The article proposes an evaluation of the educational policy implemented by the Workers Party's first government in the municipality of São Carlos (SP), from 2001 to 2004. In that period, the Brazilian educational panorama had already been marked, since the military regime (1964-1985), by a wide range of experiences and reforms, which had as one of their more important results the universalization of the access to the obligatory education by the end of the 1990's. With the quantitative issue solved, the biggest problem to be faced is the quality of teaching offered by the public school. In spite of São Carlos' privileged situation, located in one of the richest areas in the country and having strong educational tradition, our research makes us conclude that the Workers Party's first government in the city should have materialized a much more effective educational policy than the one really implemented, in order to reach the improvement on the quality of teaching offered to the population.
Educational policy; Workers Party; Democratization of education