Eficiência relativa da educação nos municípios cearenses

Abstract

Education is an essential policy for the human and economic development of a country, in which context it is appropriate to understand and, more than that, to rethink public education in Brazil. So, the present study starts from the presentation of aspects related to the organization and financing of public education in Brazil, as well as the evaluation of educational policies, in order to, based on the idea of relative efficiency, identify the reality of the public education in counties of Ceará and to glimpse alternatives for more efficient use of the inputs. In this sense, the present research aims to evaluate the relative efficiency in education in counties of Ceará. Therefore, a descriptive and quantitative study was carried out. The Data Envelopment Analysis Method was used to calculate the index of the relative efficiency result-oriented and with variables outcomes of scale (DEA-VRS). As inputs, it was used the cost per student, Social Development Index (SDI), population estimate, county´s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, average daily teaching hours, percentage of teaching functions with higher education and, as outputs, IDEB grades of 4th and 5th years and IDEB grades of 8th and 9th years. The results showed that the average relative efficiency of the counties of Ceará was 83.6%, which is considered a general average efficiency and enables the implementation of improvements. Among the analyzed units, counties with low efficiency (48.89%) were predominant, followed by counties with average efficiency (27.78%) and efficient counties (23.33%). No county was considered to be very low efficiency. In the context of the model of variable outcomes of scale adopted in the research, 25 efficient DMUs had constant returns of scale, and the 17 residual efficient units obtained an increasing return. Among the inefficient DMUs, constant returns to scale predominated. In a geographical perspective, the region of Sertão de Sobral of Ceará was the one that obtained the best results, with 44.44% of its counties considered efficient. The worst results were with the regions Litoral Leste and Grande Fortaleza, which did not have any city considered efficient. In addition, a correlation test showed that the most significant associations of the relative efficiency indices with the factors were with the IDEB results, which were above 0.5.In this line, the individualized analysis denoted that all inefficient counties need, to a lesser or greater degree, to increase their results in the IDEB. Regarding the inputs, the most intense correlation was with the population estimation factors, county´s GDP per capita and percentage of teaching functions with higher education. The analysis of the correlation together with the individualized examination of the DMUs indicates that (a) higher expenditures are not necessarily accompanied by an improvement in educational efficiency; (b) high IDS does not necessarily imply good educational outcomes; (c) smaller counties presented better relative efficiency results; (d) GDP may be underutilized in the promotion of education; (e) the increase in the daily workload in some counties seems not to be converted into an improvement in efficiency; (f) teachers with a college education may not be well served in educational improvement. In addition, of the 42 efficient units, only 25 were pointed as benchmarks, being Pires Ferreira the unit more indicated. Finally, it was concluded that the municipalities of Ceará have relevant potential for improving their educational results, and that this increase in positive results is independent of factors such as municipal size or available resources.