The doctoral thesis entitled O Plano de Desenvolvimento da Escola como instrumento de planejamento das escolas públicas municipais de Campos dos Goytacazes-RJ is a research of PDE Escola in 2014, in two schools of the first segment of municipal public elementary education of Campos dos Goytacazes, municipality located in the North of the state of Rio de Janeiro. It is utilized as subsidies of the investigation,the education policy principles of municipalization and political-administrative decentralization, federative autonomy, the institutional participation at the local level, and theories of strategic planning and regulation of educational policies. It was accomplished an analysis of the planning developed by the schools, relating the objectives and problems identified by school institutions in the elaboration process of PDE Escola with the actions executed, as well as didactic, pedagogical and financial resources applied, and relating the results obtained in Prova Brasil and Ideb. Is was subject of the investigation unveiling the perceptions of school agents about possible changes in the forms of management and pedagogical actions, provided by the inclusion in the PDE Escola, which was studied from a qualitative approach.The results indicate that the elaboration of the PDE Escola by investigated schools did not preserve the firsts fundamentals steps for the organization of the institutional environment and for the planning with the participation of the school community, as required in the program. In this case, it is important to note that the School Board was not invited to elaborate the school s plan, neither to form a Working Group including the school community. The data of schools planning documents reveals a strong channeling of program resources to mostly infrastructure actions and very few actions related to pedagogic problems, which led the school to join the program. It is comprehended in the research that the application of the PDE Escola in the municipal schools investigated in the municipality of Campos dos Goytacazes did not involve the theoretical-methodological elements of strategic planning, and that the principles of decentralization, institutional participation and autonomy of school institutions were not applied according with the theoretical-legal framework of the PDE Escola and with the theoretical-legal framework used in the research, because it was a purely formal form of planning.