The work aims at grasping if, in the State of São Paulo, the process of decentralizing public education services in primary and lower secondary schools from the state level to its municipalities contributed to the binomial of quality-equity and in which type of local context. By categorizing the municipalities in terms of their decentralization processes and confronting this dependent variable with local characteristics, the research tried to find systematic profiles of municipalization rhythm and performance evolution at school level. The unit of analysis is the municipality, and the criteria to differentiate them are their population size, local wealth production and income, and the administrative region they belong to. The work identified, among others, two groups of municipalities with opposing profiles: one that controls enrollments both at primary and lower secondary schools which is consistently improving performance indicators, and another, which opted to maintain the majority of enrollments at the state level, and is lagging to advance proficiency performance. In addition, the variables were combined to propose an index to complement the official IDEB and make the differences between municipalities more explicit.