Evaluation of Fundeb’s effects on the performance of high school students in Brazil

Abstract

From the mid 1990’s high school had a significant evolution, accompanied by expansion in investment and one of the factors attributed to the expansion in investment was the implementation of the Fundeb which took place in 2007, contributing both in enhancement teachers’ wage and in school infrastructure. This paper aims at determining the impact of Fundeb on the educational performance of school students as well as analyzing the impact of Fundeb for different segment performance (quantile) of the students. This analysis of the effects throughout the distribution becomes relevant because of the Brazilian educational system is characterized by sharp disparities between schools, and this feature overlooked in assessments involving educational policies. For this purpose, we used the methodology of impact evaluation by the method of Difference-in-Difference based on distribution mean and also in quantile. The results show that the Fundeb had a positive impact in academic performance of high school students, raised student achievement by 12.1 points in Portuguese and 18.5 points in Mathematics. In the quantile, the results indicate that there was no effect in Mathematics and for the Portuguese, there is evidence of a major effect in the first few quantile.