Why Finland’s schools are great (by doing what we don’t).

Perhaps "they did not understand the idea of 'merit pay'" because many of the teachers in Finland are of a different breed than many of the people who end up teaching in the US:<p>"McKinsey's work with school systems in more than 50 countries suggests this is an important gap in the U.S. debate, because the world's top performing school systems--Singapore, Finland, South Korea--make a different choice. They recruit, develop and retain what this report will call 'top third+' students as one of their central education strategies, and they've acheived extraordinary results. These systems recruit 100% of their teacher corops from the top third of the academic cohort, and then screen for other important qualities as well. In the U.S., by contrast, 23% of new teachers come from the top third, and just 14% in high poverty schools, which find it especially difficult to attract and retain talented teachers. It is remarkably large difference in approach, and in results." [1]<p>Taking this into account, it's silly to argue that since they have tenure, too, tenure isn't the problem here. They already have the right people teaching. We need to fire many of the people who are currently teaching.<p>Also, the U.S. spends a higher percent of GDP on education, so blaming spending seems odd. [2]<p>Finally, I'm really sick of the way Diane Ravitch constantly slams Teach For America. The U.S. needs better people teaching. TFA makes some of those people think about teaching. It's getting teaching in the same ballpark of prestige as consulting, banking, law school, medical school, etc for students coming out of top colleges. Nothing else comes close to doing that on the same scale. Even if it is true that TFA teachers aren't noticeably better in years 1-2 than a typical experienced teacher (and I don't believe that is the case), it's still a great program.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education/Closing_the_talent_gap.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education/Closing_talent_gap_appendix.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.mckinseyonsociety.com/downloads/reports/Education...</a>

Finland's schools are great because they are full of Finns, in the same way that schools with many Finns in the US do very well.<p>Hong Kong and Singapore's schools are great because they are full of Chinese, in the same way that schools with many Chinese in the US do very well, even in poor neighborhoods:<p><pre><code> http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/16/local/me-lincoln16 To begin with, the eight students agreed on a few generalities: Latino and Asian students came mostly from poor and working-class families. According to a study of census data, 84% of the Asian and Latino families in the neighborhoods around Lincoln High have median annual household incomes below $50,000. And yet the Science Bowl team is 90% Asian, as is the Academic Decathlon team. </code></pre> It is thus not likely to be the schools. It is more likely to be culture or (more controversially) genetics. But most articles don't even consider such explanations, preferring to keep looking under the streetlight for that quarter.

Whee, Finland is at the top of an international ranking. How groovy! It makes my white-and-blue heart beat with pride.<p>Except it doesn't, really. The purpose of a school, any school, in any country, is to prepare the students for the road ahead. "We do not learn for the school, but for life."<p>So while it is fascinating to study the performance of teenagers in a small selection of topics, the test does not tell whether they will grow up as happy and/or fulfilled adults. If the PISA tests measured presentation skills or perhaps essay writing, I'd bet USA would just leave Finland in the dust.<p>However, some parts of the article just fill me with dread. Child-poverty rate of 22%? That's disgraceful. Merit pay? I just can't wrap my head around that.<p>Also, sounds like you've gone bonkers with the standardized testing. The common complaint here is that the last year (or year and a half) of high school is too focused on the matriculation examination. I can only imagine what happens if you're tested once a year or every two years or so. You'd get nothing of substance into the young minds, only tricks and tips for the next test.

I taught English in the public school system in South Korea last year. There were a few stark differences that I couldn't help but notice and I feel they shed light on our failing education system here in America. They have a curriculum that is set forth on a national level. This accomplishes two important things: One, teachers can now collaborate and share resources on topics that all teachers around the country are preparing for (I did this with my fellow Native English Teachers and ended up saving a lot of time not having to reinvent the wheel for every lesson). Secondly, it helps eliminate the unnecessary spending that accompanies the insanely large amount of school districts that we have scattered around our country. Washington State alone has almost 300 school districts! The board members of these schools districts are in charge of determining the curriculum for their specific locality, mean while others are doing the same exact thing in the next town over. Furthermore, the majority of those board members have a Masters or PhD and require a hefty salary - which could be going towards funding intelligent, passionate teachers. I'd love to be a teacher but you won't see me entering a public school classroom anytime soon.<p>If we can eliminate the redundancy of our school district issue and provide the framework for a nationalized curriculum, we could pay teachers more (thereby attracting a higher talent pool), lower class sizes, increase spending on classroom necessities (pens, pencils, paper, books, COMPUTERS!), and allow teachers the opportunity to share resources on predetermined, upcoming lessons. Tackling these issues will put us on the right track towards getting our school system out of this steady decline we've been on for the last couple of decades.

