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For more than two decades, the Brazilian municipality of Sobral has focused intensively on improving the quality of its public education system; the resulting success has been remarkable. In 2005, the Brazilian federal government started calculating a Basic Education Development Index (IDEB in Portuguese), which measures the quality of education in schools across the country. In the inaugural results in 2005, 1,365 municipalities had a better score for primary education than Sobral. By 2017, Sobral made national news by ranking number one in the entire country for both primary and lower secondary education (Cruz and Loureiro, 2020). These results are even more impressive when considering that Sobral is located in the northeastern state of Ceará, which is the fifth poorest state in Brazil in terms of GDP per capita (Cruz and Loureiro, 2020).  The case of Sobral exhibits many elements that are similar to Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), an approach wherein problems are key to driving change (Andrews et al., 2015). The PDIA approach relies on reformers to identify problems that matter, break them down into their root causes, identify entry points, act, stop to reflect, and then iterate and adapt their way to a solution.1 This process of constant feedback and experimentation by local actors allows for the development of a solution that fits the local context. This paper explores the transformation of Sobral’s education system through the lens of PDIA2 , with an emphasis on the early reform period of 2000-2004. Many excellent papers have been written, in Portuguese and English, about the case of Sobral; this paper draws heavily on this existing literature.3 The paper is also supported by interviews from key individuals who either were closely involved with the reform efforts or have studied them. The paper follows the narrative of the Sobral story, starting in 1997, and uses boxes and other diagrams to view the reform efforts through the lens of PDIA. Finally, the paper explains how the reform efforts grew and scaled over the years, not only within Sobral, but also to other municipalities in Ceará and across Brazil.

A Problem-Driven Approach to Education Reform: The Story of Sobral in Brazil