The instrumentalization of educational assessment: a critical examination of profit-oriented logic and ranking practices in the public education system

Abstract

This study presents a theoretical and critical analysis of the instrumentalization of large-scale educational assessment within the Brazilian public education system , contrasting its ideal pedagogical function with the subverting logic of profit and ranking. The central objective of this research is to critique the distortion whereby assessment, which should serve as a diagnostic tool for informing and reorienting educational practice , is instead transformed into a mechanism for ranking and generating mere quantitative data, scores, and indices. The research posits that high performance indices are not solely used to measure learning but are instrumentalized by municipal administrations as political and economic capital to attract resources, investments, and validate the system's ‘quality’ to the public , especially under the legislation governing the ICMS Educacional. The study relies on the contrast between assessment models, specifically the Summative Classificatory Assessment, which aligns with a logic of control and ranking , and the Emancipatory or Pedagogical Assessment, which advocates for a practice centered on process, dialogue, and intervention , consistent with the perspectives of Freire (1992) and Hoffmann (2008). The analysis demonstrates that the instrumentalization of assessment is a direct reflection of the penetration of neoliberal rationality into public policies, as it reinforces a classificatory model that, by obsessively focusing on indices, disregards students’ socioeconomic and cultural conditions, neutralizes the diagnostic capacity of assessment, and perpetuates the cycle of educational exclusion and inequality, ultimately transforming assessment into an instrument of external control in which approval occurs without effective learning.