Duarte, Alexandre William Barbosa. Sisyphus: Journal of Education v.8 n.1 p. 28-54, 2020.
The reforms experienced in recent decades in Brazil are immersed in a framework of rationality produced by the so-called New Public Management (NPM). This article aims to present a discussion around the epistemological foundations that guided the most recent reforms in education systems in Brazil and discuss how this was reproduced at the subnational levels. The institutional text is taken as the main element of analysis, identifying how such standards are translated in the state action and determine new outlines for school management and for the work of the school principal. The results indicate that, although the reforms of the managerial canon have been expressed more intensely since the 2000s, that model had its bases established in the previous decade. Thus, it is also observed that such reforms have given special attention to the actions exercised by the school management, making their performance increasingly diverse.