Jeb Bush on education, school vouchers and the Swedish model
August 4, 2009 at 6:21 am by Ben Luongo
By Ben Luongo
PoHo contributor
Jeb Bush spoke recently with the Miami Herald about our education system and offered that America should be open to learning from other successful education systems around the world and adopting similar working models if they apply.
According to Bush:
We should be taking the best ideas from around the world, tearing down the barriers to let these things happen, and apply them in a way that we move away from this homogenous type education system where every child learns the same way and learns the same thing.
Watch the video and read the rest after the jump.
Learning from others and “tearing down boundaries” to adopt other successful models is an excellent idea. We should always be eager to look to others with an open mind for advice. However, we must be careful in our comparative analysis (comparing our education system to Sweden’s) that the ideas we hope to borrow apply correctly to our own situation.
Bush draws on Sweden’s education system as a successful example of school vouchers. Arguing for the United States to use vouchers, he says “just visualize how it could be, if we just stole these ideas that are already tested and proven to be the catalyst for improved learning.” Unfortunately, this optimism oversimplifies the argument for American school vouchers.
Sweden’s voucher system has been tested and it does lead to the country’s improved learning, but only in a Swedish context; Sweden’s education and voucher system are completely different from the education system and any existing voucher system in the United States. Just because vouchers work in one education system does not mean that vouchers could be successfully implemented into every education system.
American school vouchers refer to an amount of money given to a family to send their child to a private school instead of a failing public school. Many times, though, the money granted isn’t enough to cover the total cost of the private schools which denies poorer families the same education options as everyone else.
Swedish vouchers, on the other hand, cover the total education costs because private schools can’t ask for fees beyond the voucher’s value. Furthermore, Swedish schools don’t discriminate who can attend a school according to ability.
The Swedish voucher system is designed to grant everyone equal education choices despite economics and ability, while America’s existing voucher systems don’t completely cover the costs leaving many still behind. This is not to say that a voucher system in the U.S. wouldn’t work, but it would require much education reform as well as new ways of implementing vouchers. More importantly, it would require us to reflect on our current education system and how our market-driven mentalities affect equal access to education.
