Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast. I'm Anastasia Glova and today is Wednesday, December 13th.

The Cato Education Market Index is now available on the Cato Homepage.

Compiled by Cato's Director of the Center for Educational Freedom, Andrew Coulson, the Index

Raids school systems in America based on how true they are to a free market in education.

Today I'm sitting down to discuss the Index with Education Policy Analysts Neil Neil McCluskey who acted as an advisor to the project.

How does the Cato Education Market Index rate schools?

The market index rate schools in two ways.

First of all, it gives an index of actual markets so what exists in states right now how many kids are in private school or in schools of choice and things like that and the other way that it rates markets is it gets a policy rating and this is a

rating that allows policymakers to look at what their policies are now and to be

able to project well if over time the full power of the market was used given our current policies

How much more of a free market could we expect to have and the real value of that is they can then look at their policies and say,

well, what sort of things do we need to change if we really want to take advantage of the power of market in education,

rather than more or less the monopoly that the public schools have now?

Which countries was America compared to in the end of... the monopoly that the public schools have now.

Which countries was America compared to in the index?

The two countries that the United States was compared to were Netherlands and Sweden.

The reason that Netherlands and Sweden were picked were that and this is often surprising to people

is that those two countries have significantly freer education markets than the United States in general or than most states have.

In fact, Sweden was better than all our states.

And the reason for that is because they let parents pick schools without substantial

penalties.

Now they're still far from a perfect market because they will dictate what private schools

...