generally suggests that overall enrolment and quality (admittedly difficult to measure in the 1980s because of the absence of comparable test scores) did not improve over the 1980s (and divergence among schools increased)<sup>20</sup> . From the decentralization and accountability perspective, we can say that the poor results of the municipal sector were probably mostly due a gap between responsibility and authority to act, the presence of soft budget constraints for the operation of the municipal education sector, the lack of citizen participation mechanisms at the local level (mayors appointed, lack of local participation bodies) and the “missed opportunity” of exploiting the potential of the “client power” relationship as instrument to improve competition between public and private schools, due to the reasons just mentioned plus the lack of municipal school autonomy and the information and selection constraints on the demand-side.

In the 1990s, on the one hand, further constraints on municipal autonomy (teacher statute of 1991) and centrally driven interventions in favour of the poorest/weakest municipal schools complicate even more the working of competition between municipal and private schools (see Di Gropello (2002) for the negative impact of the teacher statute<sup>21</sup> and Sapelli and Vial (2002) for the negative impact of central interventions on competition through the differences in per-capita budget between the two types of schools that they imply); on the other hand, dissemination of standardized school scores (SIMCE scores), increased administrative and pedagogical municipal school autonomy, introduction of school co-financing and better monitoring of student attendance (through the provinces) improve the operation of the voucher system. Additionally, in an attempt to create more national consensus and strengthen “voice”, mayors were elected in 1992 and municipal management was made more participatory in 1995/1996. Overall, average test scores improve during the 1990s for all school categories and there is increasing convergence between all these school categories (i.e. municipal vs. private, subsidized or not, and private subsidized vs. private schools)<sup>22</sup> . The studies centred on the 1990s generally confirm that private subsidized schools perform better than municipal schools (see Sapelli and Vial, 2002<sup>23</sup> ) and have improved their performance due to strong incentives to compete (decision-making autonomy, reliance on the voucher or parent co-financing, etc), therefore concluding that competition/choice was helpful in improving the quality and efficiency of schools (Gallego, 2002<sup>24</sup> ). However, the impact of communities with higher private enrollment shares saw public school performance fall from 1982 to 1988, concluding to important negative effects of “cream-skimming”.

20 A study from Schiefelbein (1992) shows, insofar as test scores are really comparable over the 1980s which is not quite the case, that overall test scores were at best stagnant over the 1982-1990 time period and that while high income students (mostly enrolled in private schools) tended to have an improvement in their results, middle or low income students (enrolled in municipal schools) saw their results decrease. 21Di Gropello (2002), through the estimation of an expanded education production function covering 50 municipalities and more than 500 schools over the 1992-1996 time-period, attempts to assess the impact of decentralization measures in different areas on test scores taking advantage of the variability among municipalities in the “de-facto” application of autonomy measures. The results show that partial measures of financial and labour decentralization at the municipal level were negatively related to educational achievement because of the constraints imposed on municipal management.

22 A study of Cox and Gonzalez (1998) shows increasing overall SIMCE scores in the 1990-1996 time period and a decreasing gap between municipal and private schools. Additionally, there are also indications that within the same municipal sector, test scores became slightly more homogeneous across schools. Gallego (2002) shows convergence among private non-subsidized schools and subsidized schools in the 1988-1999 time period.

23 Sapelli and Vial (2002), using the new individual data available for the 1998 SIMCE test score, estimate the average treatment effect parameter and treatment on the treated for those students effectively choosing a private voucher school, controlling for the selection bias caused by school choice.

24 Gallego (2002), using roughly 5,000 Chilean schools in the 1994-97 period and econometric techniques robust to endogeneity, presents empirical estimations that show a positive and relevant effect of 24