HETERARCHIZATION OF THE STATE AND THE EXPANDING BOUNDARIES OF EDUCATION PRIVATIZATION IN THE STATE OF SÃO PAULO

Abstract

The article analyzes the public-private partnership between the Secretariat of Education of the Brazilian state of São Paulo (SEE-SP; in Portuguese, Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo) and the non-profit organization Partners of Education Association (APE; in Portuguese, Associação Parceiros da Educação) in the Program Education – São Paulo’s Commitment (Educação – Compromisso de São Paulo) from 2015 to 2018. The partnership was used as a case study for public-private relationships in education, according to the concepts of neoliberalization and heterarchization. By applying an algorithm able to infer political networks from physical digitalized documents, three dynamics of complexification of the education privatization in São Paulo were identified: 1) the incorporation of APE in the structure of public education governance; 2) the porosity between educational policies and the APE’s mobility beyond the initial scope of the partnership; and 3) the APE’s role in expanding the network of governance, acting as a boundary spanner and facilitating the entry of other private organizations.