EXTERNAL EVALUATIONS IN THE MUNICIPALITY OF RIO DE JANEIRO AND THE MEANINGS IN THE PURSUIT OF QUALITY OF EDUCATION

Abstract

This article addresses the Policies of Evaluation of the Municipal Education Office of Rio de Janeiro-MEO, in the last twenty years.By discussing the influence of educational policies under the alignment of external evaluations in the State,an hegemonic political discourse is focused through the concept of Governmentality (Ball, 2014),forging a regime of truth around the large scale evaluations used to measure the meaning of quality of the carioca’s education.The debate consists of addressing the meaning of quality of education,determined by international economic agencies (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - OECD, World Bank, International Monetary Fund - IMF) through external evaluations. Studies about globalization and networks of policies from Stephen Ball linked to Michel Foucault underpin the conjecture about neoliberal demands present in the curricular policies of the MEO. Thomas Popkewitz (2016) provides the questioning of educational policies committed with a significance of quality of education based on capitalist economy. This article’s theoretical revision and official documents analysis present: the MEO characteristics and policies details; the questioning of statistics as truth regime promoters, in the view of a “magic number” that sets the agenda for debates about the production of current educational policies on the basis of external evaluations results; and qthe empirical political educational analysis of the legitimation of external evaluations in the country. Finally,it is worth stressing the international agencies contribution to the diffusion of the ideology of a world citizen forged in the schools in the relation curriculum - large scale evaluation - meaning of learning and neoliberalism.