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OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 16:52:52 2012 It should come as no surprise that Finland - once again - is a focal point in the discussion of education reform. I first opined on this issue on my blog a few years back, and also posted some of my opinions here on education issues from reform to high-profile cheating scandals.The op-ed highlights issues oft discussed vis a vis education reform, such as testing and the quality of teaching. However, what it really focuses on is Finland's principal model for its own education reform decades back that propelled it to or near the top of the world in educational quality (at least, as measured by the triennial PISA test). And what is that model, you ask? The answer - a level playing field. That's right - equity - that is, enabling access to high-quality education for the entire population (as opposed to just the segment that can afford it). Anyhow, you can find the op-ed here; the story (with emphasis added by me) is posted below: ====================================================================== What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success By Anu Partanen Dec 29 2011, 3:00 PM ET The Scandinavian country is an education superpower because it values equality more than excellence. Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point. The small Nordic country of Finland used to be known -- if it was known for anything at all -- as the home of Nokia, the mobile phone giant. But lately Finland has been attracting attention on global surveys of quality of life -- Newsweek ranked it number one last year -- and Finland's national education system has been receiving particular praise, because in recent years Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world. Finland's schools owe their newfound fame primarily to one study: the PISA survey, conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The survey compares 15-year-olds in different countries in reading, math, and science. Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three competencies on every survey since 2000, neck and neck with superachievers such as South Korea and Singapore. In the most recent survey in 2009 Finland slipped slightly, with students in Shanghai, China, taking the best scores, but the Finns are still near the very top. Throughout the same period, the PISA performance of the United States has been middling, at best. Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model -- long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization -- Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play. All this has led to a continuous stream of foreign delegations making the pilgrimage to Finland to visit schools and talk with the nation's education experts, and constant coverage in the worldwide media marveling at the Finnish miracle. So there was considerable interest in a recent visit to the U.S. by one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility and author of the new book Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland? Earlier this month, Sahlberg stopped by the Dwight School in New York City to speak with educators and students, and his visit received national media attention and generated much discussion. And yet it wasn't clear that Sahlberg's message was actually getting through. As Sahlberg put it to me later, there are certain things nobody in America really wants to talk about. * * * During the afternoon that Sahlberg spent at the Dwight School, a photographer from the New York Times jockeyed for position with Dan Rather's TV crew as Sahlberg participated in a roundtable chat with students. The subsequent article in the Times about the event would focus on Finland as an "intriguing school-reform model." Yet one of the most significant things Sahlberg said passed practically unnoticed. "Oh," he mentioned at one point, "and there are no private schools in Finland." This notion may seem difficult for an American to digest, but it's true. Only a small number of independent schools exist in Finland, and even they are all publicly financed. None is allowed to charge tuition fees. There are no private universities, either. This means that practically every person in Finland attends public school, whether for pre-K or a Ph.D. The irony of Sahlberg's making this comment during a talk at the Dwight School seemed obvious. Like many of America's best schools, Dwight is a private institution that costs high-school students upward of $35,000 a year to attend -- not to mention that Dwight, in particular, is run for profit, an increasing trend in the U.S. Yet no one in the room commented on Sahlberg's statement. I found this surprising. Sahlberg himself did not. Sahlberg knows what Americans like to talk about when it comes to education, because he's become their go-to guy in Finland. The son of two teachers, he grew up in a Finnish school. He taught mathematics and physics in a junior high school in Helsinki, worked his way through a variety of positions in the Finnish Ministry of Education, and spent years as an education expert at the OECD, the World Bank, and other international organizations. Now, in addition to his other duties, Sahlberg hosts about a hundred visits a year by foreign educators, including many Americans, who want to know the secret of Finland's success. Sahlberg's new book is partly an attempt to help answer the questions he always gets asked. From his point of view, Americans are consistently obsessed with certain questions: How can you keep track of students' performance if you don't test them constantly? How can you improve teaching if you have no accountability for bad teachers or merit pay for good teachers? How do you foster competition and engage the private sector? How do you provide school choice? The answers Finland provides seem to run counter to just about everything America's school reformers are trying to do. 