An increasing number of countries are adopting accountability systems in education that rely on the external evaluation of students’ learning outcomes through standardized assessments. The international dissemination of this form of accountability, often known as test-based accountability, does not imply that exactly the same policy is adopted everywhere. Accountability reforms, as any other globalizing policy model, are context-specific. The concrete form that accountability reforms adopt is contingent on a range of political, historical and institutional conditions, and to policy-making dynamics and logics that operate at multiple scales. This paper analyzes the trajectory of accountability reforms in two Spanish regions, Madrid and Catalonia, from a comparative and multi-scalar perspective. Based on document analysis of media and official sources, and exploratory interviews with key informants, the paper shows that, although these two regions have pioneered the adoption of test-based accountability reforms in the Spanish context, their accountability systems have evolved quite differently. While accountability reforms in Madrid have been oriented toward the promotion of school choice and competition, Catalonia has adopted an uneven lower-stakes accountability approach with multiple ramifications. In this paper, we explain how and why such diverging trends have been possible within the context of a common general regulatory framework.

Educational systems across the world are applying measures addressed to the improvement of education quality. These measures have as a consequence, the shaping of a rhetoric that works as a framework for the interpretation of educational agents’ action. The article deals with the analysis of the impact of global educational policies on the notions of educational agents’−teachers and parents−autonomy, freedom and participation, within the Madrilenian educational system. To this end, it takes as a context the meaning given to these notions within the Spanish educational system, through the analysis of its evolution over the national education laws. Next, it presents the reform applied to the Madrilenian educational system through facing the policy makers’ speeches and the educational legislation that they have enacted. The results show that the impact of the reform leads to the limitation of teachers’ autonomy, the erosion of parents’ participation and the narrowing of parents’ freedom.

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This paper deals with the evolution of educational policy in Spain in relation to school from the arrival of democracy. The objective is to provide a pedagogical analysis of the legal evolution of this concept and its repercussions in daily school practice. One of the most controversial issues in the parliamentary transactions leading to the new laws on education has been the definition of parental rights, in particular the right to choose a school. This right was always interpreted as being restrictive. The work concludes by making the case that diversity of options is the best route to meet the needs of a pluralistic society.

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