Over the past decade, Argentina created and implemented a compulsory lower-secondary education level, within an ambitious educational reform programme. This article addresses the reform at the national level, diverse provincial responses, and the particular way that the powerful province of Buenos Aires appropriated the structural change. Our main source of data is fieldwork in Argentina, specifically in that province, in May 2002; we gathered official documents, interviewed national and provincial policy-makers, educational researchers and school actors, and observed schools and classrooms. In Latin America, secondary education reform has become a high priority, especially redefining its structure and role in national development and social integration (Braslavsky, 2001). In general the region does not provide enough opportunities in secondary education; it lags in ‘‘quality, efficiency and equity’’, and often its content is ‘‘outdated’’ (Wolff & Castro, 2000, p. 5). Most Latin American governments know they must focus on disadvantaged groups; now that primary education has been expanded, secondary education is ‘‘key’’ to reversing ‘‘the social reproduction of inequality’’ (Reimers, 1999, p. 537). These challenges have been critical in the reform of secondary education in Argentina, where complex dynamics affect the actors in a decentralised system. In this article, we analyse the ways actors form and appropriate educational policy at three levels – national, provincial, and school – and within the limits set by various global, national and local policy discourses. Levinson and Sutton (2001, p. 17, note 2) see the appropriation of educational policy as an active process that ‘‘emphasises the agency of local actors’’ as they interpret and adapt the ‘‘policy to the situated logic in their contexts of everyday practice’’. After reviewing the historical background and context of Argentinas reform, we discuss national education policy during the 1990s, focusing on the change in academic structure, and the different provincial responses and implementation problems. We then analyse the case of the province of Buenos Aires (PBA). Finally, we summarise some quantitative effects of the reform

En este artículo, analizamos procesos de formación y apropiación de políticas en tres contextos: el nivel nacional/federal, el provincial y el de las escuelas. También hacemos algunas referencias al papel de los supervisores, actores que median entre las autoridades provinciales y las escuelas. En nuestro análisis de la reforma educativa, concebimos las políticas como representaciones que se codifican en forma compleja (a través de luchas, acuerdos, interpretaciones y re-interpretaciones oficiales) y que se decodifican también en forma compleja (a través de las interpretaciones y significados asignados por los actores en relación con sus historias, experiencias, capacidades, recursos y contextos) (Ball, 1994, p. 16). Dentro de los límites impuestos por diversos discursos globales, nacionales y locales, las políticas son mediadas y apropiadas, de forma más o menos activa, por diferentes actores (Levinson y Sutton, 2001)