School Choice in Sweden
Conservative voucher fans sometimes tout school choice, as practiced in Sweden, as a good model for the United States to follow. And they’re right, there’s something to be said for the Swedish system. But as Dana Goldstein points out, what they do in Sweden is much closer to what we call charter schools in the United States than to a system of “vouchers.” Swedish independent schools “remain completely government-financed and are not allowed to charge tuition fees.” So, yes, this is a good model, but it’s basically the model that most progressives are already embracing. Meanwhile, people who want to eliminate public education in the United States are already largely looking past the voucher step and moving straight to education tax credits. Of course these people tend to work at the same institutions that have lately taken to arguing that refundable tax credits aren’t “really” tax cuts at all, so the larger trajectory is to move away from a system of taxpayer financed universal education to something where the well-off get a tax subsidy to educate their kids and poor children work as chimney-sweeps or something.
I, for one, will be sticking with the charter schools.
41 Responses to “School Choice in Sweden”
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March 17th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
But, of course, the voucher push is only really around half powered by actual regard for children and schools. The other half is simply to use it against the teachers unions and public education in general. This would be a much easier discussion to have nationally if there wasn’t such massive bad faith coming from voucher proponents.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
could you address some studies or data that makes you such a fan of charters beyond anecdotal evidence? All of the data that I have come across seems to indicate that taken across the boards, charters perform no better than public schools. Anecdotally, I have seen in our school district, new charters open up and become the disproportionate choice of middle class white families, who leave the existing schools for a perceived, untested advantage at the new school, which then takes 1. the most active, participating parents out of the district along with 2. the state-funding that goes with their children.
I don’t mean to ask too many questions. but really, I would like to see your take on data and studies pertaining to charters.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I believe that most of the leadership of the progressives movement do not really support charter schools. Those progressives really support college prep private schools because that is where their children go.
Of course, the last thing that any progressive will ever support is the public schools adopting any of the practices that make elite private schools go such as tracking, zero tolerance for bad behavior, high standards, and little concern for children who do not want to learn.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
No Matt, most progressives are not embracing charter schools. The people who are telling you so are the same ones your mother warned you about vis-a-vis jumping off roofs.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Oh sure Freddie, the bad faith is coming from people not in hock to unions and other assorted interest groups, and those not wanting to perpetuate a system that allows kids to graduate unable to read, write, or do algebra. You can also see a lot of bad faith coming from those poor parents who were lucky enough to send their kids to private school in DC until Democrats kicked them back to the public school ghetto. The reason liberals hate vouchers is because it will mean fewer unionized teacher jobs, less power for government, and less centralized control over curricula. That’s about where it starts and stops. Meanwhile, those who want poor kids to get a similar type of education that say.. I dunno, Matt received, are the ones arguing in bad faith.
And yes, I would love to see the public school system as it exists eliminated. It is totally indefensible. Ooo how “bad faith” of me.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
What Matt meant was most progressives in the bubble that is the District of Columbia, because here the non-charter schools are nearly uniformly awful and the charters have been semi-successful.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:06 pm
All of the data that I have come across seems to indicate that taken across the boards, charters perform no better than public schools.
I’ve read about studies that show that, and I’ve also read about studies that show slightly better results in charter schools. I’ve yet to hear of charter schools that are dramatically better than traditional public schools.
But that’s not an argument against them. If charter schools perform equally well, at the same cost (oftentimes less — in California charter schools don’t get all the funding that goes to regular public schools), then parents should be perfectly free to choose them. I’d have a hard time coming up with an argument for why you shouldn’t have charter schools, if their performance is the same.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Meanwhile, those who want poor kids to get a similar type of education that say.. I dunno, Matt received, are the ones arguing in bad faith.
So conservatives are trying to enact voucher programs that would guarantee admission to Dalton and completely cover the cost of attendance? That’d be pretty kickass.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Voucher enthusiasts, like the ones in this thread, remind me of the Progressive Era “reformers” who decided it was their God-given duty to raise up the proles by teaching them that rugs collect dust.
They can’t tell a good urban school from a bad urban school, and they don’t have any interest in finding out. No matter what the reality of any particular school, all they see are their own stereotypes about – what is it you called it again, Brad? Oh, right, “the ghetto.”
They have no interest in building up, or building on, any successes there. Anything that is indigenous to the community and the schools that have been serving it is bad – all “ghetto-ish,” I suppose.
Meanwhile, those who want poor kids to get a similar type of education that say.. I dunno, Matt received, are the ones arguing in bad faith. I’d say that anyone who thinks a cream-skimming voucher system can provide anything whatsoever to “poor kids” – as opposed to a tiny fraction of them, at the expense of the rest – is arguing in bad faith, right in the statement where they assert that their program is for “poor kids.”
