This paper deals with the issue of the quality of the Brazilian primary education, considering jointly the students performances along the time and the change in the social profile of students who reached the 4th grade of primary education. The analysis involved the development of an approach to compose the performance distribution of successive generations of 10 years old children based on available information of student samples of SAEB 4th grade (National Assessment of Primary Education System) and of students of other grades of state level evaluations. The results emphasize that about half of the observed decrease in average achievement of 4th grade students are due to the change of the social composition of students who reached 4th grade within 1995-2003.
Quality of education; SAEB; Educational Flux; Primary education
