Introduction
The concept of
public policy has different definitions. Some definitions emphasize power,
actors, organizations, while others focus on the logic of State action and
intervention in specific sectors (Dye, 1984; Höfling, 2001). According to Souza
(2003), public policy is “a set of government actions that will produce
specific effects” (Souza, 2003, p. 24). Being involved in interests and
disputes, public policies are designed considering economic, social, political,
and cultural aspects of a given society, which define its contours and contexts,
as well as the arrangements with different instances.
As an analytical
framework, research has adopted the public policy cycle (Mainardes et al.,
2011) with overlapping or merging phases — Agenda, Formulation, Implementation
and Evaluation — or the research in only one of these phases (Lotta, 2014;
2015; Giusto & Ribeiro, 2019). And the least prominent one in the studies
is the implementation, both in the national and international literature since
there is a limited amount of work that investigates the elements and factors
that influence it (Dye, 1984; Oliveira, 2019; Muylaert, 2019).
This finding is
also found in studies on the public policy Sistema Mineiro de Administração
Escolar (SIMADE), a school management system implemented since 2008 by the
Minas Gerais State Department of Education (SEE/MG), and in partnership with
the Center for Policies and Education Evaluation at the Federal University of
Juiz de Fora (CAEd/UFJF)[2],
in public schools in the state of Minas Gerais. Research on SIMADE (Fonseca,
2014; Salgado, 2014; Tomaz, 2015; Balduti, 2017) presents the phases of public
policy, but the implementation is analyzed in an operational, linear way,
favoring the hierarchy of activities conducted in the system. The analysis
models of these research establish little dialogue with the debates in the
national and international literature and there is limited observation of the
performance of educational agents and the senses and meanings they attribute to
the system and its data.
Implementation is
a complex process, which involves the subjectivity of agents who, when
interpreting the texts of public policies based on their experiences, values,
and beliefs, render this stage very unpredictable (Lima, 2019). As a result,
there is in implementation a significant margin of discretion performed by
school actors, where the effective limits of their power leave them free to
make a choice between courses of action and inaction (Bonelli et al., 2019).
According to Mota et al. (2019), the exercise of discretion is inevitable and
necessary since formal rules cannot account for all concrete cases, and it is
essential that the agent exercises his power so that the organization adapts to
reality, works, and serves people. According to Lotta (2015), discretion comes
to be understood as “[…] not only as empirical evidence, but almost as a
normative ideal, insofar as the importance of autonomy for the recognition of
reality in the implementation of public policies is proven.” (Lotta, 2015, p.
28).
In the
implementation of SIMADE, discretion can be exercised by middle-level
bureaucrats (BME), who have an intermediate position between the top and bottom
of the organizational structure, which operationalize the public policies that
the higher-level ones formulate (Muylaert, 2019). In other words, they are the
“actors responsible for interacting with their subordinates and ensuring their
compliance with the implementation of rules designed by higher levels” (Fuster,
2016, p. 7). In the context of SIMADE, this actor is the principal, who, in
addition to having an essential role in organizing schoolwork, leading, and
coordinating the routine of teaching units (Drabach & Souza, 2014), puts
“the elements of the school into action organizational process (planning,
organization, evaluation) in an integrated and articulated way” (Soares &
Teixeira, 2006, p. 157).
In view of the
characterization of this agent and the delimitation of the implementation stage
of a public policy, the object of this article is to analyze the implementation
of SIMADE from the discretion of middle-level bureaucrats, the school
principals of the state public schools of Minas Gerais. In conclusion, we seek
to understand the middle-level bureaucracy in the educational context of Minas
Gerais from the profile, performance and relationships established by school
principals in accessing and using SIMADE.
Stages of SIMADE public
policy
Even with the
scarcity of studies on public policy SIMADE (Lima, 2019), research (Fonseca,
2014; Salgado, 2014; Tomaz, 2015; Balduti, 2017) allows the observation of the
interrelation between the phases and the political, historical, economic, and
educational nuances of Minas Gerais in the institution and implementation of
SIMADE.
The Agenda stage,
where “the agendas are defined according to social, political or economic
demands, on which different socioeconomic interests act” (Giusto & Ribeiro,
2019, p. 2), began between 2007 and 2010, in the second stage of the Management
Shock[3],
which the aim was to improve the quality and reduce costs of public services
through the reorganization of the institutional arrangement and management
model (Duarte et al., 2016). During this period, was adopted the
contractualization of results, having an agreement on objects and goals between
the government and the intermediary and local bodies, and the control of
results (Duarte et al., 2016).
