O Programa “Compromisso Nacional Criança Alfabetizada”: implicações e desafios para a alfabetização nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental

Abstract

This study analyzes the National Commitment for Children’s Literacy Program (Compromisso Nacional Criança Alfabetizada, CNCA), focusing on the guidelines and normative instruments that orient and induce the implementation of literacy policy in the early years of Elementary Education. The research understands literacy as a cultural practice and a social right, situating educational policies within the class contradictions of contemporary capitalism. The objective was to examine the conception of literacy mobilized by the program, as well as the actors, interests, and hegemonic meanings present in its formulation, based on official texts that materialize its regulation. Adopting a qualitative approach, the study employed documentary analysis of federal regulations, ordinances, calls for proposals, and official public materials related to the program. The theoretical framework is grounded in Historical-Critical Pedagogy, and the analytical lens is Stephen Ball’s Policy Cycle approach, emphasizing the contexts of influence and policy text production in order to map the debates, conflicts, and actors that shaped the policy and were crystallized in its official documentation. This theoretical-methodological choice makes it possible to relate the interests permeating the program’s formulation to the guidelines and organizing principles it effectively establishes. The analysis shows that, although the CNCA is presented as an initiative aimed at equity and the guarantee of the right to literacy, its documents incorporate mechanisms of induction and regulation based on a managerial rationality, emphasizing targets, monitoring, assessment, accountability, and results-based management. It is concluded that the program tends to reinforce forms of control over networks and schools, while simultaneously shifting the complexity of the literacy process to the realm of management and performance indicators, producing tensions between the defense of rights and the logic of performativity. The research contributes to the critical debate on public literacy policies in Brazil, elucidating how hegemonic meanings are produced at the formulation level and which conceptions of teaching, learning, and the role of the State they convey. As a result of the research, an Educational Product with a formative purpose was developed, aimed at supporting the critical reading of official documents and collective debate regarding the meanings and implications of literacy policies in the daily routine of networks and schools