launched the National Pact of Literacy at the

ambitious. It seeks to improve the literacy skills of 6- to 8-year-olds in public schools throughout Brazil. The government’s decision to imple-ment this literacy intervention nationally in the first three grades of primary school was influ-enced by the apparent success of a similar 3-year program—Literacy Program at the Right Age (Pacto pela Alfabetização na Idade Certa [PAIC])—first implemented in 2007 in one (low-income) northeastern Brazilian state, Ceará. Ceará’s illiteracy rate among 7- to 14-year-olds declined from 18 % in 2001 to 14 % in 2007, simi-larly to the rest of the Northeast, in a period of increasing educational attainment for this age group. However, after introducing the PAIC, th