In addition to
the contractualization of results, there was a need for real-time monitoring of
schools, so that it was possible to rationalize expenses and improve
educational results, because the Minas Gerais Public Education Assessment
System (SIMAVE[4])
repeatedly indicated student performance below expectations. Furthermore, it
was necessary to evaluate the actions and results of government interventions
more effectively. Added to this is the introduction of Information and
Communication Technologies (ICT), with initiatives from the Federal Government,
with the National Educational Technology Program (PROINFO Integrado[5]),
and from Minas Gerais, with the Escolas em Rede Project, which distributed
computers and internet to schools (Balduti, 2017).
It is in this
context that the outline of the SIMADE public policy emerges, with the aim to
promote improvements in income and performance, reduce expenses on schools, and
use the technological benefits offered by ICT, such as real-time monitoring and
data visualization in several layouts, to institute a policy of agreement on
results in which the principal is responsible for “accounting for educational
results, making him/her the main responsible for the effective achievement of
goals and objects, almost always hierarchically defined” (Duarte et al., 2016,
p. 202).
In the
Formulation stage, “which specifies the action plans, also characterized by
debates, articulation of interests and decision-making” (Giusto & Ribeiro,
2019, p. 2), SIMADE was established based on Resolution SEE no. 1,180 (Minas
Gerais, 2008), which determined the design of this public policy. The process
execution was decisive, and defined the degree of centralization/decentralization,
inspection mechanisms, guidelines and guided the implementation, in addition to
the performance of middle-level bureaucrats, making them responsible for the
insertion and updating of data from their schools.
Resolution SEE
No. 1,180 (Minas Gerais, 2008, p. 1) enacts regarding the interpretation of the
principal's role in article 6:
It is the School Principal's responsibility to
enter data into SIMADE, ensure its reliability and its periodic updating.
Sole paragraph. Changing SIMADE data can only be done by an employee
that has express permission from the School Principal.
The resolution allowed the principal to act as a user of the system,
i.e., the street-level bureaucrat (those who act directly in contact with users
of public services, affecting performance, quality and access to goods and
services promoted by the government), or as a BME. As found in the research by
Fonseca (2014), Tomaz (2015) and Balduti (2017), in the school context, few
principals (about 20%) claim to exercise this dual role, since because of the
daily tasks and the complexity of the role of principal, the system user is the
school secretary and the other members of the school secretary staff.
Therefore, these professionals are the street-level bureaucrats in the context
of SIMADE.
The next stage,
Implementation, is characterized as “the moment when the guidelines are
effectively put into practice with the target audience” (Giusto & Ribeiro,
2019, p. 2). Traditionally, studies on the implementation of public policies
tended to focus on the performance of activities established from the top down,
as pointed out by Lotta (2015) and Oliveira (2019), in an analytical
perspective referred to as policy
centered. The implementation object was to achieve goals previously set in
the policy formulation process, being considered as prescriptive and
hierarchical, as in the top-down
model, in which actors were subjected to decision makers and there was an
automatic translation between decision and action. These could also be
descriptive and flexible, as in the bottom-up
model, which emerged in the following decades, and values the observation of
the policies effectiveness and evaluation, as well as the factors that cause
failures in the implementation process. When analyzing the implementation, in
both cases there was a gap between the formulation and the execution,
separating administrators and executors, making the existence of different
forms of implementation to be considered having different motivations and degrees
of autonomy among the implementers (Muylaert, 2019; Oliveira, 2019).
It breaks,
therefore, with the linear perspective in which public policies are implemented
as elaborated and described in the formulation, since in the implementation
there is a process of re-readings, reinterpretations, changes of meanings and
translations by the actors when placing the public policy in practice. This
public policy perspective values negotiation and action and is considered a
second generation of implementation studies.
Recent studies
(Lotta, 2015; Oliveira, 2019; Muylaert, 2019), summarizing the contributions of
previous analysis models, understand the implementation process as central and
continuous, in which one of the basic elements of analysis is the discretion of
the implementing agents and of middle-level bureaucrats. In this sense,
discretion “becomes focused on an action of viewing the implementation as a set
of tensions, interactions, and strategies which involve decision-making”
(Oliveira, 2019, p. 3).
