Impasses dos gestores escolares em relação aos processos do PDDE no município de Ituiutaba/MG

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the challenges faced by school administrators in the municipality of Ituiutaba, Minas Gerais, in the implementation and operational procedures of the Direct Money to School Program (Programa Dinheiro Direto na Escola – PDDE), examining how these challenges are connected to the logic of neoliberal rationality in Brazilian educational policies. The study is grounded in the understanding that constitutionally guaranteed educational funding has been increasingly constrained by fiscal austerity policies and state reforms that promote administrative decentralization alongside intensified mechanisms of control, evaluation, and accountability at the school level. The research discusses the historical and political context of the PDDE’s implementation, situating it within the broader process of Brazilian state reform since the 1990s, marked by the incorporation of New Public Management principles and by different dimensions of educational privatization affecting educational provision, school management, and pedagogical processes. From this perspective, the program is understood as a state policy that simultaneously expands schools’ formal autonomy through financial decentralization and reinforces bureaucratic requirements and accountability devices that shape everyday school management. A qualitative approach is adopted, based on documentary analysis of official regulations issued by the National Fund for Educational Development (FNDE), operational manuals, reports produced by school administrators, records from public information systems, and institutional data dashboards. Data interpretation is guided by content analysis, enabling the identification of categories related to the tensions between autonomy, control, and accountability. The findings indicate that school administrators experience the implementation of the PDDE as a process characterized by normative uncertainty, administrative overload, and ongoing training demands, which affect the balance between the pedagogical and administrative dimensions of their role. The study concludes that, while the program constitutes an important mechanism for financial supplementation and for addressing structural needs in public schools, it also functions as a driver of work intensification and the incorporation of managerial practices aligned with neoliberal rationality, thereby raising critical questions about the limits of decentralization and school autonomy within the context of basic education financing.