Educação pública elementar e secundária no contexto federativo dos EUA durante as duas primeiras décadas do século XXI: a proeminência de políticas top-down fundamentadas em accountability, testagens e padronização

Abstract

In this work, set in the federative context of the United States of America (USA), we analyze how federal actions have impacted the states' autonomy in the management of their educational systems, as well as allowing the inclusion of non-governmental actors in the field of public education in that country. We took our time frame for the first two decades of the 21st century. For the purposes of contextualization, we will revisit the main historical milestones that preceded this period. The analysis was based on the theoretical assumptions of Morton Grodzins and Daniel Elazar regarding dual and cooperative federalism, and John Kincaid regarding coercive federalism. This is documental bibliographic research whose method of analysis is the Integrative Review, which was carried out on two blocks of documents, namely: i) the publications of Publius the Journal of Federalism from the last two decades, since, in the searches carried out in academic databases, it was the journal that returned the largest number of works on the subject; ii) the publications of the Education Resource Information Center (ERIC), since this is a digital library sponsored by the Institute of Education Science, an entity integrated into the U. S. Department of Education (USDOE), bringing together specific publications in the field of education. The results showed a growing role for the federal government, especially after the enactment of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in the 1960s. We observed the prominence of top-down policies, based on accountability, testing and standardization, with funding as the inducing and coercive control mechanism. These actions have weakened the autonomy of states and local communities, as well as opening up spaces and precedents for the influence of non-governmental actors in the provision of public education, a reality that can also be seen in Brazilian federalism and which worries us and instigates us to undertake new research aimed at identifying the similarities and dissimilarities of the educational policies implemented in the two countries.