External evaluation in the context of corporate reform: challenges for social quality

Presentation of the dossier

Abstract

Many years have passed since neoliberal policies have sought to appropriate the evaluation of school quality, normalizing vertical forms of control over teaching as a means of promoting greater educational quality. To this end, considerable public time and money have been spent to reflect, through students' results on standardized tests, a true, almost orthodox portrait of how schools and their professionals have failed in their primary duty, which is to ensure that children and youth learn. The idea seems to homogenize that the more evaluation occurs, the higher the produced quality. In this regard, the school, tethered to business logic, becomes qualified by productivity, efficiency, and competence from a mercantile and technocratic perspective.