Yannoulas, Silvia Cristina2024-03-192024-03-192013-07https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14135/982This study focuses on educational evaluation, which uses cognitive performance tests applied to students as their main instrument constituting one of the tools in structuring post- bureaucratic educational policies. These tests have been used by a growing number of educational systems in Brazil and many other countries at the national and subnational levels, as an educational reform strategy aiming to improve the quality of education. The main goal is to analyze the development of the tests applied to the elementary schools by the Federal Government and the States of Minas Gerais and São Paulo between 1990 and 2012 in order to verify how and whether the results are being used by educational policies. Thus, it was used a comparative method based on the legal rules that established each test, identifying the changes that have occurred over the years, and also the technical reports used to disseminate their results. Given the importance that the tests have been gaining within relevant federal and state governments policies and also the association of its results as an indicator of educational quality, it was also investigated, how the media writings available on the Internet has treated the quality of education. Therefore, three cases were chosen to be analyzed and the following variables will be taken in consideration: the frequency in which the tests are applied to the pupils, its scope depending on the number of students, the school years and areas of knowledge tested, the way in which results are presented and the low or high stakes accountability adopted. To check the effects in terms of policy results, some government’s actions were chosen from each of the three cases. The findings were discussed through the reflection that education is a right, that the regulatory mechanisms are elements of good manners for the political action of the State and that the concept of educational evaluation suffered conceptual changes throughout the years so far. To conclude, it was acknowledge that the tests have not been used as a tool to evaluate the educational systems and therefore assist the learning process of the pupils, but rather as an instrument for regulating the school’s activities and its staff, and thus their results not have influenced educational policies.Documento textualporAcesso abertoPolítica da EducaçãoEducação ComparadaAvaliação da EducaçãoAvaliação do DesempenhoInstrumentos de avaliaçãoTese120515