ABSTRACT
This study aimed to understand the “school failure” in a public elementary school in the city of Vitória, ES, Brazil, submitted to the quantifying evaluation policy. The research was carried out in a school that obtained the lowest result in the Brazilian Basic Education Development Index (Índice de Desenvolvimento da Educação Básica - IDEB) in the municipality; and, through an ethnographic case study, we followed the everyday life of a 9th grade classroom and a student with “low school performance” during a school year. The production of data occurred from observation in the classroom and other spaces of the school, from the analysis of documents, as well as from interviews with teachers, a pedagogue, the principal and the student’s parents. We were present at the school, in the morning shift, for a total of 70 school days. The results obtained were presented through a dense description of the case study, and the analysis was carried out from categories that emerged during the research, such as: individualization and no commitment at the school -the production of the unclassifiable; the teacher’s disvalue; and the “blank pages” of education. We highlight the analysis of what we consider to be central in the everyday life of the researched school, a project that aimed to annul the individual’s entire legal status, producing an invisible, nameless and unclassifiable being.
Keywords:
School failure; IDEB; Assessment policy; Unclassifiable; Medicalization of education