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Surprising Lessons from Finland: Europe's Best Schools. No Student Testing. Teachers All Belong to Unions.

September 24, 2012


By Joe Rothstein
Editor, EINNEWS.com

When it comes to improving America’s schools we all need a better education than we’ve been getting. The fact is, we’ve been learning the wrong things.

Like standardized testing is the key to measurement of student performance and teacher competence.

Well, if that were true, Finland should be at the bottom of the curve in international student achievement scores, not at the very top of all European countries, where it enviably is. Finland has no standardized tests. Kids are mostly measured by how well they do in class.

Another myth: Unionization of teachers has degraded the quality of American education.

If that were true, schools in the 10 so-called “right to work” states, where teachers unions don’t exist, should be performing better than those where teachers unions are strong. In fact, schools in those ten non-union states rank near the bottom of all U.S. schools in standardized tests.

And, if that were true, Finland would hardly be as successful as it is. All Finish teachers are unionized.

How about the current conventional wisdom that charter and other private schools are better options than public schools. The truth: not necessarily.

In most comparative studies, charter school students score at about the same level as students in public schools, even though charter schools have a number of built-in advantages, such as a higher percentage of involved parents, the ability to expel disruptive students and to self-select students without physical or mental disabilities who are likely to bring down test score averages.

And because of generally lower pay, fewer benefits and lack of job security, charter school teachers are 130 percent more likely to quit those schools than public school teachers.

The Chicago teachers strike reinforced many of these myths.

While the weight of political and editorial opinion came crashing down on the Chicago teachers’ union, the reasons teachers hit the sidewalks should not be lost on anyone concerned about the quality of American education.

Ninety-two percent of all Chicago’s teachers took that strike vote and 98 percent of them voted to authorize the walk-out. Where, when and on what other issues can you get 98 percent agreement on anything? These are, for the most part, accomplished, dedicated educators trying to get our attention with a near unanimous scream. Shouldn’t we be paying close attention to what they’re trying to tell us?

And what is it that they are trying to tell us?

To summarize, two things. First, that child poverty, homelessness, malnutrition, lack of basic health care, inadequate school facilities and other factors affect student performance and that these issues need to be addressed in efforts to help kids achieve more during their years of formal education.

Equally important, teachers need to stand up for teachers. The work they do is the heart of the educational system and it’s self-defeating to arbitrarily cut pay and benefits that were contractually promised, or to undermine incentives that encourage good teachers to remain in the classroom even under poor conditions.

To understand the importance of what Chicago’s teachers are saying, let’s take another look at Finland, where public policy seems to have hit upon one of the world’s most successful educational formulas.

To teach in Finland, one needs to have at least a master’s degree. Pay, benefits and working conditions are so attractive and the competition for teaching jobs is so fierce that only the top 10 per cent of graduates earn places in Finish classrooms. In the U.S. nearly half of all public school teachers come from the bottom third of their class.

And just as public policy in Finland is geared toward luring the best and brightest into teaching, early childhood learning is considered vital to preparing children for the learning experience. Free universal daycare begins for children as young as eight months. Kindergarten starts at 6. If a mother chooses to stay home with the new child, that’s encouraged and subsidized.

Compare the Finish system with Chicago, where 87 percent of public school children come from low-income families and qualify for free or reduced cost breakfast and lunch. The ratio of social workers to students in the Chicago school district is about 900 to 1. An impossible system for checking on kids who may lack basic health or nutrition services or be victims of other abuse.

Many Chicago school students only see books when they get to school, with little home reinforcement. An estimated 15,000 kids have no homes at all. More than 160 Chicago schools have no school library.

It’s scandalous that public officials, local business communities, parents, school boards and others responsible for the quality of schools would allow kids to start life in such circumstances. To heap blame solely on teachers for student test score deficiencies is scapegoating the very people who we depend on to succeed under such conditions.

Every time a school crisis is highlighted, like the Chicago teachers’ strike, elected leaders and the media fall into the woe-is-us trap about how miserable U.S. education has become, which quickly morphs into pointing fingers at teachers and their unions. What a disservice to a U.S. public educational system that’s created more Nobel prize winners, and advanced human understanding more than anywhere, ever in human history.

Yes, there are problems, and serious ones for lots of kids being left behind. But it’s not all kids, and the problems aren’t everywhere as deep and endemic as in Chicago.

That’s not to say we can’t raise the standards of U.S. education by many notches by learning a few lessons from Finland. Rather than trashing teachers, we should demand much more rigorous teacher preparation and lifelong professional education---and give them commensurate pay, benefits and respect---to attract better and brighter people in to the classroom.

And, taking another page from Finland, kids at the earliest age should be afforded a path toward learning through structured day care and early childhood training.

Chicago’s teachers are trying to tell us something: Test scores aren’t the answer. Trashing unions isn’t the answer. Blaming teachers for a range of societal failures isn’t the answer. But there are answers. To find them we first need to unlearn what we think we know.

(Joe Rothstein can be contacted at joe@einnews.com)



Joe Rothstein is a political strategist and media producer who worked in more than 200 campaigns for political office and political causes. He also has served as editor of the Anchorage Daily News and as an adjunct professor at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management. He has a master's degree in journalism from UCLA. Mr. Rothstein is the author of award-winning political thrillers, The Latina President and the Conspiracy to Destroy Her, The Salvation Project, and The Moment of Menace. For more information, please visit his website at https://www.joerothstein.net/.