na Idade Certa (Paic), managed by the state government of Ceará. This policy provides financial incentives to municipal schools, in addition to promoting cooperation between schools to reflect management practices. The research, of quantitative and qualitative nature, used, as methodological procedures, the analysis of legal and normative documents referring to the Award, such as laws, decrees, operation manuals and data on schools and on financial resources that were analyzed using descriptive statistics for the period between 2008-2018. Results show that the Award limits the number of participating schools, allows the same school to win alternately and favors municipalities with small school networks. It is characterized as a high-stake accountability policy due to the rules established for beneficiaries, involving financial resources, and it seems to induce a significant reorganization of the municipal school networks, which reduced the number of schools offering the early years of elementary school.