Implementation

School adoption to the law was gradual. The first year, in which the SEP law was in place, 96.75% of public schools that offer elementary education adopted it, whereas only 42.30% of private voucher schools did. By 2010, 99% of public schools had adopted it, and 54.6% of private voucher schools (see Table 8). The different rates in which schools adopted the law is a clear response to fact that public schools have a much higher proportion of priority students than private voucher schools37.

36 _{This agreement also requires the schools to [Art. 7]: (i) Present an annual report about the use of resources}

acquired by the adjusted voucher –all resources received must be reported; (ii) Accredit the school board, teachers’ board, and parental board; (iii) Credit the existence of teacher’s time to pedagogical advisement and planning in the school and teacher’s academic time to non-lecture activities such as class planning; (iv) Present an Improvement plan of the school (PME), elaborated with the school community (this plan should consider areas of curriculum, leadership, school climate, and management of school’s resources [Art 8]); (v) Define and meet goals of academic achievement of their students, especially priority students. These goals should be defined using the national standardized testing system (SIMCE); (vi) Indicate in the agreement the total amount of public resources received. This data should be presented annually; (vii) Make public for parents and students this agreement, especially what refers to the academic goals of the school; (viii) Safeguard that all teachers present the academic annual plan to the school’s principal during the first 15 days of school; (ix) Include in the academic planning cultural, artistic and sport activities.

37 _{In 2008, 35.58% percent of students enrolled in public schools where priority students (eligible for the adjusted}

voucher), in contrast to 17.24% in private voucher schools. In 2010, 58.91% of public school students were eligible; whereas in private voucher schools it was only the 36.06% (see Table 9).

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The classification schools received was gradual. During the first four years schools were only classified as “autonomous” and “emergent”. Supposedly by 2010 schools should have also been classified as “in recovery”; however, that did not happen. Schools started being classified as “in recovery” only by 2012. According to staff from MINEDUC, there is no memorandum or record of why this delay happened. By 2012, 7,459 schools received a classification. However, most of them received a classification of “emergent” because they either had less than two SIMCE measures or because the schools have had 20 students or less taking the tests (average of the three tests in the last three measures). Thus, only 39% was classified using the classification formulas; percentage that has slightly decreased with the years (see Table 10).

Table 11 shows the distribution of schools in the different categories for the first four rounds of complete school classification, for all schools classified using the formulas. The greatest variation across years is in the lowest classification, where there is a steady decrease in the number of schools classified as “in recovery”. The variation of schools classified between “autonomous” and “emergent” is not quite large on average. This is something to be expected considering the classification rules are relative to the median test scores of the SES groups. In Table 12, I disaggregate such broad number in the number of schools that change from one category to another in the following years. The way to interpret this table is as follow. For example, from all schools that were classified as “autonomous” on year 2012, 809 were classified as “autonomous” on 2013, and 243 were classified as “emergent”. From all schools classified as “autonomous” on 2013, 848 were classified as “autonomous” on 2014 and 209 were

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classified as “emergent”. And so forth. Overall, the table shows there is variation across years in the number of schools that fall into each classification38.

Information about how schools are classified is not easily available. Although the criteria used to classified schools is reported in the Decree 293, how exactly these criteria are calculated and which are the threshold used are not fully reported there. Such information is contained in the Technical Report of Proceso de Clasificacion SEP which can only be obtained by filing a document request under the Ley de Transparencia. This suggests that schools are not likely to game the system, unless they had asked for and reviewed this report.

Information about the classifications the schools get is published in on MINEDUC’s website (www.mime.mineduc.cl). In this website parents can find several indicators of all schools. Information about school classification in the SEP scheme is hidden under the ‘Cost Indicators’ section. However, what each classification means is not explained, and it does not say the classification refers to school quality. From the context, each classification could be interpreted as some indicator of ‘costs management’ or alike. There is also no data regarding how schools inform parents about the classification the school gets.

The use of resources has been a matter of public discussion. Reports from the government entity dedicated to the monitoring and control of public administration expenses have uncovered thatthis information of all the funds received by schools in 2011, 37% were not appropriately accounted for (Contraloria General de la Republica, 2014). 29.4% of incoming resources were

38 _{Note that in the table the vertical sum of one category does not necessarily match the horizontal sum of the}

category the year after. This happens because not all schools participate in the SEP law every year (some schools did not renew their CIOEE after 4 years of participation), and because some schools were classified according to the formulas some years but some other were not.

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used for things not approved by the law, and 7.4% of incoming resources were missing. It would not be a surprise if the situation was somehow similar for other years.