The implementation of SIMADE, based on the top-down model, began in
January 2008, with the participation of 56 instructors and 9 analysts[6]
subordinated to CAEd/UFJF, which in partnership with SEE/MG coordinated and
monitored the entire implementation in the 3,920 state schools[7].
From March 2010, having the system already with its online version [8],
From March 2010, having the system already with its online version, the
implementation was conducted by technicians from the 43[9] Regional
Education Superintendencies (SREs), although support [10] for
system users was still conducted by the CAEd (Remote Learning Support Center).
In October 2016, SIMADE started to be managed only by SEE/MG, although the CAEd
was still responsible for supporting the users of the system until December of
the same year. In January 2017, SIMADE became the exclusive responsibility of
SEE/MG and service to users began to be conducted by the SREs teams (Balduti,
2017).
The evaluation
stage, “which uses some measurement instrument to verify the results obtained,
comparing them with the formulated specifications and the planned objects”
(Giusto & Ribeiro, 2019, p. 2), has been conducted through mixed (Fonseca,
2014; Tomaz, 2015; Balduti, 2017) or qualitative (Salgado, 2014) research. Such
researches indicate that there is little detail regarding the policy
formulation, leaving only what is prescribed by Resolution 1,180 (Minas Gerais,
2008), and that the implementation does not present a dialogue with the demands
of the schools and professionals heading the management since it used the top-down model. Furthermore, the
evaluation focuses on the effects of the system, without associating them with
a stage analysis of the public policy cycle and implementing bureaucrats at
distinct levels involved in the development, access, and use of the system.
Therefore, there is a need to introduce the role of implementing bureaucrats
and their discretion in SIMADE public policy into the analytical agenda.
Mid-Level Bureaucrats:
School Principals in the State of Minas Gerais
In recent
decades, the public policy literature has made important advances in
understanding the role of bureaucrats in the policymaking process. However, the
studies focused especially on high-level and street-level bureaucrats, in which
these are the highlights of the field, disregarding the relevance of
middle-level bureaucrats in different instances of the government and of the
public and private management (Cavalcante et al., 2017; Mota et al., 2019).
Since they occupy
an intermediate position, middle-level bureaucrats are in the conceptual
“limbo” between the top-down and bottom-up models, as they are situated
between the top and the bottom (Oliveira & Abrucio, 2018), due to the
variety and heterogeneity of actors in different sector and institutional
contexts, in addition to the specifics of the positions (Pires, 2015).
Middle-level bureaucrats are difficult to understand because they are defined
in relation to the position occupied in each policy or in each government
structure, to the detriment of specific, proper, and equal characteristics in
all public agencies and policies (Lotta et al., 2014).
However, Lotta et
al. (2014) and Oliveira (2019), note in an extensive review of national and
international publications that the literature has made some progress. Mention
can be made, among these, to the perception of similarities and differences
between middle-level bureaucrats, since each context involves specific
realities that determine who they are and what they do.
The theoretical
framework on implementing bureaucrats in studies on implementation coming from
Political Science and recently appropriated in the field of education (Lotta,
2014; Mota et al., 2019) comprises the school principal — an employee linked to
a federal education unit, state or municipal, occupying a commissioned position
— such as BME. As much as the school principal has daily contact with the
students and/or their family/guardians (who are the beneficiaries of the
educational service) through their tasks, the set of their attributions are
that of professionals who work at the intermediate level of the bureaucratic
hierarchy, i.e., the principal's tasks make him a link between the upper level
and the street level. Thus, based on the literature on implementing agents
(Lotta et al., 2014; Cavalcante & Lotta, 2015; Muylaert, 2019), the school
principal is considered a BME.
According to
Lotta et al. (2014, p. 465), middle-level bureaucrats are “actors who play a
management role and intermediate direction (as managers, principals,
coordinators, or supervisors) in public and private bureaucracies” in the
processes of public policy implementation. BMEs act to transform political
strategies into operational decisions and, to this end, establish horizontal
(with colleagues) and vertical connections (with subordinates and superiors),
also helping to understand how public administration works (Cavalcante et al.,
2017).