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 Puronen: "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. * * * Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location. Education has been seen first and foremost not as a way to produce star performers, but as an instrument to even out social inequality. In the Finnish view, as Sahlberg describes it, this means that schools should be healthy, safe environments for children. This starts with the basics. Finland offers all pupils free school meals, easy access to health care, psychological counseling, and individualized student guidance. In fact, since academic excellence wasn't a particular priority on the Finnish to-do list, when Finland's students scored so high on the first PISA survey in 2001, many Finns thought the results must be a mistake. But subsequent PISA tests confirmed that Finland -- unlike, say, very similar countries such as Norway -- was producing academic excellence through its particular policy focus on equity. That this point is almost always ignored or brushed aside in the U.S. seems especially poignant at the moment, after the financial crisis and Occupy Wall Street movement have brought the problems of inequality in America into such sharp focus. The chasm between those who can afford $35,000 in tuition per child per year -- or even just the price of a house in a good public school district -- and the other "99 percent" is painfully plain to see. * * * Pasi Sahlberg goes out of his way to emphasize that his book Finnish Lessons is not meant as a how-to guide for fixing the education systems of other countries. All countries are different, and as many Americans point out, Finland is a small nation with a much more homogeneous population than the United States. Yet Sahlberg doesn't think that questions of size or homogeneity should give Americans reason to dismiss the Finnish example. Finland is a relatively homogeneous country -- as of 2010, just 4.6 percent of Finnish residents had been born in another country, compared with 12.7 percent in the United States. But the number of foreign-born residents in Finland doubled during the decade leading up to 2010, and the country didn't lose its edge in education. Immigrants tended to concentrate in certain areas, causing some schools to become much more mixed than others, yet there has not been much change in the remarkable lack of variation between Finnish schools in the PISA surveys across the same period. Samuel Abrams, a visiting scholar at Columbia University's Teachers College, has addressed the effects of size and homogeneity on a nation's education performance by comparing Finland with another Nordic country: Norway. Like Finland, Norway is small and not especially diverse overall, but unlike Finland it has taken an approach to education that is more American than Finnish. The result? Mediocre performance in the PISA survey. Educational policy, Abrams suggests, is probably more important to the success of a country's school system than the nation's size or ethnic makeup. Indeed, Finland's population of 5.4 million can be compared to many an American state -- after all, most American education is managed at the state level. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization in Washington, there were 18 states in the U.S. in 2010 with an identical or significantly smaller percentage of foreign-born residents than Finland. What's more, despite their many differences, Finland and the U.S. have an educational goal in common. When Finnish policymakers decided to reform the country's education system in the 1970s, they did so because they realized that to be competitive, Finland couldn't rely on manufacturing or its scant natural resources and instead had to invest in a knowledge-based economy. With America's manufacturing industries now in decline, the goal of educational policy in the U.S. -- as articulated by most everyone from President Obama on down -- is to preserve American competitiveness by doing the same thing. Finland's experience suggests that to win at that game, a country has to prepare not just some of its population well, but all of its population well, for the new economy. To possess some of the best schools in the world might still not be good enough if there are children being left behind. Is that an impossible goal? Sahlberg says that while his book isn't meant to be a how-to manual, it is meant to be a "pamphlet of hope." "When President Kennedy was making his appeal for advancing American science and technology by putting a man on the moon by the end of the 1960's, many said it couldn't be done," Sahlberg said during his visit to New York. "But he had a dream. Just like Martin Luther King a few years later had a dream. Those dreams came true. Finland's dream was that we want to have a good public education for every child regardless of where they go to school or what kind of families they come from, and many even in Finland said it couldn't be done." Clearly, many were wrong. It is possible to create equality. And perhaps even more important -- as a challenge to the American way of thinking about education reform -- Finland's experience shows that it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity. The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad. Anu Partanen is a Finnish journalist based in New York City. She is writing a book about what America can learn from Nordic societies. ====================================================================== Discuss. my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by SLRT on Wed Jan 4 19:24:56 2012, in response to OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 16:52:52 2012. Im very aware of this stuff. And there is a lot more to it than even in this Op-Ed, you know, Finnish children and parents respect their