This paper seeks to contextualize some landmarks of Vocational Education in Brazil in the 1990s, during the Reform of Vocational Education promoted by the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government. We focus the discussion on Decree 2208/97 which dissociated high school programs from vocational studies, resulting in the loss of equivalent programs inaugurated by the Capanema Reform in the 1940s. This decree restored the old structural duality by establishing different and nonequivalent paths at this level of education.