The aim of this work is to analyze the municipalization process of elementary school in the State of Rio de Janeiro as well as the challenges faced by the municipal education management, taking into account case studies from three: Angra dos Reis, Itaboraí and Teresópolis. Based on the data collected from the School Census, from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), from the Brazilian Statisctics Annuary and the legislation that guided and organized educational area in the country, since the Federal Constitution, it was possible to trace the advance on the reach of compulsory education in the country and in the state, and identify the distribution of enrollments by administrative area. As a complementary search strategy for a closer relationship with the educational context of municipal system in the state, it was developed and applied a questionnaire directed to the 92 municipal leaders of education and conducted interviews with staff responsible for education in each municipality studied, as well as the collection of official documents on their school systems. The dialogue with the literature and the empirical material produced under the three municipal school systems, underlined three categories to organize the analysis: political context, bureaucratic capacity and collaborative scheme. The analysis shows that the process of municipalization of elementary school in the State of Rio de Janeiro began even in the 1970s, before the implementation of the Fundef (Fund for Maintenance and Development of Elementary School and Teacher Enhancement), in 1998, and, posteriorly, of the Fundeb (Fund for Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and Valuing of Education Professionals (Fundeb), in 2007. Therefore, concludes that the funds policy wasn t decisive for the enrollment tranfers of stadual network for the municipal networks at the state as a whole, but consolidated and boosted, in same municipalities, the municipalization process that has already started. In 2014, 70 from the 92 cities of the State of Rio de Janeiro have already absorbed the whole first segment (first five years) of education and five cities the second segment (the last four years) and all the elementary school. Also concludes that, although subordinate to the national and state policy, the municipalization process occurred in differentiated moments and formats, depending on the specificities of each city, according to the analytical in the framework chosen. However, indicate that the phenomenon keeps similarities, mainly with regard the difficulties that the enrollment absorption from elementary school imposed for the local education management. In this scenario, is urgent to set the role of each federated entity, within the collaborative scheme determined by the Federal Constitution of 1988, considering the differences in the installes capacity of the cities, either in the state or national sphere, for the provision of quality public education.