teachers, etc. etc.But what no-one wants to say is that Super-Finland has a heterogeneous society with a population about the same as Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island combined. |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by streetcarman1 on Wed Jan 4 19:39:15 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by SLRT on Wed Jan 4 19:24:56 2012. ".....but the economic inequality of society"Sure...we all know what the deal is. Poor folks live in poor areas and the rich live in rich areas. Hempstead, LI is not Great Neck, LI. The have and the have nots. "But what no-one wants to say is that Super-Finland has a heterogeneous society..." YOU meant to say homogeneous.....THIW..... |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by SLRT on Wed Jan 4 19:44:55 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by streetcarman1 on Wed Jan 4 19:39:15 2012. Yes, I did. |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 19:50:58 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by SLRT on Wed Jan 4 19:24:56 2012. But what no-one wants to say is that Super-Finland has a heterogeneous society with a population about the same as Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island combined.I assume you meant homogeneous; nonetheless, this was already addressed in the op-ed (specifically through the referenced article written by Samuel Abrams, which suggests that policy has a greater effect on educational output than the composition of the population). my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by SLRT on Wed Jan 4 19:54:02 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 19:50:58 2012. suggests that policy has a greater effect on educational output than the composition of the populationWell of course it does. |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 20:04:23 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by SLRT on Wed Jan 4 19:54:02 2012. Clearly. However, aside from flowery discourse, I haven't seen much headway on meaningful education reforms (aside from a slew of op-eds and a few stories about ed. reform funding, not much in the news recently...)my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Olog-hai on Wed Jan 4 20:13:07 2012, in response to OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 16:52:52 2012. . . . and this is a country that is currently a vassal of Germany. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by PATHman on Wed Jan 4 20:32:43 2012, in response to OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 16:52:52 2012. Shh!!! Don't tell anyone in America. They want Stuyvesant, Columbia, and Yale to remain as White and Asian as possible. |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by PATHman on Wed Jan 4 20:36:09 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by streetcarman1 on Wed Jan 4 19:39:15 2012. The fact remains that this is a society that is obsessed with exams and frowns upon innovative thinking. Asian students take prep courses for the specialized high school exam and the SAT. White students generally do the same. Minority students don't have that luxury. This is a society where schools are encouraged to teach for the test. Effort and creative thinking mean nothing. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 20:42:04 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by PATHman on Wed Jan 4 20:32:43 2012. America's gonna have to take a listen, whether it likes it or not.The status quo is failing our students and jeopardizing our future. Only by strengthening curricula and abandoning the excessive focus on standardized testing can education's course be righted again. my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 20:50:19 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by PATHman on Wed Jan 4 20:36:09 2012. I agree with most of your points, but I should note that many minority students actually do have the opportunity to prepare for the SHSAT and SAT. Whether or not they take advantage of such opportunities is another story; however, I do know that in minority hoods resources aren't as plentiful as in more affluent hoods.Effort and creative thinking mean nothing. I disagree, despite the stagnant jobs market and the sorry state of our education system. As we discussed in another thread, if opportunities don't come your way after you've paid your dues through school and such like, make your own. Not the easiest thing in the world to do, but it's much better than remaining in a stagnant state (or worse, depending on handouts). my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 20:54:38 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Olog-hai on Wed Jan 4 20:13:07 2012. . . . and this is a country that is currently a vassal of Germany....which has what to do with my OP? my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by 3-9 on Wed Jan 4 21:40:03 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 20:42:04 2012. Simply raising the standards and simultaneously abandoning the system for measuring if progress is being made isn't going to work. Teachers can then say (again) an 'A' is whatever they want. IMO, you have to start with the teachers and principals and their work environment. Giving them better pay/bennies is one thing, but so is making teaching a worthwhile profession again. At the same time, the principals have to be able to manage them (including firing them if the teacher is bad). To top it off, you have to enforce respect and authority, which is a herculean task in schools full of kids who are brought up to hate authority. Lastly, the teacher/administration setup is probably such a mess, what with the red tape and threats of litigation, it's no wonder education is the way it is. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by PATHman on Wed Jan 4 21:46:05 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by 3-9 on Wed Jan 4 21:40:03 2012. In all my years of going to school, I've performed the best in classes in which I like my professor. Usually, the professors in those classes knew how to break down and explain concepts. I performed the worst when I had a jackass professor, or a professor who played favorites. Once upon a time, learning used to be fun. Now, all people care about is getting A's. |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by AMoreira81 on Wed Jan 4 21:57:48 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by SLRT on Wed Jan 4 19:24:56 2012. The respect for teachers---and the teaching of morals---is a big part of it. Schools are not supposed to do double-duty. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 22:08:31 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by 3-9 on Wed Jan 4 21:40:03 2012. Simply raising the standards and simultaneously abandoning the system for measuring if progress is being made isn't going to work.Here now, I only said that excessive focus on standardized testing should be abandoned, not that there should be no barometer to measure progress. And I maintain this position - excessive focus on testing results in stripped curricula that ill prepares our students. While I'd retain some testing, standards must be raised, and curricula must contain more depth than "reading, writing, and 'rithmetic." More in-depth lessons. Sciences. Labs. The arts. Extracurricular activities. Opportunities to be creative, as opposed to the current rudimentary setup. Teachers can then say (again) an 'A' is whatever they want. IMO, you have to start with the teachers and principals and their work environment. I agree. Problem here is the focus on testing is a by-product of "No Child Left Behind (NCLB)," a federal policy. When grades and even teaching positions and pay are predicated on test results and little else, there exists the temptation to "cheat" the system (as evidenced by several cheating scandals). Giving them better pay/bennies is one thing, but so is making teaching a worthwhile profession again. At the same time, the principals have to be able to manage them (including firing them if the teacher is bad). And how do we make teaching "a worthwhile profession" while problems such as stripped curricula, overcrowded classrooms, and rambunctious students remain unsolved? Worse still, some of these issues are outside of the teachers' control. Even better pay and benefits (which I support) wouldn't mean much if teachers aren't allowed to expand curricula beyond that needed to ace a damn test. I agree that principals should ensure that teachers are doing their jobs properly and efficiently, but if we're gonna measure merit, let's look at how much students are learning and understanding/successfully applying (i.e. in later courses) as opposed to solely what they score on an exam. To top it off, you have to enforce respect and authority, which is a herculean task in schools full of kids who are brought up to hate authority. Lastly, the teacher/administration setup is probably such a mess, what with the red tape and threats of litigation, it's no wonder education is the way it is. I definitely agree. Reform is needed at all levels of the education system. I honestly think teachers (specifically the ones who are trying their best to educate our nation's students) are getting too much flack for this situation, even for the parts of it beyond their control. my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:15:51 2012, in response to OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 16:52:52 2012. What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success?IQ Here's the map again (clickable):  Finland's IQ is among the top in Europe, and in reality, as we see here (clickable image):  ...American Whites outperform Whites in all other countries except Finland. As Richard Lynn excellently points out, tests like the PISA and the SAT (particularly the older SAT) are really IQ tests, and national differences in performance reflect national differences in IQ. Indeed, it is possible that Finland's high score on the PISA, slightly higher than one would expect based on their IQ alone, is because they don't have private schools siphoning off some of their highest scorers (don't know if private school students in the U.S. and other countries take the PISA). This is a complete load of tired old HBD blind rubbish that needs to stop being recycled. For a second I thought that perhaps you posted it just to get me going. The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad. Sorry, I'm afraid that with regard to test scores as well as "economic inequalities," that ethnic diversity is exactly the problem. No amount of wishful thinking will alter that fact. |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:18:40 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by SLRT on Wed Jan 4 19:24:56 2012. But what no-one wants to say is that Super-Finland has a heterogeneous societyYup, they have a few Swedes, Russians, Estonians, Sami(Lapps), a smattering of recent immigrants from all over, and all shapes and sizes of Santa's elves. Yup, real heterogeneous. What no one wants to do is address the realities of the situation. |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:20:46 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by SLRT on Wed Jan 4 19:54:02 2012. Sure, if you don't teach your children at all or provide the population the basics of a developed society, you can negatively impact the test scores. No one has figured out how to reliably raise them tho... |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 22:20:55 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by PATHman on Wed Jan 4 21:46:05 2012. In all my years of going to school, I've performed the best in classes in which I like my professor. Usually, the professors in those classes knew how to break down