Educação especial e judicialização: o direito ao(à) profissional para apoio escolar à luz das concepções de estado, direito e educação em Mészáros

Abstract

The issue of the school professional support has been a recurring theme in legislation, regulations, and legal proceedings, reflecting the tensions and contradictions between the declaration of right and its implementation. In this regard, the overall objective of this study was to analyze the right to a school support professional for students with disabilities and autism, as well as the judicialization process as a contradictory factor hindering its implementation, in the state of São Paulo, considering István Mészáros’s concepts of State, Law, and Education. The following specific objectives were defined: a) to situate the context of guaranteeing the right to a school support professional, based on István Mészáros’s categories of State, Law, and Education; b) to characterize the judicialization of the right to a school support professional as an expression of the contradictions in Special Education policy; c) to interpret the normative frameworks of São Paulo’s Special Education policy regarding school support professionals for students with disabilities and/or autism, considering the discontinuities and ruptures throughout the period from 2012 to 2024. The definition of these objectives replied to the following question: What model of special education is taking shape in the state of São Paulo, when analyzing the right to a professional providing academic support for students with disabilities and autism, and the contradictions revealed by the judicialization of this issue in light of István Mészáros’s understanding of the State, Law, and Education? The theoretical and methodological framework adopted was Historical and Dialectical Materialism, with István Mészáros as the primary theoretical reference. This is a documentary study grounded in the principles of policy analysis. The corpus of analysis consisted of documents obtained from the official websites Secretaria de Educação do Estado de São Paulo (Seduc); Conselho Estadual de Educação do Estado de São Paulo (CEE – SP); Fundação para o Desenvolvimento da Educação (FDE); Assembleia Legislativa do Estado de São Paulo (Alesp); Ministério Público de São Paulo (MPSP) e Defensoria Pública do Estado de São Paulo (Dpesp). These data were supplemented with statistics obtained from the websites of the Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira, (INEP), Portal Datajud (Datajud-Wiki; Painel de Estatísticas) e Portal da Fazenda Pública do Estado. Microsoft Excel© and Atlas.ti© were used to organize and systematize the data; Mendeley Reference Manager© was used for bibliographic referencing. The results point to reformist trends, with the existing structures remaining intact. There is intense regulatory activity, combined with a persistent shortage of professionals. Government responses ignore the structural dimension, resulting in fragmented, partial, and targeted services at the expense of universal policies. Judicial intervention has functioned effectively; mediating students’ demands in relation to the state executive branch. There are aspects of structural anachronism, which maintain service models that do not meet students’ needs, as well as neoliberal principles, in which the state assumes the role of manager, outsourcing services and transferring responsibilities. These results indicate a model of Special Education strongly rooted in reformist and neoliberal practices, which affirm rights but maintain the structures.