In the SIMADE
public policy, middle-level bureaucrats are the school principals responsible
for the maintenance and periodic updating of the system, complying with
SEE/MG's designs, as well as coordinating the performance of school secretaries
in the system use. In Minas Gerais, the position of school principal is held by
public employees — contracted or permanent — who have participated in an
Occupational Certification process[11]. This
process aims to select education professionals who have technical knowledge,
measured through tests, and who are also chosen by the school community via
election to assume the position of principal of state schools (Fonseca, 2014;
Tomaz, 2015). In this way, when invested in a public office, the principal
exercises an administrative role that links him to the authority that appointed
him/her in terms of the school he/she directs and represents, creating a link
between the State and the school community (Muylaert, 2019). Thus, the
principal connects to the upper echelon, SEE/MG, and to the school and to all
the actors that compose it.
In the daily life
of schools, principals as BME play a dual role: technical-managerial and
technical-political. In a technical-managerial role, “the actions concern how
these bureaucrats translate strategic determinations into everyday actions in
organizations, building standards of procedures and managing the services,
therefore, the implementing bureaucrats” (Lotta et al., 2014, p. 472). The
second role, technical-political, concerns “how these actors build negotiations
and bargains related to the processes in which they are involved and their
relationship with the highest level” (Lotta et al., 2014, p. 473). However,
this role depends directly on the position of the BME in the chain of actors,
between formulation and implementation.
Therefore, the
actions of agents and the relationships they establish make it possible to
understand the processes of implementation of public policies. According to
Lotta et al. (2014), the absence in the literature on middle-level bureaucrats
deserves greater attention since it offers important analytical and
interpretive gains, in addition to understanding the effects on implementation
and its network of interactions and processes.
Methodological paths
This article is
the result of research conducted in the Doctor’s Degree in Education of the
Postgraduate Program at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro
(PUC-Rio). Having as its object of study SIMADE and the discretion of school
principals, this research adopted a mixed approach, combining collection
techniques and qualitative and quantitative analysis.
To this end, in
2019, an online questionnaire was applied to 3,444 principals of schools that
offer regular education and serve 2,137,891 students from the state public
school of Minas Gerais. The document consisted of 38 questions that dealt with
the respondent's profile, access, and use of SIMADE. As this is a research
conducted with human beings, both SEE/MG and each school principal virtually
signed the Free and Informed Consent Term, as requested by the PUC-Rio Ethics
Committee, to which this work was submitted and approved. In order to preserve
the anonymity of the respondents, fictitious names were assigned to each
response from the principals.
The 586
questionnaires that were answered by the school principals were analyzed using
the SPSS software (version 18), which made it possible to trace the profile of
the respondents and the characteristics of access and use of SIMADE, as well as
to identify the discretion exercised by middle-level bureaucrats.
Then, the open
question “What is your responsibility in relation to SIMADE?” was selected,
which allowed a space for less guided expression of the respondent on the
subject to understand the principal's discretion. The 586 responses were
compiled from content analysis which, according to Carlomagno and Rocha (2016,
p. 175), “is intended to classify and categorize any type of content, reducing
its characteristics to key elements, so that they are comparable to a number of
other elements”. For the treatment of data, the categorical analysis technique
was based on differentiating the nuclei of meaning that constitute the
communication to later regroup them in categories. Thus, two categories are
founded: administrative, composed of 525 schools; and pedagogical, composed of
27 schools.
BME Characteristics
In the 586
schools, 93.3% of respondents hold the role of school principal and only 6.7%
hold the role of deputy principal, predominantly women (72.1%) who ascended to
the role through a selection process and election (94.5%). Regarding color,
there is a predominance of white (50.5%), followed by brown (41.1%), a result
similar to that observed by Soares and Teixeira (2006). The average age is 48
years old, although the predominant age groups are from 41 to 50 years old
(39.9%) and from 51 to 60 years old (38.6%), like the results from studies by
Tomaz (2015) and Balduti (2017).
Most of the
principals (96.7%) have already worked as regents in basic education, with an
average of 15 years, while as a school principal and performing the management
of the current school (where they participate in the survey) the average is
less of 2 years. As each term lasts four years, these principals and deputy
principals are in their first term, as illustrated in the following chart:
Graph 1
Period as a principal in this school[12]
Source: Lima
(2019, p. 85).
The graph also
indicates that there is significant shift in the position, as only 38.5% of
principals have been principals for more than 6 years. This result is
associated with the legislation of the state of Minas Gerais, which until 2018
allowed only one consecutive re-election to the position of principal.
According to Lima (2019), ascension to the position by selection process and
election allows for a more consistent choice when selecting the best
candidates, using technical competence and the appreciation of the school
community.
