School choice the Dutch way
Posted by BrianWhile reading a bit on Utah’s voucher program that they recently passed I came across this column by Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute. He starts off with this paragraph:
Three percent of Utah students currently attend private schools. In the Netherlands, the figure is 75 percent. The difference? The Dutch enacted their universal school voucher program in 1917, and Utah’s passed just last week.
The Netherlands reference caught my eye (more in a minute) and he mentioned them throughout his piece.
In the Netherlands, all schools, public and private, are equally funded by vouchers, producing a level educational playing field.
…
When the Dutch first enacted their national voucher program nearly a century ago, it was minimally regulated. Today, the government sets a national curriculum, controls teacher certification, sets teachers’ salaries, decides when and where new schools can open, forbids voucher-accepting schools from charging tuition, and prohibits profit-making.
Because of all these regulations, the Dutch voucher program now rates only 31 out of 100 on the Cato Education Market Index, which measures how closely school systems resemble free markets.
The reason that the Netherlands caught my eye was because I remembered them being a good performing, low cost country. In this post I included a chart that showed how the U.S. fared against other countries in math. According to the OECD, the U.S. scored 17 points below the international average of 500 in math. The Dutch scored 538, placing them third. However, the U.S. spent more than every other country except Iceland on education as a percentage of GDP. The Netherlands was closer to the bottom third in that category. So even in their increasingly regulated voucher based system they get MUCH better “bang for their buck” than we do.
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February 22nd, 2007 at 7:27 am
WOW! VERY interesting - I definitely plan to blog more about vouchers - and homeschooling as well. Have you ever evaluated homeschooling versus government schooling (as Neal Boortz puts it)? I need to read more of your blog!
February 22nd, 2007 at 5:00 pm
My wife is a former government school teacher who now stays home with our children. She tutors part time at Sylvan because she misses teaching and because it gives her a little break from the full time mom job. She has also done a little work with a local home school group that brings in outside instructors to give lectures.
We’ve talked a little about home schooling, but we want the kids to have a more traditional experience. However, we both believe that learning at home is integral to a good education, whether it all takes place at home or just a portion. We both work a lot with our kids and integrate learning into nearly everything we do.
February 24th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
I’ve been advocating a move away from government controlled education and toward a private education system. I proposed that vouchers be used in the transition, but that the goal should be no government involvement at all.
I’ll take a closer look at the Netherlands’ experience. I don’t like their level of government involvement, but it sounds like they’re doing better than us.
February 24th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
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