As a Finn, I restrain myself comparing us to others but I just want to say that most schools here are not well suited for non-superficial learning.<p>I would hope the future brings a system that is driven by the need of individual pupil and by her potential and interests rather than giving equivalent, non-inspiring curriculum for all. Also, learning should have more meaningfulness in it; something along the lines of what Papert talks in his Mindstorms book <a href="http://www.papert.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.papert.org/</a><p>What I have observed is that people are not much interested in learning in schools; those with passion get bored and creativity is not encouraged, at all.<p>In my opinion, it's a horrible state what we are in but I don't think many will do anything about it. And in universities, it's even worse. Studying e.g. Computer Science is much of theory without not enough practical learning, as departments lack proper funding (e.g. assistants for helping with assignments). People learn basic concepts barely, and are not excited by them. It's just something to get through so that they get the diploma which is too highly appreciated by companies' HR.<p>Also, the content what is taught, is not what should be. The whole culture is short-sighted, and people who get out of universities are not well-equipped but are suited for trivial web-development of current age, i.e. what the industry is in need of.<p>This makes me sad as learning and teaching should be fun, and could be much more effective. I see some hope with interactive, visual tools that let people learn by themselves but I am not so sure the people responsible for these kind of things really are multitalented and experienced enough to do the proper thing.

Here is my worthless .02c:<p>One sure way to know you have failed at managing a process is when you measure employee performance by their adherence to <i>rules</i> rather than their record on delivering <i>results</i>.<p>NCLB is all about rules...<p>... as are most US institutions, public and private....<p>It isn't that rules and standardized processes don't have their place, but (1) if rules have to be enforced regularly, you have totally f'ed your incentive structure and (2) if you build "standardized processes" the right way, employees "naturally" follow (and contribute to) them because they are the best way to deliver results (see above), not because some hardass is enforcing them.<p>So, we should reward teachers who have good results, collectively and continuously make their best processes into standards, and punish the teachers with bad results (by which I mean fire them, and eliminate tenure, at least in the extreme).<p>Not so easy to do, but I think we need to get away from more and more rules, while never rewarding individual results.

From TNR:<p><i>Today, teaching is such a desirable profession that only one in ten applicants to the country’s eight master’s programs in education is accepted. In the United States, on the other hand, college graduates may become teachers without earning a master’s. What’s more, Finnish teachers earn very competitive salaries: High school teachers with 15 years of experience make 102 percent of what their fellow university graduates do. In the United States, by contrast, they earn just 65 percent.</i><p>-- <a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/82329/education-reform-Finland-US" rel="nofollow">http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/82329/education-reform-F...</a>

This article is right to the point but the discussion easily clings on some misconceptions that are hard to let go.<p>Here's some of the facts:<p>* No, the system in Finland doesn't cost much more. Depending on how you measure, it can actually be said to be cheaper: the US spends more of its GDP in education.<p>* No, the teachers in Finland are not paid a big salary to motivate them. They earn more or less the average salary of workers with a university degree.<p>* No, it's not just about Finland being more culturally and ethnically homogeneous, or just about child poverty being more rare. There are many other countries like this and they don't automatically get good results in education.<p>* No, the Finnish children are not highly motivated to go to school, to learn and to achieve. Actually, Finland gets its results despite worse than average motivation, attitude towards school etc.<p>* No, it's not about the Finnish language being "easier" to learn: Being "easy" is subjective and it takes the Finnish children the normal time to learn to speak.<p>* No, it's not about the written Finnish being highly phonemic and thus easy to learn to read and write. Many other languages (such as Spanish, Swedish) are highly phonemic as well. The time saved in not having to learn the spelling of each word in the Finnish dictionary separately is spent on the efforts to learn the completely different vocabulary and highly different phonetics and grammar of English as a second language.<p>* No, it's not just about Finnish being a highly agglutinative language where you can guess e.g. from the word for voltage that it has something to do with some kind of tension. Or maybe it is, I don't have good evidence about this... But there are other agglutinative languages, learning e.g. maths problem solving is little about guessing what words mean, the linguistics mainline theory doesn't support languages having a big effect on how people think.<p>* No, it's not about the Finnish women having nothing else to do than concentrate on teaching. Finland ranks highly in gender equality and e.g. technology industry.<p>* No, you don't have to come up with metrics and subject teachers to evaluations to get a good system or to improve on one. Finland doesn't have such evaluations. You can do scientific research on the issue without letting office politics in on the individual numbers.<p>What plausible explanations remain? Clearly you need to consider many issues when designing or improving an educational system and there's no silver bullet, but perhaps you want to read the original article again to get some good ideas from an expert in the field :-)

" I am troubled by this “lacks diversity” argument, because it implies that African-American and Hispanic children cannot benefit by having highly experienced teachers, small classes, and a curriculum rich in the arts and activities."<p>I don't agree with this. The "lacks diversity" argument doesn't imply that minorities can't benefit from experienced teachers - it means that teachers have more trouble with a heterogeneous population compared to a homogeneous one, which is reasonable if you consider the diversity of backgrounds in a classroom and how they impact the mental models that children have.

