This article discusses how assessment policies, particularly Saeb, can contribute to the quality of basic education. It identifies the reading skills indicated by Saeb and analyzes how the students are with regard to reading. This is a qualitative and exploratory research, being the instruments for data collection: the Development Plan for Education: Prova Brasil; documents which deal with the scale and performance levels in Portuguese of Inep (2011), and the results of Saeb/Prova Brasil 2011 (Brasil, 2012). As a result, it is presented that in order to students achieve higher levels of reading comprehension, they need to detach themselves of the easy text and enter sistematically in the world of reading.
Public Policies; Evaluation; Reading; Aneb