Special education student evaluation: perspectives of specialized teachers

Abstract

The present report presents the results of a study carried out with teachers of the specialized educational services that worked in multifunctional resource rooms. Seven teachers from the municipal network of a medium-sized São Paulo municipality, which counted 1,314 students with educational special needs. Interviews conducted with focus groups held during two meetings all videotaped and the speeches were analyzed using the Atlas-ti software. The corpus of the study composed by 240 excerpts in the teachers' narratives, classified in 165 codes and 16 families. The results were organized in the following topics: a) The assessment process for identification; b) The question of clinical diagnosis, c) Assessing for planning, d) Assessment for attendance, e) Evaluation of performance in the specialized educational service, f) Evaluation of academic performance in the common class, g) Retention/promotion of level or series, h) Participation of students in large scale standardized assessments. Overall, the evidence allows concluding that coexist a variety of evaluation processes, indicating the lack of clearer guidelines for schools and teachers. There were weaknesses in the processes of assessment for identification, negligence in relation to evaluation processes for both planning and performance, which seems to indicate that we are still far from guaranteeing more than presence, but the realization of the right to education of the students from the target audience of Special Education in Brazilian schools.