What Can We Take from Finnish Education?

Finland has "created the highest performing [K-12] education system in the world" (California Teacher, Feb/March, 2012). (See the link to the complete magazine here.) Pasi Sahlberg describes in California Teacher how Finland's system creates such good outcomes. I believe that we can replicate the Finnish model in a number of ways. We can't completely replicate the Finnish model, because the United States has a different history and political philosophy, but we can do the most important things. Here are my reactions to key pieces of the Finnish system. (Please read all the way to the end.)

Overcoming poverty: Finland has less income inequality than the United States, and American income inequality continues to grow. The U.S. has been increasing in inequality for twenty years. Short of draconian measures, the US won't share the pie better any time soon.

Free education for all: Finland has no charter or private schools. All the schools are more or less the same. The United States could  not be more different in attitude toward private education and our history of parochial education, and. again, it is unlikely we will change.

Cradle to university care: Again it is unlikely that the United States will enact universal day care for newborns up to age six. However, Finnish high school has academic and vocational streams. At last, here is something we should and can do. The United States used to do a better job at encouraging youth to take classes in auto shop, woodworking, and metalworking. Vocational education is a part of our history, and we should redouble our efforts training students in technology and the shop classes above. Not everyone has the work ethic and talent to be a doctor, lawyer, or professor, and most computer and software technicians make an upper-middle class livelihood. In fact, it is shortsighted and counterproductive to assume, as is fashionable now, that everyone must go to college. (See Beyond One-Size-Fits-All College Dreams and What message Does College for All Send here.)

Finland also provides 65 percent of students free university tuition. This used to be the case in California as well. My semester tuition to the University of California was around $700 when I graduated in 1982. I paid much more for my Berkeley apartment. (Now tuition is about $13,000.) When the state figures out how to better manage its finances, perhaps we will see near-free tuition some time in the future. See my blogs on California finances here and here.

Personalized education: Finland has no grade-level or national standards. Every child is unique, and every school plans its own curriculum. One third of Finnish students are in special education.

Give schools and communities control over their own curriculum? Imagine that! Standards aren't going away, but putting one third of students in special education; that is, giving more resources to the bottom third would, ironically, increase standardized test scores and lower drop out rates. We should do that.

Creative learning: "Finland has the least number of instructional hours of all countries. We have less time to teach and more time to cooperate with other teachers." Finland is also taking away  time for math and reading and adding time for music, drama and the arts.

We are moving in the opposite direction. However, American schools have improved by using collaborative assessment. Merit pay has shown less promise.

Localized assessment: The Finns don't use nationalized or state-level assessments. The schools and teachers assess instead, and education money is spent on teacher development, not on the equivalent of state testing. We should do the same.

Competition to teach: Only ten percent of applicants to teaching schools are accepted to the primary school program.  All have a masters degree and few leave the profession. Teaching is paid well, comparable to those with similar amounts of education.

Here we have the most important and critical difference, in my opinion, the real secret of Finnish success. Finland takes her best professionals and makes them teachers. America takes her best professionals and makes them doctors, lawyers, and investment bankers. Finland  gets all-star teachers. We get Wall Street. If we want better schooling for our kids we need to select and train better educators. We can imitate the Finnish model by making teachers as respected as bankers (oops) presidents (oops) doctors. Credential programs should accept only those working toward or currently holding a masters degree. Credential programs should accept only the top ten percent of applicants. The resulting shortage of teachers will drive up salaries, reinforcing the demand to get into the profession. American society will better compete in math and science, in the global marketplace, and in the arts because of her world-class teachers.
 
If you are still not convinced, please read McKinsey's How the World's Best-Performing School Systems Come Out on Top. Examining the success of ten systems including those of Singapore and Finland, McKinsey finds that that the top ten percent of high school and college graduates go into teaching. (See link here.)

Postscript: USC professor emeritus Stephen Krashen indirectly agrees with Sahlberg. In a July 16, 2012  letter to the New York Times, he states

The mediocre performance of American students on international tests seems to show that our schools are doing poorly. But students from middle-class homes who attend well-funded schools rank among the best in the world on these tests, which means that teaching is not the problem. The problem is poverty. Our overall scores are unspectacular because so many American children live in poverty (23 percent, ranking us 34th out of 35 “economically advanced countries”).

