A measure of the socioeconomic status of Brazilian schools using primary and secondary indicators

Abstract

The article presents a measure of socioeconomic status (SES) for nearly all Brazilian schools. Primary indicators – calculated with data from questionnaires answered by students in educational assessments – and secondary indicators – which characterize the schools' social contexts – were aggregated into an SES scale through an Item Response Theory model. The SES was calculated for more than 180,000 schools. The methodology gave visibility to small schools or ones in remote areas that, until now were invisible to public policies since they had not participated in educational assessments. The relationship between educational outcomes and SES represents the inequalities in the country. The schools' SES are useful for academic research, and can help improve public policies aimed at reducing educational inequalities.