Over the last two decades, the Chilean government has made substantial efforts to improve the quality and equity of education offered by the public system. During the 1990s, public policies were oriented towards improving school infrastructure, strengthening teacher’s professional development, increasing wages, and generating a national curriculum framework.

From the year 2000 onwards, Chile´s educational reform process has extended primary efforts on developing the conditions and capacities within educational communities necessary to support and generate continuous improvement. The role of public policy has been to develop this process. In parallel, a series of mechanisms of control based on national standards aimed at assuring educational quality in all schools have been installed.

For the Chilean Ministry of Education, one of the most effective forms of improving the quality of education of the schools is to challenge and support schools to take responsibility for the assessment and improvement of student performance (MINEDUC, 2005).

In practice, standards and norm-referenced controls are emphasized from the central level, specifically from the Ministry of Education. These controls are meant to influence the work in schools on both administrative as well as pedagogical levels.

Current national policies of education are foundationally concerned with a call for greater autonomy of the schools, and development of pedagogical leadership in the school principals (Núñez, Weinstein, & Muñoz, 2010). These policies seek to respect the ideals of quality and equity, in a context of continuous improvement that includes accountability for the results.

According to the international research the leadership (of the principal) is the second more important inner school factor to understand students learning achievement (Leithwood, Day, Sammons, Harris & Hopkins, 2006; Leithwood, Harris & Hopkins, 2008). In Chile, a recent research (Horn & Marfan, 2010) identify that the principal leadership is a key factor to explain how to change the school towards the improvement of the learning of the students.

The research of Leithwood, Harris & Hopkins (2008) shows that the improvement of the student´s learning, far from being an individual responsibility of the teachers, is an effort that must be taken as an organization, through the implementation of practices that support teacher´s work. Accordingly, Reardon (2011) claim that any effort which came from an organizational level will not take any effect in student achievement as long it not change the work inside the classroom. Thus, the relevance of the leadership practice and the principal action within the school became even more relevant to understand and support the student´s learning.

Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom, and Anderson (2010), argues that the action of the transformational leadership within the school could be framed in three categories: 1) improving the capacities of the teachers; 2) increasing the motivation and commitment of the staff; 3) and developing the conditions of work of the teachers.

Despite all this, there is little evidence of what are the practice and action that the principals implement that explain the results of the schools. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify, analyze and compare the role of the principals in different schools with different results in the national standard test (SIMCE). We work under the assumption leadership is highly contextual (Clarke & Wildy, 2004), therefore we could find similarities and difference accordingly with the context of each school and the school performance. 

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