The article analyzes the key challenges for education policies in Brazil and Chile, taking account the context of their educational systems organization and the strong social and economic inequality that both countries share. The analysis articulates, for both cases, two looks: the problems linked to financing methods, organization and management of education and possible answers to these problems. The article concludes showing how essential are education funding policies in these realities, and probably because of this, in both countries there is growing concern about this issue.