Avaliação externa de rendimento escolar : um instrumento para a gestão pedagógica

Abstract

The starting point for the current study considers external evaluation as a school management instrument that not only implies on the awareness of those involved in the process about the results, but also on how school managers conduct the planning of pedagogical actions using this instrument as a diagnosis. Based on that, the study intended to check what the implications of external evaluation on school performance were on the pedagogical management of the school. The paper presents the experience of implanting and implementing SAERS external evaluation (evaluation system for school performance in the state of Rio Grande do Sul) in the municipal schools in the city of Caxias do Sul. The descriptive analysis consisted in showing how school managers at the institutions subject of the research had planned the pedagogical actions considering data from the performance obtained in the Portuguese test (Reading) for the 5th or 6th grades in SAERS 2005, and if those actions had any repercussion on the performance of the school in the evaluation carried out during SAERS 2007. Authors such as Luckesi (1995 and 2001), Hoffmann (2001, 2007 and 2008), Vasconcellos (1994 and 2006), PCNs (1998) and Perrenoud (1999) are considered to interpret the approach under a qualitative focus of evaluation, more specifically as a diagnosis. Aiming at the objectives set for this research, the following methodological decisions were taken: analysis of official documents, such as SAERS instruments and reports; application of a questionnaire to 10 principals at municipal elementary schools which had some of the best performances evaluated in the Portuguese test for SAERS 2005; and the analysis of the data, comparing them to the result of the same schools in the Portuguese test for 2007. The investigation pointed to the corroboration of the hypothesis that the results obtained by SAERS were not put to their best use by schools managers for some planning that would effectively promote the improvement of students´ performance. Evidence of that is that from the universe of the schools that were evaluated, 70% of those that had been evaluated satisfactorily in 2005 had a lower performance (lower than expected) in 2007.