Every time I read an article about why XYZ's schools are so great, I cannot help but think, wouldn't it simply be because XYZ's children are great?<p>At least I think that's a factor we fail to control for. Designing a good school for well brought-up children is far easier than designing it for children who grew up in a hostile environment watching TV all day long.

A good reality check on several of the assertions made in the article, or in the comments here, about Finland is to look at another country high in international educational rankings, namely Singapore. I have known people from Singapore (mostly students at my state's flagship university) since the mid-1970s. Always, they have been amazingly smart people. I have been curious about how schooling is done in Singapore since well before the first time that Singapore was included in an international education study.<p>Chapter 1: "International Student Achievement in Mathematics" from the TIMSS 2007 study of mathematics achievement in many different countries includes, in Exhibit 1.1 (pages 34 and 35)<p><a href="http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf</a><p>a chart of mathematics achievement levels in various countries. Although the United States is above the international average score among the countries surveyed, as we would expect from the level of economic development in the United States, the United States is well below the top country listed, which is Singapore. An average United States student is at the bottom quartile level for Singapore, or from another point of view, a top quartile student in the United States is only at the level of an average student in Singapore. I have lived for years in one of the other countries that regularly outperforms the United States in those studies, Taiwan, and will also comment on the Taiwan educational experience as a reality check on the comments on Finland in this thread.<p>I am amazed that persons from Singapore in my generation (born in the late 1950s) grew up in a country that was extremely poor (it's hard to remember that about Singapore, but until the 1970s Singapore was definitely part of the Third World) and were educated in a foreign language (the language of schooling in Singapore has long been English, but the home languages of most Singaporeans are south Chinese languages like my wife's native Hokkien or Austronesian languages like Malay or Indian languages like Tamil) and yet received very thorough instruction in mathematics. Singapore is very diverse linguistically--the MAJORITY of the population in my generation spoke NONE of the four official languages (Mandarin Chinese, Malay, Tamil, or English) in standard form at home, and certainly not the main language of school instruction, English, but Singapore has become part of the "outer circle" of use of English internationally and now maintains a high degree of multilingualism. I hope that all of us here in the United States can do at least that well both in language learning and in mathematics learning in the current generation.<p>The article "The Singaporean Mathematics Curriculum: Connections to TIMSS"<p><a href="http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf</a><p>by a Singaporean author explains some of the background to the Singapore math materials and how they approach topics that are foundational for later mathematics study. The key aspect of Singapore's success is a MUCH better curriculum in primary school mathematics than is used in the United States. Homeschoolers in the United States, including quite a few parents of top-scoring students on the American Mathematics Competitions tests, have become aware of the Singapore curriculum materials,<p><a href="http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_Stds_Ed_s/134.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_Stds_Ed_s/1...</a><p>and those are generally helpful for American families who are looking for something better than the poorly organized, often mathematically incorrect materials used in United States schools.<p>Professor Hung-hsi Wu of the University of California--Berkeley has written about what needs to be reformed in United States mathematics education.<p><a href="http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_4.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_4.pdf</a><p><a href="http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_2.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_2.pdf</a><p><a href="http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NCTM2010.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NCTM2010.pdf</a><p><a href="http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NoticesAMS2011.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NoticesAMS2011.pdf</a><p><a href="http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/CommonCoreIV.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/CommonCoreIV.pdf</a><p>Other mathematicians who have written interesting articles about mathematics education reform in the United States include Richard Askey,<p><a href="http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall1999/amed1.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall1999/amed1.pdf</a><p><a href="http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf</a><p>Roger E. Howe,<p><a href="http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf</a><p>Patricia Kenschaft,<p><a href="http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf</a><p>and<p>James Milgram.<p>ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/milgram-msri.pdf<p>ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/report-on-cmp.html<p>All those mathematicians think that the United States could do much better than it does in teaching elementary mathematics in the public school system. I think so too after living in Taiwan twice in my adult life (January 1982 through February 1985, and December 1998 through July 2001). I have seen (and used) the textbooks from Singapore and from Taiwan. They are much more clear in their presentation and much more conceptually accurate than the typical United States textbooks. Moreover, elementary mathematics teachers tend to specialize in teaching mathematics while other elementary teachers teach other subjects, at much younger ages than when United States pupils typically encounter specialist teachers. The United States model of elementary education is to have teachers who are jacks of all trades and masters of none, and who do equally poorly (by reasonable international standards) in teaching reading, mathematics, science, and all other elementary subjects.<p>The United States could do a lot better and reach the level of Finland by staffing reforms<p><a href="http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads/Hanushek%202009%20CNTP%20ch%208.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://edpro.stanford.edu/hanushek/admin/pages/files/uploads...</a><p>and by using best practices<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Classroom/dp/0684852748" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Gap-Improving-Education-Class...</a><p>in provision of elementary education.

