This chapter examines the implementation of publicly funded private schools (PFPSs) in Sweden and in the U.S., comparing the origins, evolution, and outcomes of this model across the two nations. Although speculative, the article also predicts that PFPSs will continue to grow in numbers based on an examination of the dominant political and economic narratives in both nations. This assessment is made on the authors’ determination that school policies in the U.S. and Sweden will persist to embrace neoliberalism which they found to be the catalyst and sustaining force behind this school model. Although commonly known in Sweden as free schools (“friskolar” or “fristående skola”) and charter schools in the U.S., the authors use the designation “publicly funded private schools” (or PFPSs) referring to both non-profit and for-profit schools that are fully or partially funded by the public. The two nations were selected based on Sweden’s world leadership in PFPS proliferation (Klitgaard, 2008; Lundahl, 2016) and the great number of PFPS’s in the U.S. (Abrams, 2016; Adamson & Darling-Hammond, 2016).
A Brief History of PFPS
Milton Friedman, an economist greatly influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism of smaller government and individualism (Weiss, 2012), first put forward the notion of school choice in the form of vouchers in the 1950s (Hlavacek, 2016; Lubienski & Ndiamande, 2017; Zhao, 2018). Objectivism is, essentially, a form of hyper individualism, advocating personal choice ahead of those that could directly benefit society (Weiss, 2012). Friedman and other Objectivists, advocated a laissez-faire or “liberal” capitalism which sought to deregulate business, relying on the laws of supply and demand (Åstrand, 2016; Weiss, 2012). While this economic ideology had been tried in other periods of U.S. history, notably the late 19th century and the 1920s1, it was resurrected by Ronald Reagan during the 1980 U.S. presidential campaign, influenced by Friedman who was one of his chief financial advisors (Abrams, 2016; Ravitch, 2010). By the late 1980s, the ideology became commonly known as “neoliberalism” (Abrams, 2016; Apple, 2006). Many scholars (e.g., Ravitch, 2013; Zhao, 2018) believe this to be common narrative for all school reforms of the past 30+ years; and PFPSs, as will be shown, is the most important element of this narrative (Ndiamande & Lubienski, 2017).