Regarding
schooling, managers are mostly graduated in Pedagogy and Mathematics,
respectively 8% and 6%, Biology, Literature and History, around 5% each[13].
Among the principals, as already observed in numerous surveys (Tomaz, 2015;
Balduti, 2017), those with postgraduate degrees predominate, around 70%, and 6%
have completed the School Management course, 5.4% the Supervision course, 4%
the mathematics course, 3.7% the Psychopedagogy course and 3.1% the School
Inspection course.
About 60% of the
principals consider that they have a good working relationship with the school
secretaries, which is fundamental for the functioning of the school unit in the
administrative scope and for the use of SIMADE. Lima (2019) notes that the
perception of the environment is significantly associated with a strong
alignment of school actors in relation to the mission and vision they share
about the teaching unit.
Among the 586
principals, 65% claim to dedicate between 1 to 5 hours a week to external
relations, which include meetings and/or contact with the Regional Education
Superintendence (SRE), which passes on the SEE/MG guidelines. In other words,
it is easier to be complacent with the rules and norms coming from high-level
bureaucrats (Fuster, 2016), sometimes in an innovative and sometimes
conservative way (Oliveira, 2019), i.e., with a flexible margin of discretion.
These results
also highlight the relational dimension of the work of the BME, which, as they
are at the intermediate level with horizontal and vertical work relationships,
have information that regulates their relationships, in addition to maintaining
the frequent flow of school monitoring (Cavalcante et al., 2017).
They build (or produce) their position through the management of these
information flows — they demand with more or less intensity, decide what “goes
up” and what “does not go up”, […], decide how to balance the tensions between
the various actors with whom they interact, they manage the necessary measures
and referrals. (Pires, 2015, p. 217)
Thus, it is
middle-level bureaucrats who define the functioning of the school, articulating
horizontal and vertical relationships, building consensus among actors to
achieve their goals. Therefore, they are an intermediary agent between the
upper level and the street-level bureaucrats.
The role of school
principals in the implementation of SIMADE
According to Mota
et al. (2019), the implementation of public policies should be considered to
observe the performance of the actors, as well as the potential for adjustments
that this stage represents in relation to the formulation of the policy. Regarding
the use of SIMADE, specifically related to the frequency of access, only 7.84%
of the principals said they do not use the system and approximately 20% report
that the use occurs through the secretariat employees, i.e., they do not access
it directly. About 70% of principals frequently access the system.
The formulation of the SIMADE public policy leaves a space for decision
for the principal to act as a user or as an observer of the information entry,
since it does not explain what is expected from SIMADE users regarding the
system and the data access and use, broadening the exercise of discretion. The
difference between observers and users is the attendance to a training course
on SIMADE, which can foster understanding on the system and its importance for
school management. Furthermore, the observer principals work in schools that
offer initial grades (82) or complete elementary education (93); while the user
principals' schools serve elementary school (355) or high school (43). Although
the frequency of use of the system depends on the way principals interpret and
understand their action in the school, which is difficult to capture by the
survey, these responses seem to indicate that the training associated with the
steps taken can influence the use of the system.
Middle-level
bureaucrats manage the gap in the rule and use different practices with
adaptations and translations of regulations to achieve their results (Lotta,
2014). Therefore, there is a recontextualization of the original discourse to a
context in which it is modified, condensed and re-elaborated (Oliveira, 2019)
by about 30% of the principals, who understand that access to SIMADE is not
their task.
This result is
consistent with the findings of Cavalcante and Lotta (2015) and Cavalcante et al.
(2017) that the environment in which the BME operates offers different forms of
action and discretion in relation to public policy. The two forms of access —
through the secretary and the school principal himself — respectively refer to:
(i) the proximity of the principals to the street-level bureaucrats (in this
case the school secretaries), since they are the users of SIMADE and the actors
who maintain the dialogue with the beneficiaries of the policy (the students
and/or parents or guardians) and are responsible for providing the principal
with all the data necessary for the management of the school; (ii) when using
the system and possibly understanding its data, the principal comes closer to
the high-level bureaucrats because he/she is more capable to understand the
political decisions emanated by the bureaucrats high-level, in addition to
knowing and monitoring the data of his own school. It is worth mentioning, as
observed by Cavalcante et al. (2017), that the interaction between internal
actors (principals and school secretaries) and external actors (SEE/MG and
SRE), the technical nature of decisions and the very degree of discretion, can
bring about different outlines to access to the system and to the public
administration.
