The article reflects on the challenges that the overview of alphabetization with literacy presents for the first three years of primary school, in the context of expansion policies of this education, especially at the time when the Law Number 11.274/06 (BRASIL, 2006) completes ten years of its enactment and in which were defined the first three years as a time devoted to alphabetization and literacy. Some data were obtained and worked in the School Census microdata and the results of Literacy National Assessment in 2014, whose analyzes occurred during the development of researches approved by Edicts from the Education Observatory (CAPES / INEP). The results showed that a significant number of children are coming to the end of the literacy cycle without knowing how to read and write, and in schools substandard materials and pedagogical conditions, which shows that the process of teaching and learning take place in conditions that weaken the continuity of studies and the active participation of children in social life.