What we can learn from Finland’s successful school reform.

[LWolf]

by Linda Darling Hammond.

This is a piece published in NEA Today, an excerpt from her book: The Flat World And Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future.

For those who remember, LDH was on Obama's shortlist for Sec of Ed. What a difference he could have made by listening to, appointing, and supporting her. :(

I strongly recommend reading the whole piece; it's impossible to snip a few paragraphs and get all this offers. Basically, she's pointing out the differences between Finland, the world leader in student achievement, and the U.S.. The big point? What they did to improve their education system and become the world's leader is in direct opposition to the direction U.S. education has taken.

Instead of trying to craft a "reform" that is "uniquely American" (read: corporate privatization,) looking at what puts Finland on top might be a good thing to do.

Leaders in Finland attribute the gains to their intensive investments in teacher education—all teachers receive three years of high-quality graduate level preparation completely at state expense—plus a bajor overhaul of the curriculum and assessment system designed to ensure access to a “thinking curriculum” for all students. A recent analysis of the Finnish system summarized its core principles as follows:

* Resources for those who need them most.
* High standards and supports for special needs.
* Qualified teachers.
* Evaluation of education.
* Balancing decentralization and centralization. (Laukkanen, 2008, p. 319)

The process of change has been almost the reverse of policies in the United States. Over the past 40 years, Finland has shifted from a highly centralized system emphasizing external testing to a more localized system in which highly trained teachers design curriculum around the very lean national standards. This new system is implemented through equitable funding and extensive preparation for all teachers. The logic of the system is that investments in the capacity of local teachers and schools to meet the needs of all students, coupled with thoughtful guidance about goals, can unleash the benefits of local creativity in the cause of common, equitable outcomes.

Meanwhile, the United States has been imposing more external testing—often exacerbating differential access to curriculum—while creating more inequitable conditions in local schools. Resources for children and schools, in the form of both overall funding and the presence of trained, experienced teachers, have become more disparate in many states, thus undermining the capacity of schools to meet the outcomes that are ostensibly sought. Sahlberg notes that Finland has taken a very different path. He observes:

"The Finns have worked systematically over 35 years to make sure that competent professionals who can craft the best learning conditions for all students are in all schools, rather than thinking that standardized instruction and related testing can be brought in at the last minute to improve student learning and turn around failing schools." (Sahlberg, 2009, p. 22)
Sahlberg identifies a set of global reforms, undertaken especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries, that Finland has not adopted, including standardization of curriculum enforced by frequent external tests; narrowing of the curriculum to basic skills in reading and mathematics; reduced use of innovative teaching strategies; adoption of educational ideas from external sources, rather than development of local internal capacity for innovation and problem-solving; and adoption of high-stakes accountability policies, featuring rewards and sanctions for students, teachers, and schools. By contrast, he suggests:

Read more:

http://www.nea.org/home/40991.htm

While we watch the shuffling of personnel going on in the Obama administration, I'm thinking that if Obama REALLY wants to "reach out," he'll quit heaping praise on Duncan and on a policy of privatization and union-busting. It's not too late. He could bring Darling-Hammond in, do a one-eighty, and gain the enthusiastic support of public education and the public. Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the mayors and CEOs, and the charter movement might not like it much, but the nation's teachers and students would be grateful, and could begin to thrive.