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Session Submission Summary

Latin America’s education policy from the mid 2010s to today: A fourth wave of educational reforms?

Sat, March 28, 11:15am to 12:30pm, Hilton, Floor: Ballroom Level - Tower 2, Franciscan B

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Since the mid-2010s, governments across Latin America have launched, reversed, or reconfigured education reforms at a pace that suggests the arrival of a new cycle of change. These transformations have unfolded amid political polarization, recurrent economic crises, and the disruptive shock of the COVID-19 pandemic. Scholars and policymakers now ask whether we are witnessing a fourth wave of education reforms, following those identified by Suasnábar (2017) in the 1960s (expansion and modernization), 1990s (neoliberal decentralization), and 2000s (state-led equity reforms). This panel advances that debate by examining reforms in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. We argue that the region is indeed experiencing a fourth wave, but one that is fragmented and contradictory: while some countries are rescaling governance to the meso level, others are dismantling reforms, and still others display the recursive effects of earlier decentralization. The central dynamic is not a shared ideology but rather an ongoing struggle over state capacity, governance design, and legitimacy in education policy. A defining feature of recent reforms is the move toward rescaling governance to strengthen the “missing middle” between ministries and schools. After decades in which decentralization was promoted as a democratizing tool to bring decision-making closer to communities, many governments have concluded that local capacities remain weak, undermining equity and accountability (Baxter & León Cadavid, 2020). In response, Chile and Colombia have turned to meso-level structures as strategic reform nodes.

Chile’s Nueva Educación Pública (NEP), initiated during the Bachelet presidency, replaced the municipal management system with Servicios Locales de Educación Pública (SLEP). The reform sought to overcome the inequality produced by underfunded municipalities and to professionalize support for schools at a regional scale. As Bellei and Muñoz (2021) emphasize, however, rescaling carries ambivalent consequences: it can foster coherence and capacity, but risks becoming bureaucratic and top-down if not paired with teacher empowerment and democratic participation.

Colombia has followed a parallel path. Faced with persistent disparities in municipal capacity, the government has reinforced the role of departmental secretariats as mediators of quality reforms, accountability systems, and teacher careers. As Baxter (2016) and comparative research on systemic improvement stress, meso-level governance is not a mere administrative adjustment but a political project: success depends on cultivating professional cultures, teacher agency, and participatory governance rather than simply layering new bureaucracy. UNESCO (2022) and the OECD (2016, 2019) identify this tier as the connective tissue linking macro policy to classroom practice.

Not all countries are moving toward rescaling. The case of Argentina, analyzed alongside Colombia (Esper), highlights the recursive effects of 1990s decentralization. These reforms generated evolving power configurations shaped by shifting coalitions, unions, and institutional legacies (Falleti, 2009). In Argentina, devolution produced a fragmented federal system in which some provinces gained significant power while others remained weak, leaving the national government with diminished steering capacity. Over time, this created a highly desarticulated system where quality assurance policies—curricula, assessments, teacher appraisal—are unevenly implemented. In Colombia, by contrast, central authority has been partially reasserted, particularly in national testing and teacher policy. The result is a compartmentalized system in which the state reclaims certain levers of control even as decentralization remains formally intact.

This evidence underscores that the fourth wave cannot be understood as a clean break. Instead, it is marked by the layering and reconfiguration of earlier reforms, with decentralization continuing to shape opportunities and constraints for today’s policies.

If Chile and Colombia illustrate rescaling, Ecuador demonstrates the fragility of reforms when political legitimacy collapses. During Rafael Correa’s presidency (2007–2017), Ecuador built one of the region’s most ambitious reform agendas, investing heavily in infrastructure, teacher professionalization, and curriculum reform under the banner of the Estado educador (Baxter, 2016). Gains were visible in UNESCO’s regional learning assessments, which recorded improvements between 2006 and 2013.

Yet subsequent administrations—Lenín Moreno, Guillermo Lasso, and Daniel Noboa—explicitly sought to “descorreizar” policy, dismantling or neglecting reforms regardless of outcomes (Cevallos, 2025). Annual education spending contracted from 4.61 percent of GDP in 2017 to 3.89 percent in 2023, justified by fiscal austerity. Unlike the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s, this rollback lacked a coherent ideological project; it was driven by political rejection of Correa’s legacy and fiscal retrenchment. Ecuador thus illustrates how instability and backlash can undo even well-designed reforms, leaving education adrift.

The case of Peru (Balarin) highlights a different trajectory: not dismantling reform due to political rejection, but rather the erosion of reform capacity through instability and corruption. Between 2011 and 2016, Peru consolidated a technocratic style of policymaking that combined targets, measurement, and regulation with justice-oriented reforms to strengthen the teaching career, gender equity, and cultural diversity.

This trajectory collapsed after 2016, as the country entered a period of extreme political volatility: six presidents and sixteen ministers of education in less than a decade. Corrupt networks and private interests penetrated the state, rolling back regulatory efforts and blocking reforms. As Balarin argues, Peru exemplifies how education systems must now contend with a global post-neoliberal regime shift marked by criminal governance (Feldmann & Luna, 2022) and culture wars around educational aims. In this environment, technocratic reforms proved fragile because they left deeper political processes untouched.

Taken together, these cases suggest that Latin America is undergoing a fourth wave of reform, but one characterized by divergence:
• Rescaling and recentralization in Chile and Colombia seek to rebuild state capacity at the meso level.
• Recursive adaptation in Argentina and Colombia shows how decentralization’s legacies continue to shape reform.
• Dismantling and erosion in Ecuador and Peru reveal how reforms can be undone through backlash, austerity, corruption, and instability.

The common thread is the struggle over state capacity and legitimacy. Whether through rescaling, recursive adaptation, or dismantling, governments are grappling with how to reconcile equity, quality, and accountability under polarized politics and weakened institutions. This fragmentation has profound implications for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4: without coherent governance and stable political support, reforms risk reproducing inequalities or unraveling altogether. The challenge is not merely technical but deeply political: how to design governance structures that can endure beyond electoral cycles, cultivate professional cultures, and sustain education as a public good.

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