Since I, too, have visited Finland long enough to accumulate various anecdotes, statistics and observations supporting my pre-conceived policy preferences, I feel well-qualified to respond to Samuel Abrams’s TNR piece on the subject.
He’s right about one thing: they really do make their kids play outside in the cold. We visited an early childcare center where a bunch of 3- and 4-year olds spend like two hours every morning scrambling around in snowsuits. They all seemed perfectly healthy so I plan to take this approach with my own kid.
In other areas, however, I don’t think the evidence fits his agenda so neatly. For example:
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.
The reason for the 102 / 65 difference is not that teachers in Finland make more money than teachers in the United States. It’s because doctors, lawyers, and other Finnish college graduates make less money than in the United States. Finland’s labor market is much different than ours. 12% of American workers are unionized. 75% of Finnish workers are unionized. Taxation is higher and there aren’t as many obscenely rich people per capita.
The 10 percent acceptance into Finnish teacher education programs is for real. I have never, ever heard a serious proposal from the anti-testing / school of education crowd to raise admissions standards into teacher preparation to anything approaching the levels that would result in a 10 percent admission rate — or, heck, a 50 percent admission rate. In fact, only one American teacher preparation program has ever successfully set the bar that high and sent significant numbers of elite candidates into the classroom: Teach for America, which Abrams predictably critiques later in the piece.
Then we get to standards and tests:
But perhaps most striking on the list of what makes Finland’s school system unique is that the country has deliberately rejected the prevailing standardization movement. While nations around the world introduced heavy standardized testing regimes in the 1990s, the Finnish National Board of Education concluded that such tests would consume too much instructional time, cost too much to construct, proctor, and grade, and generate undue stress. The Finnish answer to standardized tests has been to give exams to small but statistically significant samples of students and to trust teachers—so much so that the National Board of Education closed its inspectorate in 1991. Teachers in Finland design their own courses, using a national curriculum as a guide, not a blueprint, and spend about 80 percent as much time leading classesas their U.S. counterparts do, so that they have sufficient opportunity to plan lessons and collaborate with colleagues. The only point at which all Finnish students take standardized exams is as high school seniors if they wish to go to university.
As Abrams notes, Finland has a national curriculum, i.e. national standards. It also administers a high-stakes test to seniors tied to the national standards. We have neither of those things in this country. Standards are de-centralized at the state level and standardized testing runs mainly through elementary and middle school. Even states that nominally have standardized high school exit exams don’t really enforce them. Is it really so obvious which country is more committed to standardization?
Finland is an unambiguous success story and there’s a lot we can learn from them. The “Finland is homogeneous and thus has nothing to teach us” argument is, I believe, mistaken. Far and away the most Finland-like American state is Utah (white, mono-religious, few natural resources, strong cultural bonds) and their educational results aren’t nearly as good.
But anyone arguing that the evidence from Finland cleanly supports either side of the American education reform debate is being dishonest.
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Carey argues that because Finland has a national curriculum, and gives one standardized tests to seniors who want to go onto college it is somehow more tied to testing as the US, where all students in grades 3-8 take annual standardized tests, and increasingly their progress, their teachers effectiveness, and their schools are judged solely on the basis of these results — no matter how unreliable and no matter how damaging to kids’ futures.
There are also many states where a HS diploma depends on passing a series of standardized exams. Despite all the emphasis on high-stakes testing in our schools, the US has made little or no progress in the international comparisons, unlike Finland.
The contrast could not be more extreme. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the high-stakes accountability system in the US has been more a detriment than an asset, and that our education system is headed the wrong way.
Having studied both the Finnish and Korean models (and taught in Korea for seven years), two things these very different systems have in common are high-stakes college-entrance exams (which are not the same as high-school exit exams, and those who miss the difference miss a crucial point), and much less class time required in the average teaching day. Good performance on the college-entrance exam leads to an almost free higher education; good performance on our high-school exit exams leads to an almost worthless certificate. Teachers whose expected contact ratio is 60% can plan better lessons, more closely monitor students, and more happily remain in contact with colleagues and parents than can American teachers with an expected 83% contact ratio.
What about South Korea as the second to the last word. Their progress has been amazing.
Yes, but, here’s the thing as an “anti-reform” partisan, I’LL TAKE IT! Give us the whole Finnish system, and I WIN.
Well having a union is important. It makes wanting to be employed more important and equitable. If teachers are accepted at a 10 percent rate would be conceivable if teachers would be treated as well.
cough*Diane Ravitch*cough
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