Avaliação de políticas públicas para a redução da violência escolar em Minas Gerais: o caso do Projeto Escola Viva, Comunidade Ativa

Abstract

The research was to evaluate the impact of the Living School, Active Community Project (EVCA), established in 2003 by the Secretary of State for Education of Minas Gerais, on the two principal objectives of the policy: to reduce violence and improve the school performance of participating institutions. Use was made of a quasi-experimental quantitative research methodology which opted for the comparative analysis of the results. Two groups of schools were included; a group comprised of the 79 state schools of Belo Horizonte participating in the 1st phase of implementation of the Living School, Community Active Project, and a control group containing 21 state schools in Belo Horizonte not subject to the government project but similar in terms of the level of education, the number of students and the socioeconomic level of the students. To determine whether the project had achieved its goals, two sets of variables were analyzed: the number of police reports, classified either as violence against property or violence against the person and the average results of student performance in mathematics and portuguese in the 4th and 8th grades of Elementary School. The data were collected for each of the schools belonging to the two groups. In order to compare the results before and after 3 years of implementation of the EVCA project, data was collected from police reports for the years 1999 and 2000 and 2005 and 2006. For the analysis of school performance results data from SIMAVE 2002 (portuguese) and 2003 (mathematics) were compared with the data from the Prova Brazil test of 2005 (portuguese and mathematics). The means of the two groups of schools were compared regarding each variable and over the period considered. Studies were made taking into consideration the socioeconomic level of the schools and the number of students in the schools. As a result, the research showed that, with respect to police reports, the EVCA Project had a positive effect to the extent that the total number of reports went up less in project schools when compared to the control group. The project was seen to act in reducing the level of violence against property over the period evaluated. As to school performance results, it is suggested that the EVCA Project did not produce any significant impact, as the two groups presented the same results.