School Choice Works! The Case of Sweden

friedman foundation ^ | 1.6.03 | Laura J. Swartley

[freepatriot32]

Historically Socialist Sweden Advances Milton Friedman’s Voucher Vision Leaving behind centralized control of schools, for-profit independent schools flourish

January 6, 2003, Indianapolis, IN--The Indianapolis-based Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, a leading national group that advocates school choice, has released a study of Sweden’s ten-year-old school financing reforms, finding that they have dramatically advanced parental freedom and improved education in Sweden. Sweden’s government is predominantly based on socialist structures, with high taxation and publicly financed medical care and retirement.

School Choice Works: The Case of Sweden, written by prominent Swedish public policy researchers Fredrik Bergstrom and Mikael Sandstrom, reveals that independent school funding reform passed in 1992 has resulted in the number of independent schools available to parents quintupling, and enrollment in independent schools quadrupling. Meanwhile, government schools have not suffered, but have improved.

Swedish law since 1992 mandates that the government separate the financing of schools from the administration of schools, as Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman proposed in 1955. Sweden’s independent schools are now financed on par with municipal schools, so long as they are approved. Since the reform, Sweden has shown the following advances:

• Competition created by this new supply of schools has increased performance in Sweden’s municipal (government-run) schools.

• Most independent schools in Sweden are run by for-profit educational companies, with no detrimental effects.

• There is absolutely no evidence that the new “voucher system” has created a scenario where the rich are supplemented in their private choices. In fact, poorer Swedes choose independent schools at higher rates than do wealthy families.

• Teachers’ unions in Sweden support the reform measures and indicate that they prefer to work in independent schools, where working conditions are better.

In Sweden now, as in many northern European countries, parents are given a large range of educational options, public and private, parochial and secular. The researchers concluded that: “The main lesson to be learned from the Swedish reforms is that school choice works…the Swedish example can indicate what would happen if a country, for example the USA, introduced more freedom of choice for students and parents and thus more competition between schools.”

The Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation is a non-profit organization promoting public understanding of the need for major reform in K-12 education and of the role that competition through educational choice can play in achieving that reform.

[freepatriot32]

the Swedish example can indicate what would happen if a country, for example the USA, introduced more freedom of choice for students and parents and thus more competition between schools.”

everyone in the gop has known what will hapen if you give student and parents choice for decades the only thing left to figure out is when gwb and the other repubs will grow a set big enough to stand up to teachers unions and quit trying to pander to people that will never in their lives vote gop no matter how badly you cave in to their demands

[Andy from Beaverton]

Go and read from one our nation's greatest economist and a true classical liberal, Milton Friedman.  His works in school choice can't be touched.  An absolute great mind and great man.  Friedman's school choice programs

[Free the USA]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[Fiddlstix]

Good Post

[widowithfoursons]

I find it intersting that the teachers also like this plan. Perhaps they enjoy the opportunity to "teach?" which is what they signed up for in the first place.