This article is interesting in that it points out various aspects of the two systems that can be manipulated for improved results.
from the Stanford Report,
January 20, 2012
How the Finnish school system outshines U.S. education
Educational
philosophy in Finland is strikingly different than in the United States, but
the students there outperform U.S. learners.
BY
STEPHEN TUNG
The
Finnish school system might sound like a restless American schoolchild's
daydream: school hours cut in half, little homework, no standardized tests,
50-minute recess and free lunch. But the Finns' unconventional approach to
education has vaulted Finland to the upper echelon of countries in overall
academic performance, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development.
Finnish
students have ranked at or near the top of the Program for International
Student Assessment ever since testing started in 2000. In the most recent
assessment in 2009, they ranked sixth in math, second in science and third in
reading. By comparison, U.S. students ranked 30th, 23rd and 17th, respectively,
of the 65 tested countries/economies.
But
Finland's system hasn't always been successful.
"Finland
had been traditionally thought of as the lowest achieving country in
Scandinavia, and one of the lower achieving ones in Europe for a very long
time. It was not a highly developed education system," said Linda Darling-Hammond,
the co-director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, in
a lecture delivered Tuesday afternoon about the Finnish educational success
story. She introduced the main speaker, Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish education
expert and the director of the Center for International Mobility and
Cooperation in Finland's Ministry of Education and Culture.
From
worst to first
"We
came from behind from everybody else," Sahlberg said. "At some point
in the last 40 years we've been able to pass the others."
In
the last decades, U.S. and Finnish education policies have appeared to be
moving in opposite directions. While U.S. public schools moved to standardized
testing, Finnish schools eschewed nationwide tests to evaluate teachers,
students or schools, instead relying on sample-based testing and school
principals to identify potential problems, Sahlberg said.
While
U.S. public schools are locally funded, usually from property taxes, and
rewarded based on high performance through programs such as the U.S. Department
of Education's Race to the Top grants, Finnish schools are nationally funded
based on the number of students. Schools are provided additional funding if
they have a higher proportion of immigrants or students whose parents are
uneducated or unemployed, he said.
Darling-Hammond,
who wrote about the Finnish educational system in her book The Flat World
and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future,
also contrasted America's test-based teaching to Finland's more flexible
system.
"The
[Finnish] curricula are very much focused on critical thinking and problem
solving, project-based learning, and learning to learn," she said.
"There is a lot of collaboration in the classroom."
In
his lecture, Sahlberg discussed three key areas: equality in education, time
management and perception of teachers as professionals, topics also covered in
his recent book, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational
Change in Finland?
Lower
cost, better results
"We
are spending less money than average for developed countries, much less than
the United States. We spend less time, but the learning achievements are
high," Sahlberg said. "You put more money and more time there, but
the outcome, the achievements are less.
"When
we compare teachers to other professions in society, we compare them to lawyers
or doctors or architects," he said. "Not as here [in the United
States], where they are compared to nurses or therapists, or something like
that, that require lower academic training."
Teachers
in Finland are required to obtain a three-year master's degree, state-funded,
before teaching. These education positions are highly coveted, Sahlberg said.
For example, only one in 10 primary-school teacher applicants are accepted.
"It's
harder to get into primary school education than a medical program," he
said.
But
Sahlberg identified the biggest obstacle in the U.S. system as the same policy
intended to revolutionize education. "If I could change one thing in
policy, I would seriously rethink the role of standardized testing," he
said in an interview with the Stanford News Service. "No high-performing
nation in the world has been successful using the policies that the United
States is using."
Sahlberg
said that he doesn't think standardized testing is inherently bad, but
"the way it's done here is simply leading to so many negative
consequences, in the form of narrowing curricula and reshaping the way teachers
and schools are working."
Sahlberg
is quick to point out that solutions won't be as easy as transplanting
Finland's policies across the Atlantic.
"I'm
not trying to convince people that if they follow what Finland is doing, things
will be good. All the education issues and reforms are done specifically to the
culture and should be done locally," he said. "I'm very much aware
that America is very different culturally. I'm trying to tell what we've been
doing and use Finland as real-world evidence."
Ironically,
inspiration for many of Finland's changes came from research in the United
States, which contributes 80 percent of the world's education research, by
Sahlberg's estimation. "We've built this excellent, high-performing,
equitable system that everyone is praising today, based on American
innovations," he said.
Stephen
Tung is a science-writing intern for the Stanford News Service.
