Abstract

In 2019, the right-wing Government of Chile was expected to implement a substantial reform regarding student assignment to schools that had been passed by the previous administration (the School Inclusion Law). While implementing this policy, in 2019, the former minister of education directed a populist campaign aiming to change policy directions coined the Just Admission Project (JAP). Such policy debates have critical implications regarding the functioning of school choice in Chile. This paper analyzes the JAP as a case study of reactionary neoliberal populism. Framed by such conceptualization of populism, this paper develops a statistical analysis to model the potential influence of the JAP bill on school choice opportunities while comparing with the recently implemented new assignment system from the Inclusion Law (NSAS). We show the results of simulations representing how students would have been assigned to schools for the 2019 school year had the admission procedure been the JAP instead of the NSAS.