Good Magazine has a nice profile of for-profit chain Vittra’s newest school, with the headline “Is Sweden’s Classroom-Free School the Future of Learning?”



The article concludes,

The open nature of the campus and the unusual furniture arrangements reflect the school’s philosophy that “children play and learn on the basis of their needs, curiosity, and inclination.” That’s true for kids all over the world, so let’s hope educators in other countries begin to pay attention.

What they don’t mention is that Sweden has had state-funded school choice since 1992 that allows for-profit companies to create and manage schools. Vittra, for instance, is 100% owned by Bure Equity, an investment company with investments in communications, textiles, training, and education.

Imagine the uproar if school choice advocates in the U.S. claimed that we should allow private equity firms to create and run schools using government funds in order to allow for educational options that were more creative? Any school choice advocate crazy enough to make such a claim would be ridiculed on both the right and the left. And yet truth is often stranger than fiction, and precisely such an outcome has taken place as a result of school choice in Sweden.