March 17th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Of course they do. If they were proposing anything else, after all the “Look how elevated I am” posturing they do about how much they want to help “poor kids,” they’d be arguing in bad faith.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Matt said: …so the larger trajectory is to move away from a system of taxpayer financed universal education to something where the well-off get a tax subsidy to educate their kids…
A link to an organization suggesting something along those lines would be helpful. My first guess would be the Cato Institute.
Back in Tucson ca. 1998, the local papers would provide several pages of year end stats on the schools, including the charters. With one exception, the charters did just as well/poorly as the public schools in their area. The exception posted exceptionally good English scores, but tanked on the math.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
What Matt meant was most progressives in the bubble that is the District of Columbia, because here the non-charter schools are nearly uniformly awful and the charters have been semi-successful.
Ding ding ding! I doubt you’d find any parents — liberal or conservative — taking up the cause of charter schools in their stable suburban school districts where funding for such charter schools would hinder the ability of the established public school to get funding for nice lab supplies and other amenities.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:46 pm
As a teacher in Los Angeles, I don’t see how a voucher system would work…there are simply a myriad of problems with it.
The main problem in the education field right now is No Child Left Behind…the first step in “fixing” problems is getting rid of that ridiculous law.
March 17th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
I think Matt has arrived at the correct position here. The problem with allowing subsidized schools to charge tuition is that it improves the education of middle class students while weakening the education of poor students. I don’t know how we managed to create a public education system in this country, but I am very reluctant to get rid of it.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
“The main problem in the education field right now is No Child Left Behind…the first step in “fixing” problems is getting rid of that ridiculous law.”
Looks like the teacher doesn’t want to have any accountability.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
I find it odd that Conservatives insist that public schools can’t be made to work and we should give up on them. The public shools I went to were pretty good. We had a fair number of students getting free or reduced lunches so its not like it was a really rich area. I think the promise of charter schools is that they will result in good schools being replicated while bad ones go away. I will ad that my Mom works as a system administrator in for Boise Schools and I do often wonder whether charter schools would work better if they shared a government provided district administration providing IT services and maintenance services etc. Maybe there is a better way but individual charter schools would seem to face a major disadvantage doing this stuff on their own.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Look I think No Child Left Behind has been a mixed thing. On the one hand it focused the education debate on providing more accountability, on the other hand it was administered poorly and Bush seemed to think that education was solved once he signed the bill. We need a sustained effort to reform the education system. Not just one bill but a series of initiatives that tackle the problem from different angles. It isn’t just universal pre-K or performance pay, or charter schools or anti-poverty efforts. Its all of them.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
As a teacher in Los Angeles… The main problem in the education field right now is No Child Left Behind
Because, you know, the LAUSD was doing just fine before NCLB came along…
March 17th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Of course, the last thing that any progressive will ever support is the public schools adopting any of the practices that make elite private schools go such as tracking, zero tolerance for bad behavior, high standards, and little concern for children who do not want to learn.
Right. Because universal public education has the word “universal” in it. But you’ve pointed to the biggest reasons why private schools perform better than public schools — self selection and the ability to kick out underperforming and disruptive kids. This isn’t a problem that market competition will fix. I don’t have an answer other than to take steps to ameliorate poverty, reduce violent crime in poor neighborhoods, strengthen families, promote early child education, nutrition and afterschool programs and use moral suasion to get parents to commit to the education of their children.
March 17th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Concern trolls, ho!
March 17th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Led
I don’t have an answer other than to take steps to ameliorate poverty, reduce violent crime in poor neighborhoods, strengthen families, promote early child education, nutrition and afterschool programs and use moral suasion to get parents to commit to the education of their children.
We might also try the approach, common to most European school systems, which separates out both the high and low performing students and places them in programs more suited their needs and aptitudes.
It never ceases to amaze me that my fellow liberals and progressives continue to defend mainstreaming in spite of the fact that it has proven to be a complete and utter failure.
March 17th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
интересное сообщение…
But as Dana Goldstein points out, what they do in Sweden is much closer to what we call charter[...]…
March 17th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
If charter schools aren’t doing better than regular schools that isn’t a reason not to have them, but it seems like it might be a reason not to have them be an important part of reform.
And, if parents are happier with schools that aren’t any better than the schools that they were unhappy with before, perhaps that’s a sign that market forces aren’t going to produce better educational outcomes.
Further, if any of the usual complaints (teacher tenure, teacher certification and teacher’s unions) were really the major problem, charter and private schools would be measurably and consistently out performing public schools (when educating the same kind of kids). It’s interesting that they’re not.