This article contrasts well with the failure of No Child Left Behind in the U.S. That program has failed to deliver any statistically significant impact on the skills and knowledge of students. What is has done is pushed teachers towards teaching the test rather than teaching critical thinking.<p>Standardized tests are multiple-choice questions and don't leave room for critical thinking, or help demonstration how a child reached a certain conclusion.<p>The Finnish method of empowering teachers through education and training to allow them to teach and help their particular students seems to be a much better way to help individual students succeed as opposed to trying to stick everyone in a box defined by an academic or bureaucrat.

I enjoy reading about education here in the US, and in other countries. It's all well and good to compare our system to others. But, I can't help but wonder what the chances will be that the system here will ever actually be reformed.

A great education system is a means to an end. The end being the host country gains a great economic engine and generally happy citizens. Does Finland have this? Singapore? South Korea?<p>Curious not disapproving...

It's funny that the article starts off criticizing standardized testing but immediately turns to international standardized test results (PISA) as the foundation for the rest of the article. It could well be that Finland has a better educational system, but - playing devil's advocate here - how do we know that it's not just (inadvertently) optimized for the PISA?

"Finnish educators were astonished ... made no sense to them... surprised ... did not understand the idea ... can’t understand ... don’t make sense to them. Nor do they understand ...."<p>Ignorance and stupidity are nothing to be proud of. Disagreeing with us is one thing - they could be right. Willful disingenuous bug-eyed goggling is something else altogether.

I think the biggest undisputable difference between the Finnish and American systems from the article is their high quality teachers and small engaged classes but I wonder if that is simply a direct result of their having a small population (less than 6mm). I can't see some of these methods (having a master's teach in schools, paying very competitive salaries) scaling well in the American system (more than 60-70mm+). There just aren't those kind of funds available anywhere.<p>Another thought that comes to mind is if we already know finish teachers are the best, then why don't we use the internet to scale their teaching. It might not be as good as in class teaching but I reckon it would be better than what we have now.

This is a Swedish guy examining the issue, resolves most of the questions in comments here:<p>"What is so special about education in Finland? An outsider’s view" By Peter Fredriksson in 2006. www.nek.uu.se/StaffPages/Publ/P949.doc<p>(Sorry, it's a doc file). Results over time (USA has worsened), immigration (it's not about it), underachievers (less of them in Finland).

Something out of whack..<p>Let me explain...about 24 years ago mid beginning 1980s the testing and tests for pre-engineering was the same level as most HS students face now for non-engineering....<p>I can remember taking additional tests on top of my HS standards tests to see if I could get qualified to enter engineering college classes..yes this was the USA..<p>my scores was 98 percentile range..<p>It would seem the author is comparing apples and oranges to display their political trappings rather than a factual article on what can be compared and contrasted.

The problem is that what works in Finland won't necessarily work elsewhere. For example in Finland teach is a high prestige job in a large part because Finland doesn't have the range or number of alternative professional careers available that countries like the US have.

"I was asked about current trends in U.S. education, and Finnish educators were astonished by the idea that our governments intend to evaluate teachers by their students’ test scores; that made no sense to them. They were also surprised that we turn children over to “teachers” who have only a few weeks of training and no masters’ degree. They did not understand the idea of “merit pay.” They are paid more if they do more work for the community, but they can’t understand why teachers should get a bonus to compete with one another for test scores. Since they don’t have comparative test scores for their students, our practices don’t make sense to them. Nor do they understand the benefits of competition among teachers who ought to be collaborating."<p>This will not last. The anglo corporatist cancer with its insanely frequent "performance reviews" and bogus metrics will eat them alive. Long live exacerbated competitiveness and backstabbing your peers. Long live natural selection and the annual culling of the herd.