Abstract
The paper addresses the potentialities and limits of four theoretical perspectives that have been evident in K-12 schooling diagnoses: the school success-failure, the school inclusion-exclusion, the educational equality-inequality, and the educational right-debt. The critical examination of the international scientific production from the 1960s on the subject, especially in Brazil and France, suggests that: a) the antinomy failure-success leads to mistaken diagnoses of schooling for having, or inducing to an assumption that the student is fully responsible for his/her educational achievement; b) the use of the antinomy exclusion-inclusion requires a clear definition of in which sense these categories will be used and that the realization that the solution for the exclusion is not merely including, but rather not excluding; c) lastly, the most promising theoretical perspectives are those of educational equality-inequality and educational right-debt, the former for being the expression of the equality principle and the latter for having its foundation on this principle.
K-12 schooling; Diagnoses; Theoretical perspectives; Educational policy