and explain concepts. I performed the worst when I had a jackass professor, or a professor who played favorites.I think most students will have similar experiences, as synergy is an important part of education IMO. If there is a disconnect between the prof and the students (especially in terms of the prof's understanding of subject matter relative to the students), learning can be tough. One thing I can share based on my experience w/grad school (where you're expected to retain knowledge of material learned in undergrad) is that you better be able to learn on your feet when you come across info you don't know (unless the prof is very helpful); otherwise, you're in trouble. Once upon a time, learning used to be fun. Now, all people care about is getting A's. Learning can still be fun, depending on which side of learning you're on! :) As for "caring about getting A's," those students are in for an extremely rude awakening if they don't retain any understanding. Of course, it doesn't help when students, teachers, and even entire school districts give in to the temptation of cheating - itself a by-product of the state of the current system IMHO. my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:21:10 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 20:04:23 2012. You mean like genetic engineering? |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:23:07 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by PATHman on Wed Jan 4 20:32:43 2012. They want Stuyvesant, Columbia, and Yale to remain as White and Asian as possible.You test into Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Nothing more, nothing less. I tested into Bronx Science and I'm not exactly as White or Asian as possible... |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:25:23 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by PATHman on Wed Jan 4 20:36:09 2012. I did zero prep for testing into Bronx Science. Got in with no problems. I hope you realize that enrichment programs design to boost non-Asian minority achievement have no effect. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Olog-hai on Wed Jan 4 22:29:34 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:15:51 2012. So you need a high IQ to put yourself into voluntary slavery to Germany? Use your head. |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Wed Jan 4 22:33:24 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:21:10 2012. You mean like genetic engineering?Well, technically, there are four choices: 1) Do nothing. 2) Mass sterilization. 3) Genetic engineering. 4) Ethnic cleansing. For all intents and purposes, we're stuck with the first option. The second is politically unpopular now, the third is science fiction at best and magic at worst and nobody knows if it's a permanent solution that doesn't cause other effects, and the fourth requires the race war that the Stormfronters are praying for. |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 23:06:43 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Wed Jan 4 22:33:24 2012. Indeed, I count myself with do nothing crowd at the moment. Polices that incentivize voluntary sterilization of low-IQ individuals might actually be too expensive to implement (or they may not be, I haven't done the math), and it appears nothing seems to motivate high-IQ individuals to stop their obsessive analyzing before having children (I am in that group as well).At the very least, we should open talk of HBD so we can stop ridiculous discourse as in the one in this thread and leave teachers alone. That said however, I'm in favor of adopting the Finnish model to a degree as to stop obsessing over competition and incessant testing. But again, HBD may explain things... Westerners, particularly the English and their descendants have a very individualistic approach to life owing to their history living in independent nuclear families. Finns on the other hand lived in the communal dwellings typical of their Russian neighbors and are introverted and perhaps less keen on competition than are Anglos. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 23:56:21 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:15:51 2012. ...American Whites outperform Whites in all other countries except Finland. As Richard Lynn excellently points out, tests like the PISA and the SAT (particularly the older SAT) are really IQ tests, and national differences in performance reflect national differences in IQ. Indeed, it is possible that Finland's high score on the PISA, slightly higher than one would expect based on their IQ alone, is because they don't have private schools siphoning off some of their highest scorers (don't know if private school students in the U.S. and other countries take the PISA).While I'm having trouble accessing the Lynn article you linked at the moment, I must ask: wouldn't a situation where private schools "siphon" (potentially) higher scorers and higher achievers underscore the socioeconomic problem? Or put another way, if the financial barriers were removed here, as they were in Finland, would we see higher achievement amongst underperforming groups? I ask because I've seen some research suggesting significant correlation between SES and academic performance... I will, however, note the significant gap between Whites and non-Whites (the so-called "achievement gap") and state that I'm not necessarily seeking a solution that "makes blacks/Hispanics/etc perform like Whites" but rather one that makes them (and anyone else with a low SES) perform better. Handicapping them with watered-down curricula and a flurry of tests won't solve this problem - hell, we've discussed this before at length. This is a complete load of tired old HBD blind rubbish that needs to stop being recycled. For a second I thought that perhaps you posted it just to get me going. I disagree on the article being "rubbish" given that people