Finnish schools vs. American schools

Diane Ravitch has been a long time critic of our educational system.  She has been especially damning of the current efforts at reform with its over-emphasis on standardized testing.  She is a strong believer that poverty plays a large role in the current sorry state of education in the U.S.  In her view the reformers believe that better teachers will solve our problems. Ravitch asks whether we also need better superintendents and elected officials, as these people control the purse and how funds are allocated.

Her latest article in the NY Review of Books discusses the education system of Finland, which is rated as one of the best in the world when measured by the PISA assessment of OECD countries.  She thinks this assessment is based on the following (emphasis mine):

• Unlike our domestic tests, there are no consequences attached to the tests administered by the PISA. No individual or school learns its score. No one is rewarded or punished because of these tests. No one can prepare for them, nor is there any incentive to cheat.
• Finland is an alternative universe. It rejects all of the “reforms” currently popular in the United States, such as testing, charter schools, vouchers, merit pay, competition, and evaluating teachers in relation to the test scores of their students.
• Finnish schools have the least variation in quality, meaning that they come closest to achieving equality of educational opportunity—an American ideal.
• Finland borrowed many of its most valued ideas from the United States, such as equality of educational opportunity, individualized instruction, portfolio assessment, and cooperative learning. Most of its borrowing derives from the work of the philosopher John Dewey.

 Another major difference between us and Finland is the training of teachers.  It seems more rigorous than ours; all must earn a master's degree in the subject they will be teaching.  The curriculum gives a lot of leeway to the teachers; they decide what to teach, how to teach and how to gauge the student's progress. And, of course, Finland is more socialist than the U.S., taxes are high but education, including college, is free.

Ravitch concludes the article thus, " the central aim of Finnish education is the development of each child as a thinking, active, creative person, not the attainment of higher test scores, and the primary strategy of Finnish education is cooperation, not competition."