Evidence and decision-making in federal education policies: what informs bureaucrats in the field of education?
Evidence-based public policies; State capacities; Decision-making; Education.
Paradigm, approach, or movement, Evidence-Based Public Policies (EBPPs) have gained space in both national and international discussion in order to improve the provision, efficiency, and, especially, the effectiveness of public policies based on available evidence, in particular scientific ones – although these are not the only form of evidence, having management experience and political judgment as other important sources of support for decision making. However, there is still no consensus in the literature regarding the terms “evidence”, “knowledge” or “information”. Discussed internationally since the 2000s and nationally since 2010, EBPPs has gained even more momentum in the Brazilian scientific debate from 2018 to the present moment – and with a tendency to deepen, particularly in contexts of economic recession and, therefore, with even more limitations of resources for the distribution and financing for public policies. Besides, the analytical and prospective capacities of the State seem to be intrinsically linked to the theme, since the collection, organization, and synthesis of informational subsidies passes through state agencies, think tanks, and political advisors, to name a few examples. Thus, the present research seeks to answer the question: what evidence reaches federal bureaucrats in the area of education and how is it applied or not in public policy? As a delimitation, the research will focus on the field of federal education policies in the last decade (2010-2020). As for the methodology, quantitative methods will be used (in addition to descriptive statistics, statistical modelings such as regression analysis or clustering models can be used) and qualitative methods (it is proposed to use web scraping to collect textual data and subsequent analysis with statistical techniques using RStudio). Finally, one expects to contribute to the theme, in the light of political science and public administration, from the development of analyses, classification of evidence used by policymakers, and elaboration of an adherence index to public policies based on evidence.