of low SES of all races perform poorer than their higher-SES peers. That said, your commentary on human biodiversity is interesting, especially given its statistical nature (I have a thing for stats, as that's one of my favorite subjects to tutor). I know ed. reform can't modulate students' IQ so differences will always exist, but I don't advocate doing nothing vis a vis education for people born in disadvantaged groups/SES. my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 23:58:35 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:23:07 2012. I tested into Bronx Science and I'm not exactly as White or Asian as possible...Cool; I'm not "as White or Asian as possible" either (I'm half Dominican half Puerto Rican) and tested into BTHS... my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Concourse Express on Thu Jan 5 00:11:25 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 23:06:43 2012. Polices that incentivize voluntary sterilization of low-IQ individuals might actually be too expensive to implement (or they may not be, I haven't done the math)...which would be advantageous how, relative to other solutions? What's your cutoff for low IQ, anyhow? And would the risk of discounting the presence of other positive traits or attributes in such people outweigh the benefits of improving education? Methinks not. At the very least, we should open talk of HBD so we can stop ridiculous discourse as in the one in this thread and leave teachers alone I've no intention of "closing" the talk of HBD, but I'll assume you mean on the national stage. I suppose you'll favor replacing standardized tests with age-adjusted subject/IQ tests? my blog |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by PATHman on Thu Jan 5 00:32:13 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:23:07 2012. I got into Bronx Science. I chose not to attend since it would have entailed a 3 hour commute (worst mistake I ever made). However, the fact remains that this system favors the privileged elite. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Thu Jan 5 00:50:14 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:23:07 2012. In contrast, I tested into none of the schools. To be honest, I didn't do much in the way of practising, so I was unprepared to take the test, and to be honest, I really am not specialized science school material. In contrast, I ended up going to St. Francis Prep where I did relatively well with a mix of honours and non-honours courses. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Thu Jan 5 00:51:41 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by PATHman on Thu Jan 5 00:32:13 2012. However, the fact remains that this system favors the privileged elite.The elite send their children to private schools. Asian immigrants and white middle class kids are not the elite... |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by LuchAAA on Thu Jan 5 00:57:50 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Thu Jan 5 00:51:41 2012. Didn't you attend a private school? |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by AEM-7AC #901 on Thu Jan 5 01:57:51 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by LuchAAA on Thu Jan 5 00:57:50 2012. Didn't you attend a private school?Yes, private Catholic school. It isn't elite compared to the prep schools that charge $35K to upper class parents. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by 3-9 on Thu Jan 5 03:15:24 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by PATHman on Thu Jan 5 00:32:13 2012. Not necessarily. It's been a long time since I took the test, but I believe it's still a straight aptitude test. You don't have to pay a huge fee or tuition, show "references", etc. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by 3-9 on Thu Jan 5 03:31:05 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by JayMan on Wed Jan 4 22:15:51 2012. Are you sure the private schools are siphoning the higher scoring (students), or are they siphoning away the teachers? I've been under the impression that the majority of finalists and semi-finalists for the Intel Talent Search are public school students, for instance. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by PATHman on Thu Jan 5 03:41:26 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by 3-9 on Thu Jan 5 03:15:24 2012. Are Asians simply naturally smarter than everyone else? Even when I attended Brooklyn Tech, I struggled in pre-Calc while they learned it effortlessly, and I put in the time. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by 3-9 on Thu Jan 5 04:15:30 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 22:08:31 2012. Here now, I only said that excessive focus on standardized testing should be abandoned, not that there should be no barometer to measure progress. And I maintain this position - excessive focus on testing results in stripped curricula that ill prepares our students. While I'd retain some testing, standards must be raised, and curricula must contain more depth than "reading, writing, and 'rithmetic." More in-depth lessons. Sciences. Labs. The arts. Extracurricular activities. Opportunities to be creative, as opposed to the current rudimentary setup.I agree that the tests do not cover the full scope of what a student should be learning. However, since I'm proposing a top-down approach, the tests should be the last part to change. Improve the administration, teachers, curricula, then the tests, which ideally, the students would then ace. And how do we make teaching "a worthwhile profession" while problems such as stripped curricula, overcrowded classrooms, and rambunctious students remain unsolved? Worse still, some of these issues are outside of the teachers' control. Even better pay and benefits (which I support) wouldn't mean much if teachers aren't allowed to expand curricula beyond that needed to ace a damn test. I agree, better pay and benefits aren't enough by themselves. Unfortunately, I don't know enough of the details of what goes on inside the schools to know what will make teaching "a worthwhile profession", but I have a hint based on what Sahlberg said. He mentioned "cooperation" which to me implies something like a "small business" or a "team" mentality. From my experience, people in a close, well-run team will have a higher morale than someone who's just a member of a massive, faceless bureaucracy, kind of like the current Board of Ed. As for expanding the curricula, is it the standardized testing requirement that's preventing it, or is it the budget (including inefficiencies, corruption, etc.)