School choice in Sweden
This text is part of: "Problem of Schooling" by Piotr Wozniak (2017-2024)
Freedom in education
Education around the world is failing due to limits on freedom. By definition, freedom is the basis of free learning. All forms of coercion have negative effect on learning, well-being and mental health. Freedom is not only a matter of individual learning choices. Freedom in education should extend to free choices for parents, teachers, educational entrepreneurs, principals, supervisors, and all good brains involved in the education process. The only place where freedom should be limited is where the freedom of students is affected. In that sense, the hierarchy of dependence should be reversed. Today the minister limits the freedom of school inspectors, who limit the principals, who limit teachers, who limit students. It should be the opposite. Teacher should serve at the pleasure of students, principals at the pleasure of teachers, and owners at the pleasure of principals.
Milton Friedman extrapolated the power of markets into the power of the idea markets in the form of school choice. In my musings on Grand Education Reform, I see school choice as the necessary evolutionary ground for cultural transformation of societies from the Prussian Model of Education towards free learning. Only free choice will let children, parents, and educators see how free learning can optimally fit into the fabric of society. On a free market of choices, we will see if children like to spend their time at school, being homeschooled, unschooled, or to interleave those forms with gaming or work at younger ages.
Today, the evolutionary chance that comes from Friedman's postulates is stymied by critics of the school choice. Let us consider the case of Sweden, which tried to implement school choice in 1992 and is now often used as an example of a failure. This "failure" comes from errors of implementation and errors in assessment.
Errors in implementation are primarily based on limits on freedom. For example, Sweden is notorious for a ban on homeschooling. If students are not free to learn on their own, they are slaves of the system. This violates the principles of free school choice.
Errors in assessment involve lack of good measures of educational attainment. The use of grades or standardized testing invalidates the assessment. As I argue in my text on IQ (see: IQ is a dismal measure of intelligence), we cannot effectively measure the progress of unschooling. The only valid criterion is one's own assessment in the context of one's own needs. Optimality of the learn drive makes sure that unschooling is beneficial for the entire society. This fact remains largely beyond the grasp of most educators today. In short, without understanding the brain, neural networks, the conceptualization process, the systems theory, and the information theory, one needs to prop one's reasoning with strong systemic intuitions to grasp the power of evolution and diversity for collective intelligence of societies.
In this short text, using he example of Sweden, I show how poor understanding of the optimization process in the context of education leads to vastly erroneous conclusions that undermine further dissemination of school choice in the world.
Failure of school choice in Sweden
In Grand Education Reform, I argue for the value of Friedman's school choice. 70% of OECD countries use vouchers or tuition tax credits in their systems of education (source). Sweden is a poster boy for how difficult the implementation of the idea of school choice can be. Some even use Sweden to claim Friedman was wrong (source). A mutation of school choice has been introduced in Sweden in 1992. The decision came from Social Democrats. When a great economic mind comes up with a model that requires a great deal of good math intuition to make it workable, you better do not leave that model in the hands of politicians who will tinker, change a thing or two, disrupt the efficient control mechanisms, and result in an unstable system that may collapse despite the correct underlying assumptions. A good system cannot be modified in ways that affect the optimization process. Even a tiny inefficiency can bubble up in a long-term to a collapse. Add to this regular swings between conservative and social-democrat forces that blame and counter-blame each other and it is a surprise that Swedish system is still considered solid. In the wake of a PISA shock, major Jan Björklund contemplated re-nationalization of the entire system (source). It would take another article to discuss all the departures from the Friedman's model in Sweden. In the context of this text though it is only important to notice that homeschooling is illegal in Sweden (see: Ban on homeschooling). Major Björklund had a hand in that ban too. I see a bright future for free learning and homeschooling. Without that essential choice, school choice remains a choice in name only.
