
9
10.22633/rpge.v29i00.20975
Revista on line de Política e Gestão Educacional (RPGE), Araraquara, v. 29, n. 00, e025118, 2025.
Claudia Pereira de Pádua SABIA, Luana Lopes dos SANTOS & Eduardo Guimarães MIELO
e-ISSN: 1519-9029
educaon policies. As Venco (2016) observes, the restructuring of the state apparatus carried
out by the federal government found ferle ground in states whose governments shared the
same polical orientaon. Inspired by the principles of New Public Management (NPM), the
richest state in the Federaon deepened mechanisms for bringing public administraon closer
to market logic, favoring performance criteria and meritocracy.
In alignment with educaonal technology companies—known as EdTechs—the São
Paulo state government acquired various digital services with the juscaon of opmizing
the educaonal indicators of the São Paulo state school system. Among the pialls of digital
plaorms is the false belief that they oer a free support service to students, teachers, and
administrators, in addion to promong the opmizaon of results and indices. However, this
service comes at a very high cost.
We will present some examples of digital plaorms and their purposes. We begin with
Khan Academy, a non-prot organizaon whose goal is to oer educaonal tools for teachers
and students, with praccal exercises, educaonal videos, and other resources. The plaorm
is maintained by enes such as Bank of America, Ann and John Doerr, Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundaon, and Lemann Foundaon (Khan Academy, 2025; Fundação Lemann, 2025). Its ide-
ological funcon is easily idenable: its maintainers and sponsors belong to the upper eche-
lons of the global bourgeoisie. In its adversements, the ideal of bourgeois educaon is pre-
sented under the juscaon of useful training, based on a specic worldview. Without any
menon of crical thinking, the plaorm promotes the oer of beer academic development
and, consequently, greater success in future professional life.
Another plaorm linked to a tech giant is Alura, a startup connected to Google (Alura,
2025; Google for Educaon, 2025). Among its partners are companies such as Mercado Livre,
SulAmérica, Santander, Porto Seguro, Caixa, Grupo Globo, TOTVS, Samsung, Nubank, Itaú, and
Stone. Its goal is to oer content on programming, data science, design, innovaon, and ar-
cial intelligence. The plaorm aims to develop “skills” that enable students to understand ba-
sic programming concepts in dierent areas, preparing them to become future professionals
with unique opportunies in the job market.
Several other plaorms are used in the São Paulo state school system, such as Mac
and Me Salva!, as well as plaorms directly linked to the government, such as Tarefa SP, Redação
SP, Prepara SP, Elefante Letrado, among others. Plaorms donated by their developers, such
as Khan Academy and Me Salva!, represented, according to publicaons in the State Ocial
Gazee, an esmated value of R$ 40 million reais for each, referring to the use of the material
over an 18-month period. Alura was acquired for R$ 30.8 million for use over the same period
(Mello, 2024). The Elefante Letrado plaorm, on the other hand, had a forecast bid of around
R$ 17.3 million (Maos, 2024).
In order to support the implementaon of digital plaorms, the São Paulo Secretariat
of Educaon invested in the purchase of equipment such as tablets, laptops, and computers,