? Though I don't keep up on the news coming from the Board of Ed, it seems to me the usual reason for cutting a program is budget not irrelevancy. If anything, at least the current tests make sure there is some kind of concrete goal that teachers have to aim for. I agree that principals should ensure that teachers are doing their jobs properly and efficiently, but if we're gonna measure merit, let's look at how much students are learning and understanding/successfully applying (i.e. in later courses) as opposed to solely what they score on an exam. Unfortunately, an exam (or series of exams) are the only way to measure it/put a number on it/etc. If there's a better objective method, I'd like to hear it. Otherwise, I agree with what you're saying. I think also that Bloomberg has actually tried to make some of those top-down reforms, by trying to inject new teachers and introducing changes on how the schools work via the charter schools. It would also help if that bureaucracy would be a little more helpful for once and run some interference on the teachers' behalf. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by SMAZ on Thu Jan 5 04:21:01 2012, in response to OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 16:52:52 2012. The whole basis of the US education system is the separation of income classes, not education.It's why he have tens of thousands of byzantine and inefficient independent school districts and the exorbitant, communistic property taxes they command to support them. The premise of the upper-class white American parent is to make sure that their kids, no matter how stupid, never mix with the riff-raff (of any race) at school or outside of it and they will do whatever it takes to make that happen, whether it's paying overpriced private school tuition, crippling property taxes for exclusive communities or sky-high real estate prices in urban neighborhoods where their local schools fall within the "right zoning". THAT is what nobody wants to talk about. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by 3-9 on Thu Jan 5 04:27:57 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by PATHman on Thu Jan 5 03:41:26 2012. That's a good question. As an Asian, I think it's part natural, but I also think it's a lot cultural. Asian parents, I think, tend to push their kids to work and achieve and value good grades and education (translating to high motivation). Besides, I don't think it's good to generalize all Asians as really smart - you may have been focusing on the really smart Asians and not on the ones who weren't so smart (I knew a few of those too). For instance, when I took pre-calc, linear algebra and other high-end math classes, I stumbled and fell flat on my face 8-S. Paying for it even to this day - I could really use some of those concepts now, like handling vectors. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Scorpio7 on Thu Jan 5 04:47:35 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Olog-hai on Wed Jan 4 22:29:34 2012. Drop the act, it's getting boring. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by GP38/R42 Chris on Thu Jan 5 07:34:12 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by LuchAAA on Thu Jan 5 00:57:50 2012. Most Catholic schools are far from "elite". |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Thu Jan 5 08:11:21 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by PATHman on Thu Jan 5 03:41:26 2012. I struggled in pre-Calc while they [Asians] learned it effortlessly, and I put in the time.I've lived in Flushing for nearly 50 years and witnessed its transition to an Asian community. One difference is that I no longer see kids playing ball or other street games after school. In fact I see very few kids playing on the street (or in parks). I've wondered where they are. I got an answer this summer, when I went to a local pizza shop for lunch. An academy had just let out for lunch. The place was packed with students from the academy. There are about half a dozen such academies within a five block radius of my home. Those kids were studying the same courses they get in high school. There may be a genetic factor but I believe that the Asian achievement differential is the result of hard work. That hard work isn't limited to the public school system. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by GP38/R42 Chris on Thu Jan 5 08:19:06 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Stephen Bauman on Thu Jan 5 08:11:21 2012. One difference is that I no longer see kids playing ball or other street games after school. In fact I see very few kids playing on the street (or in parks). I've wondered where they are.That's not just Flushing, that's all communities nowadays. They are all inside playing video games and stuff. Gone are the days of kids all over the street or parks, at least on the scale of years ago. That has been slowly ending since the 80's already. This has less to do with a neighborhood turning "Asian" than it does to different technologies keeping kids indoors. