High-stakes accountability and the expansion of a school improvement industry in Chile

This investigation analyses the emergence of a school improvement industry
in Chile, a country well known internationally for being highly marketised
and commodified and for its high- stake testing policies (Bellei & Vanni, 2015;
Falabella, 2020a; Parcerisa & Falabella, 2017). In this country, not only does
school provision follow market rules, but in the last 15 years, the hardening and
diversification of accountability measures has contributed to expand a market of
commercial services for schools. Resorting to commercial ‘school improvement’
services, which in Chile are known as services of Educational Technical Assistance
(ATE, for its acronym in Spanish), is one of the main ways both public and
private schools address accountability pressures.