This paper analyzes the development of private education in Chile since the military coup of 1973, in the context of the military regime's neoconservative political and ideological aims. Despite these professed aims, copious evidence is presented to suggest that the need of an authoritarian state to maintain "national security" by suppressing all dissent has led to a serious discrepancy between the professed aims of the regime and its need for total ideological control of private education. These contradictions are expressed in three fundamental ways. First, despite the discourse on freedom, the state reserves for itself the right to legislate and control all aspects of education, both administrative and curricular, and a national system of supervision at the regional level has been installed to monitor and evaluate the schools and control the aid given to private institutions. Second, the private sector has assumed responsibility for educational services in a partial and fragmented way. Since profits are given preference over community service, the number of subsidized institutions has increased in urban areas but has declined in the rural areas, where educational services are needed most. Third, the transference of the privatization plan to the totality of the educational system has wrought a discriminatory system of state financing for education at all levels, along with reduced salaries and loss of tenure rights for teachers. All these practices have brought about a deterioration in the quality of education. Appended are a series of statistical tables, along with organizational charts illustrating the structure of the Chilean educational hierarchy.(TE)