The article presents results of a research conducted in public schools in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. It investigated the perceptions teachers have about their pedagogic practices, in order to understand if the characteristics that refer to the school environment and prestige can influence the teaching accomplished in the schools. The findings suggest that teachers tend to change their attitudes in the schools according to the schools' reputation and to the images they construct of their students. Factors associated with the school's contribution to promoting or emphasizing the inequalities among the students were identified, stressing differences in the criterion for offering vacancies, in the profile of school administration, differences in the treatment of the contents to be taught and in the forms of evaluation. The work indicates that there is a snowball effect by which the schools tend to become relatively homogeneous environments.
school prestige; school environment; school hierarchies