Equity and Efficiency in Education: motivations and targets

The recently released "Educational PAC" attempts to place basic education at the center of the social debate. We have subsidized this debate, offering a diagnosis of how different education levels can impact individuals' lives through broad and easily interpreted indicators. Initially, we analyze how much each educational level reaches the poorest population. For example, how are those in the bottom strata of income distribution benefited by childcare centers, private secondary education, public university or adult education. The next step is to quantify the return of educational actions, such as their effects on employability and an individual's wages, and even health as perceived by the individual, be that individual poor, middle class or elite. The next part of the research presents evidence of how the main characters in education, aka mothers, fathers and children, regard education. The site available with the research presents a broad, user-friendly database, which will allow interested parties to answer their own questions relative to why people do not attend school, the time spent in the educational system and returns to education, which can all be cross-sectioned with a wide array of socio-demographic attributes (gender, income, etc.) and school characteristics (is it public, are school meals offered, etc.) to find answers to: why do young adults of a certain age not attend school? Why do they miss classes? How long is the school day? Aside from the whys and hows of teaching, the research calculates the amount of time spent in school, resulting from a combination between absence rates, evasion raters and length of the school day. The study presents ranks of indicators referring to objective and subjective aspects of education, such as the discussion of the advantages and care in establishing performance based incentives that aim at guiding the states in the race for better educational indicators.

A (des)educação dos educadores: repensando a relação teoria/prática dentro da própria escola

Do reconhecimento de que a. prática educativa tem uma especificidade no interior do conjunto das relações sociais, decorre a concepção de que a educação não pode ser encarada como um problema em si, mas articulada à realidade social em que se insere, enquanto uma prática contraditória que medeia interesses antagonicos. Partindo desse pressuposto, o presente trebalho se propõe a refletir sobre a questão da formação dos educa,dores e, mais especificamente, a questão da prática educativo do educador, seus condicionamentos e suas contradições. Para fazer um levantamento das questões e impasses que estão presentes na formação e na prática dos educadores, analisou-se os relatos das experiências de dois projetos educacionais; um envolvendo o 'Centro de ~ducêção da Universidade SlUlta '6~sula e outro o "Projeto NEC/USU", nos sub-projetes integrando a Universidade e escolas de Ensino Supletivo e, em escoléls de lQ grau da Rede Nunicipal do Hio de Janeiro. Nesse processo, desvendou-se a função que a forma- ção de educadores vem desempenhando, uma função de n=S-:DUCAÇÃO, onde um dos pontos-chave e contraditórios da questão seria a relação entre teoria e prática.'~ Propõe-se assim, um repensar desta relação dentro da escola.

Centro de Estudos Supletivos de Niterói: proposta de reformulação de currículo

Desde a década de quarenta, quando foi criado o Serviço de Educação de Adultos, até os dias atuais, com os Centros de Estudos Supletivos, a educação de adultos no Brasil apresentou um processo evolutivo que tem abrigado no seu contexto uma gama variada de metodologias adotadas. Como experiência pioneira no curso de suplência em nível de lo grau, o Centro de Estudos Supletivos de Niterói foi o primeiro a ser criado no Estado do Rio de Janeiro utilizando-se do ensino individualizado. Para o desenvolvimento do trabalho foi inventariada a bibliografia do ensino individualizado, da qualificação educacional da mão-de-obra no Brasil e da reformulação de currículos. Em seguida, passou-se à descriçio e análise dos questionários respondidos pelos alunos do Centro de Estudos Supletivos de Niterói. Pôde-se determinar a caracterização da clientela, de um lado, sob os aspectos de idade e escolarização anterior ao curso de lo grau, de outro, sob os objetivos com que os alunos procuram esse curso. Delineada a caracterizaçio da clientela e levando em conta o referencial teórico adotado, apresentaram-se proposições para reformulação do currículo do Centro de Estudos Supletivos de Niterói. Para a condução dos trabalhos de reformulação, foi sugerida a adoção, como diretriz básica, da busca do desenvolvimento nos alunos do ato de pensar.

Life expectancy, educational attainment, and fertility choice

This paper explores the role of mortality as a determinant of educational attainment and fertility, both during the demographic transition and after its completion. Two main points distinguish our analysis from the previous ones. Together with the investments of parents in the human capital of children, traditional in the fertility literature, we introduce investments of adult individuals (parents) in their own education, which ultimately determines productivity in both the goods and household sectors. Second, we let adult longevity affect the way parents value each individual child. Increases in adult longevity or reductions in child mortality eventually raise the investments in adult education. Together with the higher utility derived from each child, this tilts the quality-quantity trade off towards less and better educated children, and increases the growth rate of the economy. This setup can explain both the demographic transition and the recent behavior of fertility in “post-transition” countries. Evidence from historical experiences of demographic transition, and from the recent behavior of fertility, education, and growth generally supports the predictions of the model.

Public investment in basic education and economic growth

The main objective of this paper was to visualize the relation between government spending on basic education and the human capital accumulation process, observing the impacts of this spending on individual investments in higher education, and on economic growth. It is used an overlapping-generations model where the government tax the adult generation and spent it in basic education of the next generations. It was demonstrated that the magnitude of the marginal effect of government spending in basic education on growth crucially depends on public budget constrains. The paper explains why some countries with a lot of public investment in basic education growth at low rates. In that sense if a country has only a lot of public investment in basic education without investment in higher education it may growth at low rates because the taxation can cause distortions in the agents incentives to invest in higher education.

From dakar to Brasilia: monitoring unesco´s education goals

Active participation of Brazilian civil society, coupled with the 2007 education development plan, launched by the Brazilian government provides an interesting example of the influences of the Dakar Goals. The two domestic initiatives share the same name, spirit and direction proposed in Dakar 2000. We analyse here changes in the Brazilian policies and indicators related to the Dakar Education Goals since its creation, we note: (i) an increase in enrolment over the relevant period; (ii) access to primary education was nearly universal by 2000; (iii) over-aged youth and adult students fell considerably during the period, but access did not expand; (iv) illiteracy has been falling at a rate which, if sustained, will enable us to meet the goal; (v) gender discrimination did not take place in Brazil; (vi) most pupil proficiency indicators have progressively deteriorated from what was already a low standard. In summary, quantity indicators did improve over the period while most quality indicators worsened.

Is child labor harmful? the impact of working as a child on adult earnings

This paper explores the question: is working as young laborer harmful to an individual in terms of adult outcomes in income? This question is explored through the utilization of a unique set of instruments that control for the decision to work as a child and the decision of how much schooling to acquire. These instruments are combined with two large household survey data sets from Brazil that include retrospective information on the child labor and schooling of working-age adults: the 1988 and 1996 PNAD. Estimations of the reduced form earnings model are performed first by using OLS without controlling for the potential endogeneity of child labor and schooling, and then by using a GMM estimation of instrumental variables models that include the set of instruments for child labor and schooling. The findings of the empirical investigations show that child labor has large negative impact on adult earnings for both male and female children even when controlling for schooling. In addition, the negative impact of starting to work as a child reverses at around age 14. Finally, different child labor activities are examined to determine if some are beneficial while others harmful with the finding that working in agriculture as a child appears to have no negative impact over and above the loss of education.