Tuesday, July 29, 2008

School choice is alive and well in Sweden

I had not known this: Sweden has a nation wide voucher system. School choice was implemented in 1992. The Washington Post reports that "the numbers have shot up. In 1992, 1.7 percent of high schoolers and 1 percent of elementary schoolchildren were privately educated. Now the figures are 17 percent and 9 percent."

That is pretty impressive. Almost a fifth of all students in high school are attending a private school.

Vouchers would make a huge improvement in public education. But there are so many roadblocks. It seems like every time there is a push to have true school choice politicians, unions and others demand rules that handicap and often kill the vouchers. One of the techniques is to only allow vouchers to pay for half as much money as public schools get. In the United States on average schools get over $10,000 per student. Typically vouchers get less than half.

It is nice to see that at least one nation in the world allows parents choice in where their children are educated.

(Hat tip: edspresso.com)


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Technorati tags: government schools, public school, public education, education, Sweden

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