Limits on choice
Swedish mutation of school choice makes it impossible for private schools to develop their own initiatives funded by tuition. Once they receive public funding via vouchers, they cannot ask for extra private fees. In some circumstances, student choice is limited by geographic constraints. Those should wane with transition to on-line options. Some regulations have been devolved to local level, which may seem like a good idea from the evolutionary point of view, however, in a country with a culture based on state regulation, local solutions may actually limit choice even further. Many Swedes see school choice as "privatization of profits and socialization of losses". It is hard to see how educational innovation may succeed in such cultural and political setting even though the number of private school options is on a relentless increase.
Ray Fisman in Slate wrote in Sweden’s School Choice Disaster:
There are differences between the libertarian ideal espoused by Friedman and the actual voucher program the Swedes put in place in the early ’90s. Friedman would have allowed schools to charge parents more in tuition than what a voucher could cover, potentially allowing rich parents to send their kids to better-resourced schools than poor parents could
Egalitarian thinking
Many educators, economists and sociologists complain about market reforms in education. They tend to lead to segregation and social stratification. In egalitarian Sweden those voices are particularly loud. Some scholars even feared balkanization of Sweden. OECD has voiced concern and suggested improvements. Research confirmed a slight increase in segregation in Sweden (source, PDF), but the country remains in the relative low-to-medium segregation category. There are simple systems that help reduce inequality. For example, Chile implemented a weighted voucher system that benefits students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged (2008).
Equality is a great thing as long is it is not achieved by dragging the leaders down to the average. Inequality in Swedish schools is blamed on the school choice. It is increasing indeed. Best students will always flock to best schools. That's a good thing.
We cannot run away from the fact that some kids have better home environments, more eager to work hard, or in better control of their emotions. Neither can we sweep under the rug the fact that some kids, mostly due to a bad start, will not excel in school or in life in general. There are many downsides to inequality, but levelling should not be done through coercion or slowing down the talent. The only acceptable approach to increasing equality is to assistance to those who lag behind. Again, this cannot be wasteful. It is not too smart to spend most of the educational investment at the bottom fraction of lagging students.
Segregation is a result of school choice too. It is unavoidable in any multi-cultural society. Desegregation cannot be accomplished at the cost of learning either. Enlightenment is the best unifying factor in society.
Metaphorically speaking, Sweden might want to tax Bill Gates to blend in the crowd. This would make many members of society feel better about themselves with untold psychological benefits. However, this approach has always lead to disastrous economic consequences. I am happy Bill, Warren, Jeff or Elon have altruistic and utilitarian plans for their fortunes. However, the rich always waste a great deal of resources on a fleet of yachts and jets. Levelling the billionaires down would inevitably destroy an efficient market system.
Education is not much different. I see limits on school choice as an equivalent of a ban on jogging only because it leads to some members of society sporting supreme health that might be an envy of the rest of the population. Education should not be much different from health care or economics. Some individuals will do better, and this may be great for the majority in the long run.
Achievement criteria
The problem of optimization criteria in education is as intractable as intangible is human genius and creativity. We keep measuring short-term memories and optimizing in the direction of intellectual deprivation.
The global standard for measuring progress of schooling are PISA or TIMSS tests. All forms of standardized testing are poor measures of progress. Even worse, when countries compete for their relative positions in PISA rankings, we run into optimization absurdities. All testing procedures should be reworked to eliminate the impact of short-term memory on results. Otherwise we will all end up in cram school prisons.
School grades cannot be used as an optimization criterion either. Grade inflation is inevitable when the whole admission process is based on grades! A good teacher would never want to hurt his good student's prospects by sending him out with an uncompetitive grade.
Good criteria in the optimization should be based on the actual learning effects, competitions, and long-term factors such as school prestige. It is a pity that a lag between schooling and Nobel achievements is too large to influence the recruitment.
Actual long-term knowledge would be a great criterion except it is not easy to measure. Unannounced randomized testing unrelated to admissions might be helpful, but it could also drive a downward race towards fact-cramming.
School prestige is ok as long as it does build on climbing walls, swimming pools, or football teams. In America, graduates of ivy league colleges never say "I got an MS in chemistry". They say, "I got an MS from Harvard" or words to that effect. I never seem to hear of "MS from Lund" or "MD from Karolinska", even though probably everyone heard of "Karolinska Institute".
