4th Floor Conference Room
Woodrow Wilson Center

The low performance levels of Brazil's public schools are well-known. Less understood are the varied efforts in several states and municipalities to overcome these difficulties—the product of a groundswell of concern about educational failure and its implications for the future.

The São Paulo-based Fernand Braudel Institute of World Economy has gained valuable experience in dealing with problems of public education with research on school management and with Reading Circles, which promotes weekly sessions of reading and discussion of classic literature with adolescents at 30 public schools in peripheral communities of Greater Sao Paulo and in public high schools in 16 towns in the state of Pernambuco as part of Procentro, a privately funded school reform program.

Speakers
Norman Gall
Executive Director, Fernand Braudel Institute

Patricia Mota Guedes
Coordinator of Education Projects,
Fernand Braudel Institute