Evaluation of the educational policies in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro

Author(s)

Guilherme Ramos Rocha

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Economia, Administração e Contabilidade (FEA/SBD)
• Defense date: 2014-06-06

Examining board members

Naercio Aquino Menezes Filho; Sergio Pinheiro Firpo; Ricardo de Abreu Madeira

• Advisor: Naercio Aquino Menezes Filho

Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation is to evaluate the impact of the educational policies adopted by the Secretaria Municipal de Educação do Rio de Janeiro, starting in 2009, on students achievement in the Prova Brasil national exam using the methods of Propensity Score Matching and Differences in Differences. The data used comes from the years of 2007, 2009 and 2011 of the Prova Brasil database, which contains school average grades in the mathematics and portuguese language exams and socioeconomic questionnaires for the teachers, directors and students, along with questionnaires about the infrastructure of schools. The results indicate that the schools in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro had a significantly higher increase in grades when compared to the selected control group, especially in the mathematics exams of the fifth and ninth graders, supporting the effectiveness of the policies adopted in the municipality. Moreover, there was a short-run effect on the grades of fifth graders on both the mathematics and portuguese language exams, identified on 2009, the starting year of the new administration. The analysis of the results indicate that the gains obtained in 2009 where well distributed along the initial distributions of school averages, while the gains in 2011 where concentrated in the superior quantiles of the distribution. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 12/20799-0 - Evaluation of the Educational Policies in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro
• Grantee: Guilherme Ramos Rocha
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master