Introduction
A number of public policies have been implemented to ensure that all children and young people attend school and have access to quality education. In part, this goal has been reached, according to the latest survey by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE, 2014), which indicates that 97.1% of young people aged from 6 to 14 years were enrolled in elementary school and 59.5% of young people aged 15 to 17 years were enrolled in high school.
Since its first participation in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2000, Brazil has occupied the lowest positions in the ranking. Brazilian students have shown below average performance (6.0) for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), similar to that of countries like Albania and Jordan and below that of other Latin American countries.
To improve the PISA results, the federal government implemented a National Education Plan (NEP), which set targets for improving the quality of education by each state and by each school, measured every two years using the IDEB, created in 2005, which uses a methodology similar to that of the PISA. The objective is to assess the quality of education offered in every public school in the country, through the IDEB using a scale from zero (0.0) to ten (10.0). This indicator is calculated based on two components: the rate of school performance, i.e., student pass rates, and average performance in the tests applied by the federal government. In numerical terms, it is expected to advance the national average from 3.8 recorded in 2005 to 6.0 by 2022.
To achieve this goal the Brazilian government has invested increasing amounts in financing public education. Law 12,858/13, allocated 75% of the royalties from the sale of oil and 50% of the pre-salt Social Fund for education in order to achieve the goal set by NEP to invest 10% of GDP in education as from 2024.

Objectives

Part of the international literature has suggested there is a weak relationship between investment in education and student performance in developed countries (Hanushek, 1986, 1996a; Wößmann, 2003; Figlio, 1999). In Brazil, few studies have investigated the relationship investment in education and student performance. Therefore, the objective of this study is to measure the correlation between investments in education in Brazil, by state, and the results obtained by students in the IDEB in the assessments since the beginning in 2005 to the last assessment in 2013.

Theoretical Framework

This study is guided by the theoretical perspective of education economics theory (Coleman et al., 1966; Hanushek, 1986, 1996a; Wößmann, 2003; Figlio, 1999), which investigates the factors that influence student performance in school. Theoretically, the higher investment in education or in schools, the better the result of student learning, in this case measured by the IDEB. Scholars in this field believe in an educational production function that describes the relationship between investments (explanatory variables) and results (dependent variable) of the educational process (Waltenberg, 2006).

Significance

According to the OECD (2013), Brazil is among the three countries that have achieved the greatest progress in their PISA results in the last decade, although it continues to occupy the lowest positions in the ranking. For the MEC (2015) one of the main reasons for this improvement was the increase in financial investments in the sector and a better distribution of those resources. To investigate whether these investments are achieving the desired results is critical to the development of Brazil, since improvement in education outcomes in the internal indicators can lead to improved performance in external assessments, such as PISA, which can bring major investments and job creation in the country.

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