Building on two decades of educationreform, Brazil's Ministry of Education (MEC)implemented a key instrument for measuring education qualityin 2005, when it first administered Prova Brasil, anationwide test of proficiency in math and Portuguese forstudents in grades 4 and 8. Prova Brasil, which will beadministered to primary students every three years, is thecountry's first census-level assessment of studentlearning, and forms the cornerstone of a drive to improvebasic education quality and establish a results frameworkfor measuring learning outcomes. The aim of this study hasbeen to promote discussion rather than to provide definitivesolutions. Beyond the limited set of specific practicesobserved and reported upon in the course of this smallstudy, a wide variety of good practices are beingimplemented in Brazilian school districts, day after day, asteachers, principals, education officials, and parents eachmake their indispensable contributions to student learning.The reason one municipality achieves better test scores thananother is almost certainly due to a occurrence of goodpractices and the interaction among them, or to a particularconfluence of local characteristics and events whose effectscontinue to accumulate over time. Therefore, the descriptionof good practices in this brief policy note can not be takenas the single best recipe for achieving good test results.Quite to the contrary, it is the aim of this study todemonstrate that there are many possible routes to success.
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