Dr. Doug: What Can the US Do Now?
- It took Finland a while to go from mediocre to the top so we need to be patient. First and foremost we need raise our voices to convince policy makers to scrap our standardized testing and insistence on a national curriculum. If we build more trust and local control in to the system, we might encourage more top students to go into teaching. Next we should examine our needs and rate of teacher production. I suspect we are training more than we need and allowing just about anyone to enroll. Anything to make teacher education more selective and attractive is necessary. Teacher education should also require research.
- High schools should be able to subdivide their courses so if you don’t do well you only lose six weeks rather than repeating an entire year. Students who come close should be given an option to finish at their own pace. If students plan to enter community colleges, don’t let them leave high school until there are ready for college. At the elementary level we need to bring special educators into the game early and often. We should also abolish grade retention except for extreme cases.
- We just need the right vision at the top. Time to raise your voice!
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This is a nice summary.
However, there’s a minor flaw in the description of the current structure of the Finnish education system. There is no standardized test at age 16; the national matriculation exam is the final test of the upper secondary school (called lukio, somewhat equivalent to the American high school, even though more advanced topics such as differential calculus are taught).
Also, the test can be taken in three parts and students are free to choice which tests they will take, and will they take them in the spring or in the autumn.
Those who choose the vocational education never take any standardized tests, and the choice between upper secondary school and vocational school is not entirely, or not even largely nowadays, determined by academic success: many successful students also opt for vocational education.
An amazing summary and thank you DgBorn for clearing that up. Actually, I also heard that the NME is also taken at 16.
The overall picture I get is that things are much more customized in Finland- principals and administrators work with teachers to make them better at what they do best and teachers customize the student experience for each student helping them to achieve more in their strengths.
I wonder if things are also different from an employer perspective. I feel like employers are one of the key driving factors to get all of our students in the US to college and some employers won’t value a vocational or trade school like they will a top University. I wonder if the culture is different in Finland.