The Paradox of Continuity: An Analysis of the Political Administration of Education in Twenty Years of Workers' Party Governance

Abstract

This article analyzes the educational policy of the municipality of Vitória da Conquista-BA from 1997 to 2016, from the perspective of Political Administration, focusing on the dimensions of temporality and implementation capacity. The study investigates how twenty years of uninterrupted governance by the Workers' Party influenced the trajectory of educational policies, considering the continuities, ruptures, and implementation challenges. The methodological approach adopts a qualitative perspective, based on the triangulation of research techniques: documentary analysis of laws, reports, and pedagogical projects; narrative interviews with five former municipal secretaries of education; and systematic analysis of IDEB (Basic Education Development Index) data. The results reveal a complex scenario, with significant advances in the expansion of access and teacher qualification, but persistent limitations in the quality of education, reflected in the irregular performance of the IDEB. The analysis demonstrates that party continuity did not guarantee the continuity of the didactic-pedagogical organization, highlighting tensions between educational innovation and implementation capacity, in addition to the persistence of inequalities between urban and rural areas. The study concludes that the articulation between management (political dimension) and administration (technical dimension) was fundamental for the results obtained, offering relevant contributions to the field of Political Administration and to municipal educational management.