Teachers in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Stop Work to Stop High Stakes Test
On June 27 and 28, teachers in Rio de Janeiro are stopping work for an unusual purpose: to boycott the SAERJ exam. This “Education Evaluation System of the State of Rio de Janeiro” has nothing whatsoever to do with a scientific diagnosis of the pedagogical development of the students. Like the national Prova Brasil exam, this test doesn’t even measure the level of factual knowledge, much less the capacity for analysis, critical thought and ability to express oneself. By reducing education to a number based on answers to a standardized multiple-choice test designed to be corrected by machine, the SAERJ is a swindle perpetrated against students and parents and a weapon of capital against teachers. It is an arm of the enemy in the capitalist offensive to privatize public education. Teachers together with students, parents and working people must mobilize our strength to rip up this fraudulent test and prevent it from being administered.
The walkout called by the Teachers Union of the State of Rio de Janeiro, SEPE, is not an isolated local event. The SAERJ imposed by [Rio state governor] Sérgio Cabral is a key component of his Goals Plan, and only the most recent of a series of failed education “reforms” promoted by successive governors and the federal governments of Henrique Cardoso and Lula. Like the New Schools program of Anthony and Rosinha Garotinho (who governed the state of Rio from 1998 to 2007), it seeks to bribe teachers with promises of a few reais in addition to their wretched salaries. In exchange it demands acceptance of a system of evaluation based largely on students’ scores on high-stakes tests (“provões”). In this way, the bourgeois politicians seek to link the wages of educators to the “product,” as if education were a commodity purchased on the market rather than a fundamental democratic right of working people and the entire population.
At the national level, the Lula administration’s Educational Development Plan (PDE) is based on the earlier Law of Educational Fundamentals and Directives approved by the government of Henrique Cardoso [in 1997], which declared education to be “open to private enterprise,” permitted state financing of “non-profit” private schools, and provided vouchers and scholarships for private schools. Lula’s PDE is also the result of a campaign, “Everyone for Education,” sponsored by high finance (the Santander, Itaú, Unibanco and Bradesco banks) and big companies (Gerdau [steel], Suzano [wood products]), to monitor the “proper management of public resources invested in education.” And above all, it is in response to the directives of the imperialist financial institutions, notably the World Bank and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which promote a business model of educational management in order to increase the “productivity” of teachers. This is where the SAERJ exam and other high-stakes tests come from.
In calling a work stoppage of the state school network, the SEPE correctly underscores that these tests blame teachers for the results of “decades of neglect and dismantling of public education.” The lack of investment, the overcrowded classrooms, the inadequate or non-existent computers, laboratories and libraries, teachers’ starvation wages[1] and students’ difficult living conditions are all factors which impinge on the quality of education but are ignored by the SAERJ exam. “Rewarding” or “punishing” teachers and staff on the basis of test scores is not only unjust, not only does it promote cheating, it introduces competition into an undertaking (education) which is inherently collective and collaborative. But the conclusion that the reformist union leadership draws is to suggest to the state education secretary to end bonuses based on “productivity,” open a “discussion” on necessary conditions for a quality education, and construct “a pedagogical policy plan for every school”! This is a recipe for defeat.
more . . . http://internationalist.org/rioteachersboycotttest1206.html
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