Via the Providence Journal in Rhode Island: Gregory K. Fritz: Finland has secret for great schools: Great teachers. Excerpt:
There are a number of fundamental ways in which the educational systems in Finland and the United States differ — so many that it is tempting to say that all the two have in common is the desire to do the best for their children.
A reasonable assumption, given the magnitude of the differences in the educational outcomes, would be that Finland puts more resources into education than the United States, but that is hardly the case. The United States averaged $7,743 per public student in the 2010 school year compared with $5,653 in Finland, according to USC Rossier.
The Finnish students don’t invest more either: They don’t begin formal academic education until age 7, they have fewer and shorter school days compared with their American peers, and they have very little homework, averaging 30 minutes per day.
Another characteristic that critically distinguishes schools in Finland and the United States is equity. There are no private schools in Finland; the handful of independent schools that do exist are all publicly financed and forbidden to charge tuition fees. All schools get equal support from the government. And there are no private colleges or universities.
In contrast, every large city in the United States has elite private schools with tuitions as high as $35,000 or more as well as public schools with inadequate books and substandard facilities. Not surprisingly, Finland has the least variability in the world in the level of success achieved by different schools, whether they are in wealthy or poor or urban or rural regions.
Competition is a fact of life in American education, consistent with our individualistic and capitalistic values. American children compete in the “race to the top,” in school sports, in efforts to get into the top colleges, and, increasingly, on standardized tests.
Finns appear to be minimally interested in competition, especially when it comes to education. There are no school sports teams (replaced by community sports), valedictorians or prom queen competitions. And there is only a single standardized test, taken at age 15 to determine the direction of future education. Teachers report that competition is rare, cooperation is the rule, and fear of losing one’s job because of low student test scores is nonexistent.
My own bias that high-quality teachers make the greatest difference in education would appear to be supported when one compares Finland and the United States. Teaching is a high status occupation in Finland, with 40 applicants for every job opening. Finnish teachers are required to have a master’s degree, and courses on educational theory don’t cut it; the master’s must be content-based (biology, language, math, etc.).
Per hour, Finnish teachers are paid about twice as much as American teachers. But most importantly, teachers in Finland have autonomy, responsibility and trust — leading to a high level of job satisfaction. No wonder Finland’s teachers are their “best and brightest”; would that it were consistently the same in the United States.
Noneducational explanations abound for Finland’s academic excellence. The fact that Finland is smaller and less diverse than the U.S. has been cited as a possible explanation for the differences in achievement. However, other Scandinavian nations — Norway is a good example — with demographics similar to Finland’s but an educational system closer to ours do not produce academic excellence anywhere near that of Finland.
Compared with the United States, Finland is a relatively homogeneous country (4.6 percent of Finns were foreign born compared with 12.7 percent in the U.S.) but that number doubled in Finland between 2000 and 2010 with no change in academic outcomes as measured by PISA. Further, in some schools in and around Helsinki, 30 percent of the students are immigrants, but those schools have academic achievement scores that are roughly on par with the rest of the country.
The dominance asserted by the powerful teachers unions in the United States has been postulated as a cause of our lagging academic achievement, but a comparison with Finland suggests that this is simplistic, as 99 percent of Finnish teachers are unionized as well.
One is left with the impression that educational structure, values and policy, and their impact over time, are the most important factors in achieving academic excellence—not size, ethnicity or other demographic variables. I find this encouraging because—at least in theory—an educational system is modifiable.
Comments