The Powers and Limits of a National School Voucher System : The Case of Sweden

Twenty-five years ago, Sweden enacted the most ambitious school choice policy seen in the Western world, allowing families to select any school regardless of their residence and independent providers to open new Free Schools after satisfying some general regulatory requirements. This made Sweden, a paragon of social democracy, an unlikely opportunity to test Milton Friedman’s theory that open competition in education facilitated by state-funded vouchers would better serve the public than monopoly state provision. Has it worked? The premise of this chapter is that choice has produced observable benefits. It may also have contributed to a few unintended bad social consequences. However, it has not had the impact so far to justify some of the initial excitement. I explore possible explanations for this outcome and what we can learn when proposing future educational reforms