Over the last decades, school autonomy and accountability policies (SAWA) have been at the forefront of education reforms globally. SAWA constitutes a reform package grounded in managerial and quasi-market principles to transform school systems governance radically (Verger et al., 2019). During the 2000s, SAWA reforms were epicenter in the Global North, particularly in OECD countries (Högberg & Lindgren, 2021). However, SAWA policies have also been disseminated, to different extents, among middle and low-income countries (Hossain, 2022). In particular, SAWA policies have circulated among Latin American countries, taking precedence in school-based management and decentralization reforms during the 1990s (Barrera-Osorio et al., 2009). Literature on policy transfer in education has largely accounted why, how, and where different reforms are diffused. However, most studies focus on single instruments or specific reform aspects, such as standardized testing (Kamens & McNeely, 2010), whereas complex packages are underexplored. This study aims to fill this gap by examining SAWA’s dissemination across Latin America, a region that has served as a laboratory for multiple managerial and neoliberal reforms in the past (Meseguer, 2004). First, the study dissects SAWA into its main elements: (i) autonomy to enable decision-making by school agents –boards, principals, and teachers–; (ii) accountability and standardization to measure and monitor school outcomes; (iii) competition as a driver for improvement; and (iv) performance incentives to nudge agents’ behavior towards targetted outcomes (Verger et al., 2019). Then, it specifies 13 instruments that operationalize SAWA’s theory of change, such as decentralization laws, large-scale standardized testing, curriculum standardization, bonus payment for teachers or school league tables. Thirdly, to explore the extent of SAWA instruments dissemination throughout Latin America, it creates a self-elaborated database on SAWA policies’ adoption, at the regulatory level, for each of the 34 Latin American and Caribbean countries from 1990 until 2020. According to the World Education Reform Database, the period coincides with the peak of neoliberal reforms (Bromley et al., 2021). Following a similar methodology from prior policy diffusion studies (Bromley et al., 2021), data for this paper comes from coding country-level policy documents and international organizations publications (i.e., OECD’s Review of National Education Policies or the World Bank’s SABER publications). This paper contributes to the study of globalization and policy transfer in education by offering a cross-national and historical account of the spread of a complex reform package and its composing policies and analyzing trends in instrument diffusion throughout Latin America.

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