Private privileges and public consequences Inequality of educational opportunity and learning dynamics in Chile and Latin America

This dissertation examines how inequality of educational opportunity (IEO) emerges across the full schooling career, focusing on the interplay between individual mechanisms, group-level social contexts, and institutional structure of school systems, shaped by privately driven sectoral differentiation. Building on the distinction between primary and secondary effects, the dissertation shows how achievement inequalities and educational choices are mutually reinforcing processes that unfold within stratified school and higher education systems.
Using longitudinal, administrative, and cross-national data, the four empirical studies trace these dynamics from compulsory schooling to higher education transitions. Chapters 2 and 3 follow Chilean student cohorts to investigate how families’ educational preferences and expectations shape both achievement trajectories and postsecondary choices. The results show that parental expectations explain social disparities in achievement gains and in access to higher education tracks, net of demonstrated performance. These patterns are amplified by the clustering of high-expectation, socially advantaged families in private institutions, at both the school and higher education levels. Chapters 4 and 5 incorporate school- and system-level variation. Chapter 4 shows that the equalizing effects of Chile’s means-tested voucher reform are weakened by concurrent changes in school social contexts within private voucher schools. Chapter 5 extends the analysis to Latin America, demonstrating that higher levels of privately driven stratification within school systems reduce the equalizing impact of curricular standardization on achievement inequality.
Overall, the dissertation highlights how family agency, social sorting within schools, and institutional differentiation jointly contribute to educational inequality, underscoring their effects across unequal and market-oriented education systems.