Standardized testing and improving educational opportunity in Brazil

Educational Forum, The, Spring 2002 by Wilcox, Kristen Campbell, Ryder, Randall

Education is one of the basic pillars of democracy-- the more political, the more difficult the life of the people. --Giberto Dimenstein (1998)

The federal role in education is not to serve the system. It is to serve the children. George W. Bush (2001)

Standardized testing has become an integral element of school reform in the United States and in countries throughout the world, advancing the notions that standardized tests improve educational quality and impose accountability measures in schools and among school district employees (Hanushek, Gomes-Neto, and Harbison 1996). Opponents have argued that the damaging consequences of these tests outweigh any perceived benefits (Kohn 2000).

It has been widely recognized that standardized tests have serious limitations, because they do not fully measure students' higher-order thinking skills (Schmoker 2000). Supporters have argued that, regardless of these shortcomings, standardized tests still enhance public trust by emphasizing accountability in terms of discrete, measurable outcomes (Schmoker 2000). Opponents have noted that the use of standardized tests for promotion and placement reinforces and extends social inequalities in educational opportunities with reduced learning achieved by students placed in lower tracks or held back in grade (Darling-Hammond 1995). In addition, when standardized tests are used in highstakes accountability systems, they yield the undesirable effect of narrowing the curriculum to factual information or simplistic cognitive tasks. Moreover, the investment and emphasis on the alignment of the curriculum with these tests tends to control educational authority (McNeil 2000). These systems become tools to shame educational institutions into raising performance standards and hold them accountable for factors (such as socioeconomic status) beyond their control (Line 2000).

Though the usefulness of standardized tests is questionable, their ubiquity globally is prompted by a variety of economic and political factors. Wealthier countries lead the world in producing and dispensing standardized tests to enhance education standards and the eventual productivity of their workforce. Developing countries follow this lead, embracing the promise of first-world, reliable measures of performance with the appeal of simplicity and cost-effectiveness. Yet do standardized tests really help to serve children, or do they politicize issues in education, making the education of children more difficult?

Documentation and policy attention to the effectiveness of standardized testing in achieving its stated goals is critical for evaluating the possible contributions of these tests. Discussing the issues of the standardized-testing debates in a cross-cultural perspective reveals some of the striking similarities of the problematic issues inherent to their use; this perspective also reveals the influence of standardized-testing practices in developed countries on developing countries. Brazil provides a relevant comparison to the United States; it struggles with many of the same issues of providing equal educational opportunity in a geographically large, multiethnic, and multilingual country with a colonial past.

This essay attempts to locate the origin of the trend toward the use of standardized testing in Brazil, not in an attempt to improve social welfare through education, but rather in the attempt of politicians to advance their own interests and the interests of their constituents. This effort distorts test results for political ends and ultimately reinforces and extends social inequalities. This interpretation, as discussed in Elmore, Abelmann, and Fuhrman's (1996) study, parallels the view held by U.S. researchers and policy analysts that warn of the "increasing emphasis on student performance as the touchstone for state governance" (Linn 2000, 22). Outlined herein are some of the key issues in the Brazilian standardized-testing debate, revealing some of the similarities and differences with the U.S. debate as well as the influence of developed countries and their international agencies on standardized-testing choices made by Brazil. Finally, I will elaborate on some of the implications of the standardized testing debate in Brazil and beyond.

THE TESTING DEBATE IN BRAzIL

Brazil has a long history of subscribing to plans to eradicate illiteracy and provide universal primary education, including the national literacy campaign of 1970 (MOBRAL), which ambitiously sent tutors into rural areas to teach basic literacy skills (Plank 1996). However, recent research has clearly shown that Brazil's public school system failed to achieve even the low standards of literacy and primary education of its neighbors. The Research Institute of Applied Economics affirmed that, in 1995, 36.6 percent of Brazilians were considered illiterate, despite MOBRAL and other literacy campaigns of its kind (Dimenstein 1998).

Following the MOBRAL effort, Brazil's Ministry of Education (MEC) was directed by constitutional reform, in 1980, to allocate at least 50 percent of its budget to basic education. However, the budget record showed expenditures of 7 percent in 1980, 34 percent in 1986, and 17 percent in both 1989 and 1990 (Plank 1996). In fact, from 1975 to 1989, Brazil's expenditure on tertiary education, at the expense of basic education, increased from 18 percent to 26 percent (Birdsall, Bruns, and Sabot 1996).