Scholars such as Henry Levin have earlier warned that the Swedish experiment in privatization is promoting greater social segregation and not improving education.
Reader Chiara Duggan adds this recent Reuters article, with her comment on the failure of market-based reform. Will anyone tell Arne Duncan or will he continue to follow the guidance of (Sir) Michael Barber of Pearson?
Duggan writes:
“http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/10/us-sweden-schools-insight-idUSBRE9B905620131210
“Good piece on Sweden’s experiment with privatizing education:
“In a country with the fastest growing economic inequality of any OECD nation, basic aspects of the deregulated school market are now being re-considered, raising questions over private sector involvement in other areas like health.
Two-decades into its free-market experiment, about a quarter of once staunchly Socialist Sweden’s secondary school students now attend publically-funded but privately run schools, almost twice the global average.
Nearly half of those study at schools fully or partly owned by private equity firms.
Ahead of elections next year, politicians of all stripes are questioning the role of such firms, accused of putting profits first with practices like letting students decide when they have learned enough and keeping no record of their grades.
The opposition Green Party – like the Moderates long-time supporters of privately run schools but now backing the clamp-down – issued a public apology in a Swedish daily last month headlined “Forgive us, our policy led our schools astray”.
“I give the Greens huge credit for that.
“Can you IMAGINE a US political party writing “forgive us, our policy led our schools astray”? 🙂
“Never, ever happen.
“In 20 years when there are no public schools left we’ll get “mistakes were made”- by some unidentified person or group of people. :)”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I don’t think we’d even get “Mistakes were made…” I think we’d get, “See, we always told you “they” were lazy/dumb/don’t care about education.”
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The reactionaries at AEI, Cato, Fordham, etc., always point to Sweden as the voucher “success” story that everyone else should follow. Once more we see that the private sector only does one thing well—stuff profits into the pockets of a select few.
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Why, Arne, Why? It’s the toxic, education-killing, brew of ‘true believer’ ideology and narcissism.
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Hmmm…. well, as the article admits, only a quarter of children attend these schools, and there is no hard data that can link the lowered educational performance — let alone growing income inequality (complete non-sequitur!) — to them. While the article does very briefly note that demographic “changes” (read: collapse) are affecting the situation, it does not even allude to the even more destabilizing changes brought on by the massive influx of culturally unassimilated Muslim immigrants. In places like Malmo, a majority of the young people are now Muslim immigrants or the children of immigrants. If you want to know the reasons for lowered school performance and growing inequality, that’s the place to start. But it’s politically incorrect to mention it, so of course, it gets ignored.
It really does sound like Sweden went overboard with its reforms (and it blows my mind that the Greens were the ones behind it!), but this article is an exercise in trying to find a convenient scapegoat for things respectable Swedish society is not allowed to discuss.
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Read this. It’s much more thorough.
Click to access Carnoy%20on%20Chile.pdf
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Dem Party has backed it here too. The bs about urban decay is the fault of schools and teachers, etc. At least Green Party here supports public ed.
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Thomas Piketty’s best seller explains the cause of growing income inequality in the world.
In the U.S., over the past 3 decades, 60% of the national income went to the richest 1%. Couple that with the 2% drain on the economy, from the financial sector and, it explodes the myths about assimilation,
mismatched skills, etc.
The U.S. invented the concept of taxation of great wealth and high incomes. Its creation allowed the nation’s people to prosper and to fulfill the American dream. Sociopathic billionaires gutted progressive taxes and the nation is paying the price.
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The article below has Krugman discussing oligarchy, a topic some of us here continually write about. Bottom line definition is “Patrimonial Capitialism”…children of the uber wealthy a generation of inherited wealth…total lack of work ethic and/or languishing in greed. See the Walton Family as a prime example.
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Paul Krugman: What the 1% Don’t Want You to Know
Bill Moyers, Moyers & Company: Economist Paul Krugman discusses how jumps in executive compensation may have a profound effect on widening income inequality and explains how the United States is becoming an oligarchy – the very system our founders revolted against.
Watch the Video and Read the Transcript
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A minor digression, but part of the entire scenario of privatizing schools….
This is from Truthout today…also google Krugman. It is part of the whole of the false idea the Austrian School of economics (Von Mises) sold to Milton Friedman et al at the U. of Chicago converting the Keynsian perspective of sharing the wealth, to creation of the monatrist point of view, the Gordon Gecko “greed is good” mantra that permeates our country . The free market, as many progressive economists explain, is far from free. Sweden is/was ranked as a nation, one of the most pleasant societies for its citizens who lived under a semi-socialistic form of government…and when capitalism took over, we see the same results as in the US. Greed is a driving force and human nature can be bascially no damn good.
Most industrialized nations use ‘redistribution’ of wealth in the form a progressive income tax to protect against the inequality we find in America with the 1%, but the same mindset that is shown to fail in Swedish privatizing, and failing, with their schools, is far more vast in the US where these oligarchs have a stranglenhold on not only education, but our entire economy, and redistribution, is sold to the ignorant public as a ‘Marxist’ ploy. ALEC members worked in unity over long periods of time to bring us to this point of the death of democracy.
Sadly, US public, and charter schools, do not teach honest historical economics, but rather pander to the oligarchs who rule us.
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60 minutes just showed an oligarch helping charters through his “Robin Hood” foundation. Isn’t it funny how he doesn’t help public schools? He is a hedge fund manager.
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Dee dee, I didn’t see 60 Minutes but the oligarch who founded the Robin Hood Foundation is Paul Tudor Jones, who manages $13 billion in his hedge fund. He has decided to “save” American public education by privatizing it. He attended private school in Memphis. His foundation raises $80 million at one dinner, mostly for charters. We don’t need rich men pretending to be Robin Hood. We need a tax structure that prevents such obscene accumulations of wealth.
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Exactly Diane…a tax code that does not reward the ultra rich while keeping the rest of the taxpayers struggling and unjustly paying the bills of the country. The banksters took in record profits this year, and the Tudor Jones NYC denizens of poverty still sleep on park benches. Redistribution by progressive income tax has been Creatively Destroyed by the collusion of Wall Street and our government.
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I’m new to this blog and was just looking for a like for your comment, Ellen. Absolutely.
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Welcome teacherblack…and a like back attcha. Please expand on your thoughts.
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