Abstract:

Our paper presents some of the major results of a recent research, called “Educational Success & Organizational Profiles” [2009-2010], developed at the Lisbon University Institute and funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science & Technology. The major empirical basis of the project were the schools evaluation reports, produced on the behalf of the National Program for Schools Assessment, as well as interviews to school principals.

In this paper, we shall provide a sociological analysis of a National Program for Schools Assessment itself, implemented in Portugal since 2006, by the Education General Inspectorate. Such system was an important innovation in Portuguese educational system, since it evaluated all the basic and secondary schools in the country through a complex procedure, joining inspectors and scholars, quantitative and qualitative data, and all the reports are available online.

Our analysis is supported by sociological theories on the evaluation as a social process, with particular features (and impacts) in modern organizations. Some recent studies on the specific purposes and effects of schools evaluation programs on the educational arena were also used, in order to interpret the current process.

For the analysis, all the evaluation reports from three different regions of Portugal were introduced in a database, using MaxQDA and SPSS. After a brief characterization of the national goals and standards, our analysis will focus on the quantitative measures of variation between assessment reports, according to schools type, social context, region and year of evaluation. Although such variations were not officially prescribed, as we pointed out, all these factors have some influence in the way assessment was developed and the way the results were presented. Since there are several assessment issues, for an in-depth analysis, we will focus on just one “controversial topic”, one of those with more internal variation: the participation of students, family and community in school affairs.

The interviews to twenty principals are also used in order to understand their views on how the assessment process was implemented, in the field, and especially its effects on school organizational developments. Schools were chosen to provide a huge diversity, in terms of the different variables above mentioned.

Crossing national standards, school evaluation reports and principals’ narratives, we are able to sketch how the school assessment program was growing up, from the complex interactions between central administration, universities, education inspectorate, regional agencies and schools.