Experts, neoliberal doxa, and the rollback of high-stakes school rankings in Chile (2006–2024)

What drives the rollout and rollback of high-stakes, test-based school rankings? Adapting the theory of strategic action fields to the Chilean case and mobilizing Bourdieu’s concept of doxa, I look at market reform in education as the result of competing, cooperative, and conflictive relations among incumbent and challenger actors. While the formers dominate the field and thus wield definitional power over how the field should be organized and reformed, the latter vie for alternative ways of structuring the field. This fielded logic configures a contingent dynamic in which the field is transformed as challenging frames gain ideational currency. Based on this conceptual framework, I evince how competing ideas over the market-based education have shaped the technical construction and public use of school quality rankings. Implications for a sociology of reform follow.