Another student
forwards this story that tries to understand why Finish schools are so successful. For starters they do everything exactly the opposite of how we do things here in the US:
For starters, Finland has no standardized tests. The only exception is
what's called the National Matriculation Exam, which everyone takes at the
end of a voluntary upper-secondary school, roughly the equivalent of
American high school.
Instead, the public school system's teachers are trained to assess children
in classrooms using independent tests they create themselves. All children
receive a report card at the end of each semester, but these reports are
based on individualized grading by each teacher. Periodically, the Ministry
of Education tracks national progress by testing a few sample groups across
a range of different schools.
As for accountability of teachers and administrators, Sahlberg shrugs.
"There's no word for accountability in Finnish," he later told an audience
at the Teachers College of Columbia University. "Accountability is something
that is left when responsibility has been subtracted."
For Sahlberg what
matters is that in Finland all teachers and administrators are given
prestige, decent pay, and a lot of responsibility. A master's degree is
required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are among
the most selective professional schools in the country. If a teacher is bad,
it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it.
And while Americans love to talk about competition, Sahlberg points out that
nothing makes Finns more uncomfortable. In his book Sahlberg quotes a line
from Finnish writer named Samuli Paronen: "Real winners do not compete."
It's hard to think of a more un-American idea, but when it comes to
education, Finland's success shows that the Finnish attitude might have
merits. There are no lists of best schools or teachers in Finland. The main
driver of education policy is not competition between teachers and between
schools, but cooperation.
Finally, in Finland, school choice is noticeably not a priority, nor is
engaging the private sector at all. Which brings us back to the silence
after Sahlberg's comment at the Dwight School that schools like Dwight don't
exist in Finland.
"Here in America," Sahlberg said at the Teachers College, "parents can
choose to take their kids to private schools. It's the same idea of a
marketplace that applies to, say, shops. Schools are a shop and parents can
buy what ever they want. In Finland parents can also choose. But the options
are all the same."
Herein lay the real shocker. As Sahlberg continued, his core message
emerged, whether or not anyone in his American audience heard it.
Decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the
goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success
today, was never excellence. It was equity.