This result is
consistent with the answers given by the principals about their responsibility
in relation to the use of SIMADE[14].
Some answers were selected to illustrate the principals' perception:
(i) answer group
1 – to keep updated and correct data for a true and concrete analysis
(Margarida, 44, principal); to designate and supervise the responsible
secretary and carry out some more specific actions when necessary (Jasmim, 40,
principal); to monitor the entry of reliable data and its constant updating
(João, 37, principal); to supervise, the service is performed by the
secretariat (José, 47, principal); to enforce all actions inherent to it,
inspecting access by the secretary and punctuality in providing data (Rosa, 33,
principal); to supervise, the service is performed by the secretariat.
(Amarílis, 42, principal)
(ii) answer group
2 – to weekly open together with the pedagogical staff to check attendance,
evasion, pedagogical performance (Azaleia, 51, principal); to monitor evasion,
dropout and student performance rates and develop plans of goals and actions
for intervention with the support of the school supervisor (Camélia, 45,
principal); to verify, together with the pedagogical team, the strategies that
should be elaborated for better student performance and to reduce school
evasion. (Paulo, 49, principal)
In the first
group, composed of 525 principals, a supervisory role is assumed, supervising
the execution of tasks, aiming only at the fulfillment of the activities that
must be conducted in SIMADE. As noted by Muylaert (2019), the principal plays a
well-defined role in most public policies, which is the task of coordination.
In this perspective, as highlighted by Salgado (2014) and Tomaz (2015), there
is a predominance of the technical use of the system, i.e., for the purpose of
complying with Resolution 1,180 (Minas Gerais, 2008), which aims to control the
school unit, in addition to contributing to the implementation of school
services in a standardized way. In particular, this type of perception of
responsibility proposes a new form of regulation — centered on the definition
and a priori control of results, whose aim is to ensure coherence, balance, and
identical reproduction of the use of SIMADE by all schools, through practices
that allow the control and recording of what happens in the teaching units.
In the second
group, formed by 24 managers, the use of the system focuses on the information
that can be extracted and can contribute to the improvement of student learning
and to the quality of education. The student seems to be the focus and the data
extracted can facilitate monitoring, enabling monitoring of student and school
performance, which can ensure data that allow diagnosis and propose strategies
for improving the quality of education.
In this context,
the principal, through the system data, can promote the necessary conditions
for the implementation of improvements in the school, particularly those of a
pedagogical nature. It seems to us that the principals of group 2, unlike those
of group 1, produce a new rule that is not limited to the systematic and full
compliance with Resolution 1,180 (Minas Gerais, 2008) when using the system to
monitor and make decisions within schools.
Although these
two categories are already widely discussed and verified in the literature that
investigates the daily life of school management (Werle & Audino, 2015;
Leal & Novaes, 2018) and how these are identified as focused on
administrative matters — accountability, budget collection, organization of
timetables and financial — and/or pedagogical — control — curriculum,
assessment, teaching methodology and performance analysis — the study in
question indicates that there is a lack of clarity in the object of formulating
the policy, which may be causing two different forms of implementation and
consequently two uses of the system from the discretion of school principals.
On the one hand,
the aim is to achieve greater compliance with educational standards; and, on
the other hand, the search for better performance and better student
performance, which appears to indicate that there is appreciation of a
pedagogical management of the school based on data provided by the system.
“Although there are rules and norms that shape some standards of action, these
bureaucrats still have the autonomy to decide how to apply them and insert them
into implementation practices” (Lotta, 2015, p. 46). In this way, SIMADE is
understood only as a standardization and control instrument, to the detriment
of being a pedagogical tool that influences educational efficiency and school
management.
This result
corroborates the statement by Lotta et al. (2014), because the diversity of the
implementation context can cause the same regulation to produce entirely
different results in different realities, even though they are predominantly
schools that serve the final years of elementary and high school (60%). That
is, the school context can be affected by the type of system use, although the
actions, values, and references of the principals also influence and transform
the way the policy was conceived.
In addition, both
access and perception of the principal's responsibility in relation to the use
of SIMADE are related to the ability to influence decisions, as pointed out by
Cavalcante et al. (2017). These variables materialize in the SIMADE public
policy, in the verification of schools in which the principals claim that the
use of SIMADE is compatible with the way secretaries perform it, i.e., in 525
teaching units, principals and secretaries use the system in an administrative
way. According to Lima (2019), due to the duties of the secretary's position
focused on the bookkeeping, registration and organization of information, these
professionals are not dedicated to the pedagogical dimension and, therefore, do
not envision SIMADE as pedagogical. It is hypothesized that, as 61.5% of
principals are in their first term or at the beginning of their second, they
may be using the system according to the vision of the school secretaries,
which is in line with the purposes of SEE/MG materialized in Resolution 1,180
(Minas General, 2008).