My own anecdotal evidence is not so clear. I teach plenty of middle class kids that do poorly on standardized tests--and not just in history! Teaching strategies must improve and remediation time must increase to help these kids.

Debt Crisis

I recently finished Michael Lewis' Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World. The book describes the reversals of the economies of countries, Greece, Ireland, and Germany, states, especially California, and municipalities, San Jose and Vallejo. Citizens of these areas traded prosperity for disaster by taking on too much debt, especially the debt created by foolish decisions by bankers, and overpaying government employees.

Now these problems threaten to bring down or at least change the fabric of the European Union. In the United States many will suffer a lower standard of living as government services are cut back and fees and taxes rise. Lewis blames the problem on groups looking out only for their self-interest; ie., the controversy over public sector salaries and pensions bringing down the entire system as in California; and groups that don't look out enough for their self-interest; ie., national governments such as Ireland's that nationalize the debt of banks instead of allowing the banks to fail.

Lewis hints that Greece and Ireland will be paying off debt for a long time to come and Germany may be brought low by the foolishness of her own bankers. The EU may split into a two-tiered structure with Germany, Austria, France, and the Nordics in the top tier, and Southern Europe in the bottom tier. California's fiscal crisis will be felt primarily by municipal governments.The city of San Jose recently voted to cut pensions to its municipal employees, a way out of their fiscal mess. Stockton, California teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and will cut health benefits to retirees as well as renege on debt.

Link to the book here:

The New York Times review of the book can be found here.

Bringing Back High School Research Papers

Will Fitzhugh, in a thoughtful article, Meaningful Work: How the History Research paper Prepares Students for College and Life (link here), bemoans the lack of serious academic writing by high school students.

Much of the problem is lack of practice. The "focus on standardized tests and superficial writing skills has left educators with little time to teach students how to write serious research papers, and even less time to correct and grade them." The problem is worse in public schools, since those schools are most besieged by standardized testing. Somehow, however, educators must fine the time for academic writing or we set students up "for failure in college and in the workplace."

A greater proportion of students' lack of preparation comes from not doing enough rigorous reading. Teachers, starting in elementary school, must assign texts that allow students to acquire knowledge--that is, reading more serious fiction and nonfiction. (See E.D. Hirsch, Jr's blog on core knowledge here.)

To really teach students how to write, educators must give them examples of good writing found in nonfiction books and require students to read them, not skim them, cover to cover. Reading nonfiction contributes powerfully to the knowledge that students need in order to read more difficult material--the kind they will surely face in college.

Electric Cars Still Strike Out

NYT Picture

In The Battery-Driven Car Just Got a Lot More Normal, Berkeley resident (of course) Bradley Berman writes a glowing New York Times revue (link here)of the Ford Focus Electric. The car is "as handsome as its gasoline-powered siblings," and a "full recharge from empty to full [happens] in a little more than four hours when pulling 240 volts" free at public charging stations. It is very quiet, of course, and powers and handles well.

Marin Clean Energy is now offering 100 percent clean energy, so, in theory, a Marin County (Northern California) driver can go to work without putting any carbon in the atmosphere or buying foreign oil. Gas prices are irrelevant. How nice!

Unfortunately, the original problems of battery-driven cars remain: charge time, range, and price. I rarely have four hours free, and when I do I would not choose to waste this precious time at a charging station. Perhaps I could charge from home while I slept if I lived in a house with an attached garage, but I do not. My owners' association would not approve of a large extension cord traveling from my condo to the garage.

Secondly, the estimated driving range of the car is 76-90 miles. My commute is 16 miles each way, so I could go to work for only two days without needing to include time for a charge. I could not use the car at all for a longer trip, let's say to lake Lake Tahoe, without researching the location of charging stations, necessary every 85 minutes or so of freeway driving. It can be done, but charging stations are not yet as ubiquitous as gas stations. However, a day trip, let's say to Los Angeles, would take at least eight hours longer than a trip using a gas-powered vehicle. So the Ford Focus electric is best used for local trips to the store or for errands. Why bother to use the car? I walk or ride my bike to pick up a few groceries or see the dentist.

Lastly, the Ford Focus Electric is expensive, $30,000 after the federal tax credit and California rebate. That's unaffordable for most middle class drivers. Hybrids are cheaper and don't have range problems.