Raczynski and Muñoz (2007) analyzed the Chilean educational reform, its achievements and pending issues, from the perspectives of school improvement and effectiveness. The main conclusion was that the Chilean reform had had little effects within schools and class rooms. The pending policy challenge, therefore, was to find a way to create the urgency of change among school stakeholders and commit them to school improvement. The present article analyzes the Law of Preferential School Subsidy (SEP) in implementation since 2008. Four hypothesis guide the analysis: i) SEP implies a paradigm shift, a new way in Chile of understanding school improvement and a new relationship between the state, school administrators and schools; ii) the strength and way with which SEP intervenes the educational system is modifying the functioning of schools, principals, teachers and other stakeholders; iii) the SEP law creates new “actors” in the system, and modifies the role and interrelationships among preexistent actors; and iv) SEP anticipates a new institutional order and is prelude to a novel system of accountability presently being installed in the country.