Determinants of Performance in the Public Schools of the State of Rio de Janeiro, 2023

This study investigates how socioeconomic, demographic, and institutional factors are associated with the performance of 180 public school proxies in Rio de Janeiro on the 2023 National High School Exam (ENEM), utilizing official Anísio Teixeira National Institute for Educational Studies and Research (INEP) microdata. The analysis is based on the application of multiple linear regression models with robust HC3 standard errors and unsupervised clustering techniques. To mitigate multicollinearity issues between parental education and household income, a Socioeconomic Status Index (SSI) was constructed via Principal Component Analysis (PCA), explaining 92.19% of the joint variance of these variables. Regression results identified three consistent determinants: the SSI showed a direct positive association with scores; racial composition, where a higher proportion of non-white students correlated with lower performance; and administrative dependency, with federal schools significantly outperforming state schools. Complementarily, K-means cluster analysis revealed four distinct institutional profiles, showing a gap of approximately 70 points between performance extremes. Robustness tests, including log-linear regression and bootstrap validation with 1,000 resamples, confirmed the stability of the estimates. The findings indicate that the performance of public schools in Rio de Janeiro reflects not only structural socioeconomic inequalities but also a marked heterogeneity across educational networks and racial profiles. It is concluded that overcoming these bottlenecks requires focused, evidence-based educational policies capable of addressing the territorial and institutional disparities that persist in the state’s public education system.