Europe's Independent School Debate: different names, same idea

According to comments in The Independent, in Sweden anyone can set up a school and get government money for it. The money follows the child, so the more children one attracts, the more money one gets. Folks can also set up the kind of school they want which apparently impacts who can attend. A lot of parent groups have set up schools. Success seems to depend on the social and economic context. As ambiguous evidence from the US suggests, what works in Sweden's homogeneous society will not necessarily work everywhere.

One significant problem facing Kentucky will be designing a charter school law that does not exacerbate the existing separation between the "haves" and the "have nots," while qualifying Kentucky for federal dollars. Simply leaving it to local school councils to decide whether or not to seek a charter - with their naturally localized view - will do more harm to some children, and the constitution, than anyone should want.

Of course, Kentucky could always follow (soon-to-be-former) South Carolina Governor Mark Sandford's lead and refuse the money.

This from Hilary Wilce in The Independent (UK):

'What's so great about schools in Sweden?

Are they really so good we should copy them?'

...Like all education journalists, I've had my ear bashed repeatedly about the wonders of this region's schooling systems, from Finland's fabulous primary schools to the miracles of Danish kindergartens. The current darling is Sweden's system of state-funded independent schools, and if the Conservatives get in at the next election, we will apparently see a lot of these "free" schools [in England].

Like our academies, the schools are free to do their own thing while broadly staying in line with the mainstream curriculum, although a big difference is that for-profit companies are allowed to run them. The schools get good results, and pupils and parents seem to like them.

But the schools appear to be able to screen out at least some children with special needs, and it's hard to say how much of their success stems from attracting middle-class families - and thereby increasing the kind of educational apartheid that is so harmful to poorer pupils and to society in general.

So the short answer ...is that there are NO magic solutions in education, and it is no good looking for them. Every incoming politician should be forced to write this out 100 times. Scandinavian countries invest heavily in their school and have cohesive cultures with relatively small gaps between the highest and lowest earners. These things are the true bedrock of their flourishing educational systems, not anything else....