Educational decentralization policies in Argentina and Brazil: exploring the new trends

This paper compares educational decentralization policies implemented in Argentina and Brazil during the 1990s, focusing on the rationales and contexts of the policies, and through a review of secondary sources and some official documents. The paper argues that school decentralization, the movement toward transferring functions and responsibilities to schools, appears as a new and extended reform that was accompanied by more traditional forms of decentralization, but also by a process of centralization of planning and evaluation at the national level. This new form of centralization/decentralization is seen as linked to the neoliberal restructuring of the state, to pressures from globalization processes and forces, and to various internal demands for improving quality and efficiency in the delivery of education.