Under Brazilian educational reform, the growing interest of governments and legislators regarding accountability policies for teachers and schools reflects on the change of the focus of investigation and research, which moved from external evaluation of basic education to evaluation as a mechanism of results-based management in education. This critical review of literature aims to contextualize the controversy about the use of the results of standardized tests as instruments of educational management and the regulation of school work by means of monetary incentives for performance. The article shows that experts' discourses oscillate between two extremes: on the one hand, there are those who criticize such proposals and seek to investigate the impact of political reform on educational and teaching organization; and on the other hand, those who argue for the implementation of such reforms as a means of holding professionals accountable and of a supposed improvement of educational quality. Between these two positions, there are those that require more scientific evidence about the effectiveness of such proposals on student learning outcomes.
educational policies; assessment; teaching quality; accountability policy programs