School Choice in Sweden: Who Knew?

For the last ten years in Sweden there is only one thing you can say about school choice.  It’s the law.

It must be the best-kept secret in education.  In other words, I never knew about it.  Not until I read about it last week in an article in the London Spectator (reg) that called for liberating schools in Britain.

Naturally, I blogged the article immediately.  But where could I get more information?

Google aside, where would you look?  I know where I would look.  I would look at the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation website.

What a surprise!  The Friedman Foundation has a white paper on the Swedish school-choice reforms, authored by Frederick Bergström and J. Michael Sandström (pdf here).

Here are the basic features of the Swedish reform:

• Independent schools and municipal schools are placed on an equal footing for funding.
• Any group can apply to open an independent school: non-profit, for-profit, religious.
• To get permission to open a new independent school you make an application to the National Agency of Education.  Few applications are turned down.  It is difficult for the local municipality to sustain an objection to a new school.
• No fees may be charged.
• The number of independent schools has quadrupled since 1992/93.  The market share of independent schools is now about 10 percent.
• Competition has improved the municipal schools.
• Teachers are happier in the independent schools.

Teachers are happier in the independent schools.  That could be a very big deal.  As Bersgström and Sandström write:

It should also be clear that teachers have no reason to fear school vouchers. To the contrary, when the choice of employer is not only between different municipalities but also between several independent schools, this seems to benefit teachers. Also, the working conditions in the independent schools appear to be superior to those in the municipal schools. This may be due to a less bureaucratic structure of the former.

 School-choice advocates should pay close attention to this.  We don’t know what is important to US teachers, but the chances are that they would appreciate improvement in working conditions—in the way they are treated—over more material things like money.

Right now teachers are being led by their unions to oppose school reform to the death.

But sooner or later teachers are going to find out from their friends that they might like teaching in an independent school.

Then we will start to see the wall of defiance start to break down.

And then, perhaps, parents in the United States will win the freedom to send their children to the school of their choice.