The Importance of the Group in the Performance of Municipal Schools Students

Abstract

The process of distribution of students pertaining to the same grade in different classes, known as “enturmação”, has consequences for the students’s learning. Evidences regarding the class effect on learning are shown, with data from a sample of municipal schools in three municipalities located in the Rio de Janeiro State. The data is from a portuguese test applied to 2254 students in the fourth grade, distributed in 103 classes of 53 schools. The scope of the work is to provide evidence about the class effect in three ways. First, the explained variance of the test results for the class effect is compared with that from three other groups of variables: students, teachers and school directors. Second, regressions were made considering the average score of the class and three factors which are related to the class effect, namely, the average student age, the specialization of teachers and the class size. Finally, evidence is provided about the relationship between inequality, as measured by the standard deviation of the scores in a class, and efficiency, as measured by the average score of a class.