March 17th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
When I was in public school not that long ago, high and low performing students were separated. There was no distinction in the lower grades, but by 3rd or 4th grade they separated out “gifted and talented” kids for specific subjects like math. Starting in middle school igh-performing/richer students were placed in “honors” classes for virtually every subject, while lower-performing/poorer students ended up in “regular” classes. By the upper levels of high school another level of separation was introduced with the distinction between an AP class and a merely honors class. At all of these levels students with developmental disabilities ended up in “special ed.”
As far as I know this is the way it works in pretty much all American school systems.
March 18th, 2009 at 12:41 am
When I was in public school not that long ago, high and low performing students were separated. There was no distinction in the lower grades, but by 3rd or 4th grade they separated out “gifted and talented” kids for specific subjects like math.
Well, it was in the seventies, but when I was a kid they separated classes into ‘tracks’ starting in second/third grade. I started & finished at the same 1-12 public school (the middle school years were spent living elsewhere, with tracks even within classrooms at times and pull-out programs all the way through), and with not too many exceptions, many of the kids in my third grade class were also in advanced/honors high school classes with me.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:10 am
“The main problem in the education field right now is No Child Left Behind…the first step in “fixing” problems is getting rid of that ridiculous law.”
Looks like the teacher doesn’t want to have any accountability.
You know, mutatis mutandis this sounds like every right-wing gripe about Sarbanes Oxley I’ve ever heard.
March 18th, 2009 at 3:27 am
UGG
Air Max
March 18th, 2009 at 4:35 am
интересное за сегодня…
But as Dana Goldstein points out, what they do in Sweden is much closer to what we call charter[...]…
March 18th, 2009 at 5:34 am
There are many reasons to oppose charter schools and no good reason to support them.
99.9% of charter schools do not provide a better educational outcome than public schools in their area while draining financing away from our already underfunded public schools.
Charter schools are often religion oriented and this means that they promote doctrines which are discriminatory.
The ballyhooed parent preference for charter schools, despite the schools’ failure to improve educational outcomes, is a result of simply promoting the parents’ existing prejudices.
Society must have a very strong and demonstrable rationale for using public funds to finance discriminatory programs and charter schools fail to meet this test.
As others have noted, since our public schools in reality are performing as well or better than the preferred charter schools (while operating under constraints which those charter schools escape), it is clear that our public schools are doing better than is commonly admitted and that the preference for charter schools is in reality built upon other than performance.
At best that other is simply a reinforcement of parents’ religious and cultural prejudices while at worst it is an opening wedge aimed to dismantle the public school system.
For the sake of these undemocratic agendas some “progressives” would work to destroy one of our more successful institutions?
March 18th, 2009 at 8:39 am
Thank you DTM.
Charter schools are not public schools. They operate under radically different operating constraints. If you wish to argue that those differences don’t matter, that charter schools are still public schools just because we say they are then it is your dishonesty which is breathtaking.
It is the same sort of stupidity which calls the bombing of Baghdad an intervention rather than an illegal war of aggression.
And yes the US does not torture.
Further it matters not what the laws establishing charter schools say. What matters is what they do and how they are overseen by their local school boards. Across the nation that oversight is slight to non-existent. If you wish to pretend that there are not charter schools which operate as Christian schools then fine but stop lying.
Just consider:
By law charter schools are also supposed to demonstrate improved educational outcomes.
Almost no charter schools in the nation demonstrate improved performance over their area public schools.
And so by law almost all charter schools fail and as a result cannot receive public funds.
Why are the laws not enforced?
If charter schools are public schools why are they not held to the same requirements as public schools?
BECAUSE CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE NOT PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ANY COMMONLY ACCEPTED MEANING OF THE TERM!
More blah blah blah pulled out of DTM’s ass in order to justify the unjustifiable.
March 18th, 2009 at 9:43 am
I’ve never fully understood the idea behind charter schools–aside from the bad faith middle ground between vouchers and universal public schooling.
Since this debate is almost entirely anecdotal, I went to a large unified (very liberal) suburban district, wherein we had about 6 separate tracks, a separate vocational school, a strong teachers union, and a hugely diverse ethnic and economic base. It was nationally recognized in the 80s but (I hear) does poorly under NCLB.
While my school had many problems, it resulted in a better education for me (in the top track) than I got at Miami University, and high college placement for those in the lower tracks.
I don’t see what’s wrong with that. As an aside, Ohio’s charter schools seem to do worse in every regard than my district (and the much-maligned Cincy Public Schools).
March 18th, 2009 at 9:47 am
I don’t have an answer other than to take steps to ameliorate poverty, reduce violent crime in poor neighborhoods, strengthen families, promote early child education, nutrition and afterschool programs and use moral suasion to get parents to commit to the education of their children.
