The thesis – Evaluation policies and practices in daycare centers: a research in the public system of Rio de Janeiro is a qualitative study that analyses the different concepts of evaluation that arise from practices in the daycare center context, considering the meaning the professionals give to their own evaluation practices as well as the conditions under which they are formed. The theoretical and methodological references are the works of various authors, including Mikhail Bakhtin s philosophy of language and Walter Benjamin s cultural criticism; in the field of evaluation, the study dialogues with the ideas of Claudia Fernandes, Domingos Fernandes, Alicia Bonamino and Paulo Freire; in the area of early childhood education, the main references are Ana Bondioli, Donatella Savio, Peter Moss and Sonia Kramer. The methodology consisted of observations in groups at the researched daycare center, as well as the analysis of the reports of children s evaluations. The essay also approaches the macro-perspective of policy context – its concepts and processes of elaboration and implementation. To do so, it analyzes the history of childhood education in the city of Rio de Janeiro and the current situation with regard to attendance, the pilot experiment of Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) and curricular and evaluation policy. In addition, the study presents an updated view of old discussions about early childhood vis-a-vis the relationship between psychology and education and the deterministic approach of neuroscience in the evaluation of infants and toddlers. This analytical path led to conclusions and propositions for the development of policies and practices, with the following standing out: the analyses of the supervisor s reports, produced by the Municipal Secretary of Education (MSE) of Rio de Janeiro, expose contradictions in the understanding of education in early childhood education: educational and preparatory conceptions coexist with proposals that value the children s self expression and culture backgrounds; the observation of the researched daycare center s practices shows that the act of evaluating children is often dominated by the developmental psychology approach, which tends to asses children s growth in a linear way and with dichotomic meaning, with the adult defining what and when should be taught; the teaching methods observed reveal an artificial knowledge, one without meaning and detached from the children s interests, a problem also found in the orientation documents from the MSE of Rio de Janeiro; although the evaluation reports purportedly aim to avert the standardized check-list analysis, it is very common in daycare centers and kindergartens to find analyzed records that do not emphasize the singularity of the children and their learning development but instead focus on the description of skills and competences.