It’s Raining Meatballs
What lessons can we fail to learn from Sweden’s disastrous school choice disaster?
Reader: it seems like only yesteryear that you and I were off to Sweden together to tour the wonders of that country’s experiment with skola privatisering, otherwise known as *the magic of the market.* So what happened since we boarded our return flight aboard Scandanavian Airlines? In a word:katastrof. A familiar recipe of vouchers and privately-run, publicly funded schools, spiced up with the profit motive, has had the exact opposite effect from what advocates promised, with international test scores plummeting and gaps between haves and have nots widening, even as for profit school operators have been profiting. So why do I feel like we’ve taken this trip before?
Upps!As an expert on Swedish-style school choicification, you no doubt recall that the Swedes began breaking up their equivalent of the BLOB three decades ago. Power was decentralized, more than 800 privately-run but publicly funded schools opened their doors, infusing the system with the aquavit of competition, parents got vouchers and a choice to choose the school of their choice. And the kronanow followed the child to whatever choice his or her parents had chosen. In other words, Sweden is a choice lovers dreamscape. Except, that is, when the entire experiment goes meatballs up. Andreas Schleicher: take it away.
*It was in the early 2000s that the Swedish school system somehow seems to have lost its soul. Schools began to compete no longer on delivering superior quality but on offering shiny school buildings in shopping centres, and I think that’s the issue we are really seeing.* Andreas Schleicher, OECD.
Choice, with a side of choiceOh well, as long as the test scores go Upp, Upp, Upp, which is the true measure of any choicetastic experiment. What’s that you say, Mr. Schleicher? Sweden’s PISA scores haveplummeted like a rock to the bottom of Lake Torneträsk? Dropping further since 2000 than any other participating country? And causing Swedish officials to make bleak statements like *the bleak picture has It’s Raining Meatballs | EduShyster:
