Excellence and social inequality in the National High School Exam
In this text, we investigated the influence of the social effect on school performance in the National High School Exam (ENEM) in the 2015 to 2019 editions. From the Adjusted Multiple Correspondence Analysis of the socioeconomic information of the candidates, we obtained a measure of the social position of the schools. This social position, if taken as an explanatory variable in a Simple Linear Regression model, was shown to predict approximately 80% of the score achieved by the school in the ENEM. Transposing this model to each test of the exam, we see that the tests of Languages and Natural Sciences show greater prediction from the social position of the school, with 75% and 73%, respectively. At the national level, the Southeast region and the Federal District occupy the first positions in the rankings when the classification is operated under the influence of the social effect on school performance. Thus, based on Pierre Bourdieu's Sociology of Education, we take a critical look at the performative and arbitrary role played by rankings in the creation and maintenance of school excellence. In doing so, we show that new ways of ranking schools are possible and how they are sensitive to the way rankings are operated. Controlling for the social effect on school performance, we observe that some state and federal schools performed well above what was expected according to the statistical model employed. Regarding the regions of the country, the Northeast region presents some states that stand out when the social effect is controlled.