You mean, solving the real problems instead of scapegoating the schools where the problems finally show up in measurable form (with a side order of reflexive union-bashing, of course)?
That’s so crazy, it just might work. But how will it play in the Senate?
March 18th, 2009 at 10:36 am
This bit here had me looking away in embarrassment, as if a grown man had an accident in his pants. Do you offer to help, or would that just make him feel worse?
March 18th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
To the person that said I don’t want accountability: The test scores of my students are stellar. Under NCLB, I’m golden…and it still needs to go.
NCLB sets a proficiency level at 100% by 2014. Do you guys realize that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to have 100% proficiency in English and Math? It’s impossible, given a large population, to have 100% proficiency in anything. What happens if proficiency isn’t reached? Schools close. We’re in a situation where every single school in this country will close unless this law is taken to the trash.
Also, schools with great curriculum with teachers working together are being broken up. Why? Any subgroup that fails to meet its AYP goals goes under sanctions. For example, let’s say a school of 2,500 has 150 special ed students. They miss their AYP target and the whole school goes under sanction. The response is to bust the school up into 5 different schools so that there are not enough special ed students at any school so their scores don’t have to be reported.
Let’s not forget the government hasn’t defined what proficiency actually means. Each state sets up their own AYP targets. Some states set their initial proficiency level at 7%. Why? Because it’s impossible not to improve on that and thus not go under sanctions. We’re looking at a situation that in a year or two 85% of Louisiana schools are about to close. The numbers look like that from across the country.
In the meantime, all other subjects are being cut back for test prep. Our students are getting an awful education in favor of test drilling. Basically all the research shows that this is a ridiculous approach to education.
You want to talk about good teachers? Why would good teachers come into the profession when they could lose their job immediately under NCLB, when they spend their time test prepping, and when they get low pay? Can you blame them? I’m in it because I love it…I know many great teachers that have moved on to the private sector because they make more money, and don’t have to deal with NCLB which is the straw that broke the camel’s back for a lot of them.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Joe from Lowell, if charter schools are indeed public, can you tell me what elected body oversees them? I’m serious.
School districts are a form of local government — they are one type of special district. Like other local governments, they have jurisdiction over a defined geographical area, collect taxes, must have open records, and are overseen by elected representatives — aka the school board.
If I’m unhappy with what’s going on in my local district, I can go to the next school board meeting and ask them questions or tell them my complaint. I can ask to see their financial books. I can get involved in helping to elect new representatives. I can even run, myself.
Now, I’m very happy with my suburban school district, but over the years I’ve lived here some individuals and groups haven’t liked various school board actions and they’ve made it known. They’ve run candidates that have lost and won. In a word, it’s democracy.
What is the mechanism by which charter schools must answer directly to the citizenry?
March 18th, 2009 at 8:02 pm
You are the best
March 19th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
To Ohio Mom,
If you don’t like how the charter school operates, then you have the option of moving your kids to the local public school.
March 20th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Vouchers, etc.:
You miss my point. Public schools are *public* because they *belong* in essence to the entire citizenry, whether or not any particular individual citizen has children.
Some of the people who have complained the loudest about things in my school district have no school-age children but since it’s their tax money going to the schools, they get a chance to have a say (that is, to speak at board meetings, ask to see the books, campaign for and against school board nominees, to run for the school board themselves, etc). You might recall hearing something once about taxation and representation…
Let me try another way to explain this. My city contracts out for garbage pick-up, or to put it another way, garbage pick-up has been privatized. Theoretically, if the private company does a bad job and the people who live in my fair city complain, our elected representatives (the city council) will direct the city staff to find another way to have the garbage collected and then terminate the relationship with the private company that disappointed us. If they don’t, they might not win re-election. It’s one of those checks and balances you might also have heard about.
But if we privatize/charterize a school, where is that check? School boards in my state have mandates to provide transportation to private school students, as well as some services to special ed students in private schools (if the private school lets any in), and maybe to provide some other things I don’t know about. But the school board, the only body which is accountable to the entire citizenry, has no say, for example, in what is taught at the private school (and believe me, curiculum matters come up all the time at my school board’s meetings), or any say in any financial matters.
So, if the private school is misusing public funds (as several charters in my area have been found to have done), what rascals can I vote out? Where is my voice in how my school tax dollars are being spent?
I’ll try one last time: when we talk about local public education, we are not talking about a consumer good/service that is purchased by individuals in an open market. We are talking about a democratically-elected form of local government and its functions. Remove the school board from tax-funded education and you’ve just removed some of our democracy. I like democracy, don’t you?
April 5th, 2009 at 4:12 am
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