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Scandinavian surprise (none / 0)
I'm surprised that the republicans want a system used (and liked my most people) in "socialist" Sweden...I wonder if they know that hehe.

I wonder if American progressives realize that Sweden is not nearly as socialist as they assume.

In Sweden, the average cost of a municipal education follows the choices of parents. Even if they send their kid to a private school, that budget - about £6,500 - follows. To get the money, private schools are not allowed to charge top-up fees, and there is no academic selection. But it's easy to get a licence to enter this system, and 1,100 new schools have sprung up because of it. Most, about 800 of them (Gove please note), are profit-making. Many are small schools but in big chains (some with turnovers of £100m and more), which actually have a successful model for organising and running schools, and take that successful brand to one school after another.

Nor surprisingly, this supply-side revolution, a deregulation of the school sector, has brought plenty of new investment. In the UK it might cost £25m to set up a new school. In Sweden, it costs the state nothing, because parents, teachers, companies and others raise the money they need - and usually work out ways to do things far cheaper than the state can. And it works. the new schools have 20% better educational outcomes.

There seem to be four lessons from all of this. (1) Make it easy for new people to come in and provide education. Standards, yes, but allow people to start small, maybe renting empty office or warehouse space, rather than insisting that everything has to be built and run as the state builds and runs it. (2) Allow profit making, because that is what drives the investment and the risk-taking. (3) Don't keep subsidizing failure, but reward success. (4) Let people spread their success. That is what makes the Swedish system work: it's about knowing how to deliver education effectively, and taking that expertise far and wide.


If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's "free."

by TheArtistFormerlyKnownAsTwba on 07/31/2010 11:14:03 AM EST

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Mislead, much? (none / 0)
It's socialist enough for me! They pay for college! Through taxes! No onerous "student loans" to hold you back when you enter the job market - imagine that!

For the fact deprived, Sweden is slightly larger than California and has an under 18 population of around 2 million. 10-15% of those (I'm being very generous going to 15%) are in these private schools (Another example of consolidated buying power and centralized decision making - imagine that, too!). So, around 250,000 max students in these schools.

In contrast, the Los Angeles school system, by itself, has 618,000 enrollees in K-12. Which doesn't include charter or private schools.

And now that Sweden has banned home schooling and curtailing the amount of variation for-profit and religious schools from the official government standard, the abuses might be curtailed.

So, even though there are for-profit schools for the religious and ethnically bigoted to send their kids to, they still have to learn what the other kids do in terms of science, history, and all that good stuff.

When are you going to learn that a balance is what's needed, not a pendulum swing in either direction? Public Education is a good thing. We should be doing everything we can to shore it up, not undermine it. Expand it, not make it whither away and disappear...how the hell does that benefit the country? What will the excuse be when our illiteracy levels are back those of the 1800's?

(A Stack Of The Deck note: It's easy to get "20% better educational outcomes" when you can pick and choose which students you'll accept. That's a bogus marketing claim no matter who is making it.)

by MedfordTim on 07/31/2010 07:13:36 PM EST

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Shop around for schools | 15 comments (15 topical, 0 hidden)