Conservative Principles Now

As regular readers of the Foundry know, Congress has recently moved to end the popular and effective D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, denying low-income families the chance to attend a school of their parents’ choice. Meanwhile, other countries are pushing forward with plans to give all parents school choice.

In September, Heritage’s Stuart Butler looked at the Sweden’s popular universal school voucher that began in 1992. Now, Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute explains that Qatar, the small Persian Gulf nation, is planning to move forward with a universal school voucher program:

Qatar’s voucher program, which is just being implemented this year, is part of the country’s comprehensive reform effort called “Education for a New Era.” The voucher amount will be equivalent to the per-pupil funding allotment for government-run schools. It is envisioned that this amount will pay for the majority of private-school fees, with parents paying the rest. Initially, the number of private schools will be limited, but over time that number should increase until the system is universal, with vouchers available to all Qatari parents.

“Parents will have options to select a school of their choice that suits the needs of their children,” says Adel al-Sayed, a top-ranking official at the Supreme Education Council (SEC), Qatar’s national education agency. The voucher program was adopted because it meets the principles that the SEC says inform Qatar’s education policies: schools should be autonomous, schools should be held accountable for student learning, and parents should exercise increasing levels of choice in selecting the best school for their children from a growing number of alternatives.

Parental options are a key element of internationally competitive education in the 21st century, as more countries are recognizing.

In socialist Sweden, universal school choice allows every parent to choose the best school for their child. The voucher program, which has been in effect since 1992 and was created to tackle the kind of problems plaguing the U.S. educational system, provides families with the opportunity to send their child to any type of school they like – public, private, religious, or even for-profit. Stuart Butler, Heritage Vice President of domestic policy studies, explains in Washington Times:

These independent schools, like the public schools, get a voucher payment for each child. They compete vigorously with one other because the money follows the child to the school of his or her choice. Schools must satisfy their customers … or lose them.

While schools must adhere to the Swedish national curriculum and testing, they are free to design their own programs and implement any teaching style they see fit. This arrangement has led to high levels of satisfaction among parents as well as a thriving private school market:

The growth of the competing private sector has been dramatic. Before the voucher program, less than 1 percent of Swedish children attended private schools. Now it is 10 percent. At the senior high school level, it is 20 percent. About one in five Swedish schools is now private, and roughly 10 percent of the private schools are church-based.

Swedes have somehow managed to do what the United States has been unable to do – placate the teachers unions, which vociferously oppose school choice. But while socialist Sweden has provided families with the opportunity to receive the best education possible for their children, lawmakers here at home shamefully deny such opportunity to American children. Butler concludes:

But it is ironic - and embarrassing - that if the 216 low-income D.C. children now effectively being barred from going to private school lived in socialist Sweden, they would be able to exercise choice in a free-market school system.

Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute also highlights some of the logistics of the Swedish voucher system in a video op-ed in the New York Times. “We implemented competition in education…anybody can use their voucher to choose any school,” states Peter Fyles, CEO of Internationella Engelska school.

The universal school voucher system has worked beautifully in Sweden, providing families with choice and children with educational opportunity. If President Obama and Education Secretary Duncan want to stay true to their promise to do “what works” in education, Sweden certainly provides an effective template.