Chile: School leadership challenged by double accountability towards schools

Abstract

The presence of accountability conceptualization in educational research is related to a pro-accountability trend in school systems, which has been described, among others, by Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and specifically for the United States by Darling-Hammond. Under the dictatorship of General Pinochet, Chile experienced a sort of capitalist revolution, becoming a country where the neoliberal ideas of Milton Friedman were put into full swing, elevating the market as playing a significant role in national development. The main achievement attained by this market system was the growth in numbers of students inside the school system. The Preferential School Subvention Law (SEP) revolutionized the top-down support forms, based on centralized programs, which in the 1990s the Ministry of Education set in motion in order to boost the educational quality of most vulnerable facilities. The main results that principals are supposed to achieve are in line with the two forms of accountability that have become prevalent in Chilean school system.