Federalism and the Execution of Coherent Education Policy: The Case of Brazil's Common Core

• In Event: The Implementation of Brazil's Base Nacional Comum Curricular: Promise and Challenge With Brazil's Common Core

Abstract

Scholars and practitioners have long been interested in how to design and implement coherent education policies, with the ultimate goal of producing effective school reforms (Fuhrman, 1993; Honig & Hatch, 2004). However, decentralized governance has raised questions about which actors are best suited to execute different aspects of such policies (Rivlin, 2012). The evolution of Brazil’s federalist structure complicates these questions. Uniquely, the country began as a unitary system that decentralized power to states and municipalities in order to hold the country together, as opposed to other federalist nations that created pacts between autonomous states to bring the country together (Stepan, 1999). This complex system, marked by a delicate dance between centripetal and centrifugal interests (Soares & Machado, 2018), has created an ambiguity that requires public policies to flexibly adapt to such dynamics. In this paper, we explore the extent to which the federalist structure of Brazil—situated within the context of its historical development and contemporary sociopolitical landscape—undermines a coherent implementation of the BNCC, the first national policy to introduce common curricular standards in Brazil.

Drawing on a qualitative analysis of over 100 key stakeholder interviews as well as document analysis from the first two years of implementation, this paper first describes the federalist structure in Brazil, including the roles and responsibilities of different levels of governmental actors in BNCC implementation. Subsequently, the paper explores the ways in which alternative actors, such as the third sector (e.g., foundations and other non-governmental entities), have attempted to fill the holes in policy implementation left by a decentralized government with limited capacity to influence adoption from the federal down to the municipal level. Additionally, the paper examines how an ill-defined decentralized education system has created blurry jurisdictional boundaries and a “culture of informality,” complicating coordination, funding, incentives, and accountability mechanisms used to motivate implementation.

To date, our results suggest a fragmented implementation of the BNCC, with differing perceptions of the purpose of the BNCC, the actors held responsible for different stages of the policy’s implementation, the translation of the national policy into local curricula, and ultimately, teacher training on BNCC-aligned curricula. The full paper discusses in detail the “leaks” in the BNCC implementation pipeline that have been brought on, or complicated by, the longstanding history of federalism in Brazil. This research contributes to the literature on policy implementation in decentralized contexts in two key ways: first, by examining how the interplay of structural and cultural elements in Brazil has produced an entirely new culture of ambiguity and flexible policy interpretation, posing systematic challenges to the local adoption of federal education policies; and secondly, by shedding light on the role of the Third Sector in accounting for such ambiguity and redirecting the efforts of public sector actors.

Authors

• Iris Daruwala, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Filomena Siqueira, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Douglas Ready, Teachers College, Columbia University