Valor acrescentado, eficácia diferencial e equidade social: evidências longitudinais da educação básica no Brasil

Abstract

This dissertation examines the use of Value-Added (VA) models in educational evaluation, linking their theoretical foundations and methodological gaps to an empirical application on differential school effectiveness and social equity in the Brazilian education system. The study is structured around three progressive essays. The first, a scoping review (1971–2024) and the second, an Ibero-American systematic review based on the PRISMA protocol, show that the literature in developing countries remains limited and characterized by methodological constraints, particularly the predominant use of simplified two-level models that tend to underestimate within-school and contextual factors. To address these limitations, the third essay investigates differential school effectiveness and social equity in Brazil through a comparison of the states of Maranhão and Minas Gerais. Using matched longitudinal data from the Sistema de Avaliação da Educação Básica (SAEB) for the period 2011–2015, the analysis combines a five-level linear multilevel model (student, classroom, school, municipality, and state) to estimate academic proficiency with a multilevel logistic model to examine school success and regular student progression. The results show that more than 90% of the variation in student performance occurs within schools, concentrating primarily at the student and classroom levels. Differential school effectiveness is limited, indicating that schools have a constrained capacity to compensate for the effects of socioeconomic background and prior learning deficits. The binary model further reveals dynamics of inequality that are not captured by standardized test scores alone: although girls display lower proficiency in Mathematics, they have nearly twice the odds of school success, and racial penalties in student progression are more pronounced in more structured educational contexts, such as Minas Gerais. The findings suggest that the reproduction of educational inequalities in Brazil operates predominantly through withinschool processes and selection mechanisms within institutions themselves. Accordingly, VA models should be understood not only as accountability metrics but also as analytical tools that highlight the urgent need for public policies focused on internal school processes in order to promote genuine educational equity.