In these cases,
there seems to be considerable alignment between principals and secretaries,
who share perceptions about the system in a productive collaborative
relationship that can have a positive impact on the school atmosphere, as
pointed out by 60% of principals, and on the use of the system and its data.
After all, the fact that the alignments between principals and secretaries are
aimed at the administrative aspect indicates that the regulation proposed by
the State since the Management Shock policy (Duarte et al., 2016), as well as
the accountability of principals for student results (Drabach & Souza,
2014), is still very present.
Although the
pedagogical use of SIMADE may be a consequence of other factors that have a
much more significant weight in education, such as, for example, the social
origin of students and the didactic-pedagogical actions of the teacher (Soares
& Teixeira, 2006), the following hypothesis is recorded here for future
studies: the 24 schools can aim to ensure educational quality, via increased
student performance and intra-school equity, adopting actions based on evidence
provided by SIMADE, since “the same set of school practices can act,
concomitantly increasing the average performance of schools and promoting
equity among students” (Lima, 2019).
The result of the
24 schools reflects, in opposition to what was observed by Bonelli et al.
(2019) in the application of Agency Theory[15], in a
synchronicity between the use of the system by principals and secretaries that
can generate informational strategies, articulating certain administrative
and/or pedagogical information from the perspective of each actor that allow
raising educational evidence about the teaching unit and a meaningful use of
system data for the school context. As noted by Giusto and Ribeiro (2019), when
analyzing street-level bureaucrats, there is, as for BME, “a freedom of action,
especially when faced with ambiguous and contradictory rules” (Giusto &
Ribeiro, 2019, p. 4), which allows secretaries to make their own interpretation
of public policy based on their previous experience, something that can be
considered when providing information to the BME. It seems to us that in these
schools, even with divergent views on the system, the performance of the school
secretaries and the BME is articulated and complemented in favor of the
students' results.
Therefore, school
principals are responsible for coordinating the implementation of the SIMADE public
policy and, at times, articulate and build consensus among the different actors
involved, as in schools where the use of the system is administrative or
pedagogical. Due to their intermediate position in the organizational
structure, principals make decisions to be put into action, but they also
exercise discretion, which may aim to improve quality and equity in public
schools in the state of Minas Gerais.
Conclusion and final
remarks
The School
Administration System of Minas Gerais (SIMADE) allows middle-level bureaucrats
to have a significant margin of discretion in accessing and using the system,
which reverberates in new directions and meanings for public policy and
consequently for its implementation. In addition, the formulation of this
policy structured in a prescriptive and hierarchical manner is far from
implementation, since the former did not explain much about access and mainly
about the use of the system, allowing a great margin of discretion for the
principals and even the no access to the system. Both in terms of access and
usage, the BME sometimes approaches the top level, having a pedagogical use
that allows it to monitor the performance of students and the school; sometimes
he/she approaches street-level bureaucrats, being a supervisor of the actions
developed in the system.
Furthermore, in
the form of implementation aimed at the administrative use of SIMADE, based on
Resolution 1180/2008 (Minas Gerais, 2008), the BMEs are in line with the
statement provided by the highest level in a managerial perspective, which
values control, standardization, efficiency in the public service. On the other
hand, there is the production of a new rule in the implementation focused on a
pedagogical perspective that is not limited to the systematic and full
compliance with the aforementioned resolution but uses SIMADE data to monitor
and make decisions within schools. Since it was instituted under the Management
Shock Policy, SIMADE contributes to a larger public policy, which is
educational, being a means to achieve certain educational purposes.
The limits of
this study, which result from the methodological approach, circumscribe the
starting points for future qualitative researches, with the possibility to
investigate the use of administrative and pedagogical data from practices and
profiles of the principal; organizational complexity of the school (secretaries
and their interactions with management); stages and student profiles
(socioeconomic level, income, etc.). Such studies can reveal technical, political,
and managerial aspects established and carried out by high-level bureaucrats,
in addition to promoting evidence on the need to train principals to use
SIMADE.
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