Explaining Education Reforms and Decentralization in Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, and Spain

The article assesses the education reforms in four countries: Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, and Spain. The main objective of the comparison is to identify the elements of the reforms that led to different educational performances. By taking South Korea as a model of successful education reform, the comparative analysis shows that the educational reforms in Brazil, South Africa, and Spain have set these countries aside from the path toward highperforming educational systems. In these countries, differently from South Korea, decentralizing education reforms have been dominated by conflict over the distribution of fiscal and administrative resources.