Matt Yglesias on School Choice in Sweden

Following up on Dana Goldstein’s American Prospect blog post, Matt Yglesias calls the Swedish system and U.S. charter schools better education policy models than education tax credits.


He doesn’t say why, and I’d be interested to hear his reasoning. As I documented on Cato‐​at‐​Liberty in response to Goldstein, the econometric evidence shows that the greatest margin of superiority over state‐​run schooling is enjoyed by truly market‐​like education systems. By that I mean systems that are minimally regulated with respect to content, staffing, prices, etc., and which are funded at least in part directly by the families they serve.


Yglesias also claims that choice supporters want to “eliminate public education.” On the contrary, choice supporters are fundamentally more committed to public education than anyone who refuses to consider the market alternative.


“Public Education” is a set of ideals. It is not a particular institution. It is the ideal that all children should have access to a good education, regardless of family income; that schools should prepare students not just for success in private life but for participation in public life; and that our schools should foster harmonious relations among the various groups making up our pluralistic society — or at the very least not create unnecessary tensions among them.


School choice advocates are more committed to those ideals than is anyone wedded to the current district‐​based school system, because that system is inferior in all of the above respects to a universally accessible education marketplace. This is documented in the literature review linked‐​to above, in my book Market Education: The Unknown History, and in the work of James Tooley, E.G. West, my Cato colleagues, and many others.


The education tax credit programs my colleagues and I have proposed would ensure universal access to the education marketplace, while leaving essentially intact the freedoms and incentives responsible for the market’s success. I know of no other policy capable of achieving this. Certainly charter schools and the Swedish system fail to do it.