A simple and effective measure of school performance might be achieved by international academic competitions. Competitions abound [1]. Math, reading, literature, design, photography, you name it. Hackathons[2] and robot wars[3] are excellent motivators famous for attracting best talent, and providing excellent recruitment grounds for tech companies. This type of competitions in all sorts of specialties are a great way to build a school brand and prestige. This could be the simplest optimization criterion in school choice. It won't measure national progress, like PISA inaccurately does, but it will provide good guidance for school choice by kids and parents.
Competitions can be organized with a view to recruitment in all imaginable skill categories. Schools can choose which competitions would add best to their prestige. Kids and parents can choose which schools perform best in areas of interest. Economic and geographic constraints make it complex, but transition to on-line learning will spark a revolution, which we should all support.
Gabriel Heller Sahlgren wrote for EdChoice.org (source):
The sad truth is that education policy in general has rarely been based on proper research, the least in Sweden. Instead, it has been the playground of educationalists with little interest in verifying whether their theories actually hold up to empirical scrutiny. As Milton Friedman said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results”
Self-learning vs. performance
Some of the Swedish decline in international tests has been blamed on students working on their own or choosing their own courses and learning methods. It is true that best scores on tests are achieved when the education proceeds under the leadership of the teacher. A teacher tells students exactly what to learn to score well. He will whip kids to engage in cramming. He will suppress passions and interests that are considered a distraction. Individual learning will favor select areas of knowledge. In a standardized test, self-directed student may perform worse, while still showing superior knowledge and skills.
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Many educators look up to Scandinavia and marvel at the human face of the Prussian system. This is the system in which the child is allegedly treated with respect. I disagree, if you use coercion in education, you have no respect! If you ban or discourage homeschooling, you ban or discourage freedom (see: Ban on homeschooling in Sweden).
Danny Greenberg is correct. In harsher systems, you know your enemy. In saccharine Scandinavian schools, the enemy is hidden behind a layer of attractive veneer.
Allegedly, Malcolm X observed:
That what you do not hate, you are bound to eventually tolerate!
That's exactly the problem of the Scandinavian model (see: Finnish paradox). A good litmus test is the mental well-being of the young population. The problem with learned helplessness is that it sets in gradually. Gradual boiling of the frog is a perfect tool of pacification. In the meantime hikikomori is coming to Sweden.
Short-term optimization
Dozens of economic reports have attempted to make an analysis of the impact of school choice on education. They all struggled with the problem of how to effectively measure the outcomes. Inflated grades are useless. Standardized tests are skewed. Productivity and earnings introduce a lag and questions about overarching goals of education. All those efforts are vital and necessary, however, they should weigh little on the choice of reforms. If we optimize the system for individual brain development in terms of learning capacity, creativity, independence, problems solving, emotional control, sociability, and the like, we will almost certainly ensure good outcomes 3-5 decades from now. I propose all essential ingredients at SuperMemo Guru. Making trajectory corrections with an attempt to measure the accuracy is a strategy that is highly unreliable. This is explained by a metaphor:
At the core of the school problem is coercion. Children need to make their own choices. School choice should make it possible. We can gradually evolve educational systems in conditions of freedom. I predict, we will ultimately arrive at the dominance of free learning combined with facilities that will allow of teamwork, socialization, vocational training, sports training, etc. That evolution will be efficient only if we free children entirely, and we help parents assist children in allocating available resources (if granted democratically).
Conclusion
Sweden took a good idea of school choice and provided faulty implementation. Analysts took wrong tools to analyze Sweden's progress and provided faulty diagnosis. As a result, the golden idea is being corrupted and used as a weapon against itself. Freedom is essential in education. Free market of ideas is essential in cultural evolution towards optimum education. The simplest measure towards a remedy is to treat the right to free choice in education as the basic human right. Compulsory schooling must end. Perhaps Student Spring 2022 will make a dent.