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Thu Jan 5 09:50:59 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Wed Jan 4 23:56:21 2012. your commentary on human biodiversity is interesting, especially given its statistical nature (I have a thing for stats, as that's one of my favorite subjects to tutor).Well I'm certainly glad that you're willing to discuss the matter and see if we can shed light on the situation. God knows we need more of that in America (and somewhere beyond internet discussion forums and HBD blogs). While I'm having trouble accessing the Lynn article you linked at the moment Yes, sorry about that, I as yet haven't found a free link to that particular paper. The main point that Lynn makes about the PISA test is that scores on the PISA correlate about as well with scores on IQ tests (~0.85), about as well as IQ tests correlate with each other, and about as well as scores of one individual taking the same test multiple times correlate. In other words, the PISA is really an IQ test, and doesn't measure the effectiveness of education per se, but rather students' ability to learn. I must ask: wouldn't a situation where private schools "siphon" (potentially) higher scorers and higher achievers underscore the socioeconomic problem? As Lynn recites, this is what Arthur Jensen terms the sociologist's fallacy. Think of this: IQ is highly heritable (70%-80% so, especially in late life) and not really subject to environmental manipulation. As well, IQ has an impact on life achievement both academically and economically. As such, it necessarily follows that children coming from higher SES parents have higher average IQs than those from lower SES backgrounds, and those from wealthier backgrounds will perform better as a group. This is especially true in today's world that is awash in opportunities and people of all sort of backgrounds have a reasonably fair shot at succeeding. The earlier era of people ascending into the middle and upper classes was due to new opportunities being provided to people who previously lacked them, such as poor rural dwellers like Charles Murray who praised the SAT for identifying his talent and opening the door to better schools. However in the current generation, this process is now largely complete; the children of the higher classes remain in the higher classes because of their talents, and the children of the lower classes remain there because of their lack of talent. The main reason that we have far less social mobility in today's world isn't because we don't have a level playing field, but precisely because we do. As Jensen put it: CBGMT argue that the north–south differences in the PISA data are reduced “when one corrects for family and background variables” such as family incomes and school variables such as financial resources, teacher tenures, and tracking”. They conclude that “correcting for family and context background removes a sizable part of the postulated genetic differences between regional groups.” This correction for family background, SES, and other variables is known as “the sociologists' fallacy” identified some forty years ago by [Jensen, A. R. (1973). Educability and group differences. London: Methuen]. As Jensen observed “SES classification is more a result than a cause of IQ variance”. The fallacy of the method is that the SES, earnings, etc. of the family are themselves products of the families' IQs, which determine the IQs of the children.(emphasis added) Or put another way, if the financial barriers were removed here, as they were in Finland, would we see higher achievement amongst underperforming groups? So the short answer is no, as the failure of programs like Head Start demonstrate. In fact, as we see on the PISA charts, all racial groups in America do better than they do in their ancestral homelands (indeed, American Blacks average IQ is about 85, significantly better than the average African average IQ of 70). Handicapping them with watered-down curricula and a flurry of tests won't solve this problem - hell, we've discussed this before at length. Here's the secret and the piece of the puzzle that I think you're missing: education doesn't make you smarter, it only makes you more knowledgeable. Intelligence, particularly the g-factor (the meat of IQ tests) appears to be largely innate, and poorly affected by learning. Smarter students can learn more at a faster pace, hence, they have more hefty curricula. By contrast, less intelligent children learn more slowly and generally can only handle the "watered-down" curricula. This is why if you compare a middle school in the South Bronx to one in Helsinki, you'll notice a world of difference of what is taught and how quickly. I know ed. reform can't modulate students' IQ so differences will always exist, but I don't advocate doing nothing vis a vis education for people born in disadvantaged groups/SES. Unfortunately, this is one of the things where the wisdom of the "Serenity Prayer" comes in handy. Eliminating social inequality is impossible in a free, meritocratic society, as long as innate differences between people exist. They have not even eliminated it in Finland and the other European countries; it's just that they don't have the wild extremes that we do because of their homogenous (and high IQ) population. I am however one of the apparently rare liberal believers in HBD. I'm all for social welfare programs that help the underprivileged. However, they should have realistic expectations—just as none of the nations in sub-Saharan Africa will rise to First World standards in the foreseeable future, no matter what the developed world does for them, requiring us to accept that we in the developed world must resign ourselves to look after them, so we must we do for the underclasses in our own country. Indeed, one of the reasons it's so hard to get more progressive measures passed in the U.S. is because of its heterogeneous population, reducing the feelings of kinship Americans feel towards other Americans vis-a-vis Europeans. One thing we can do is enact immigration reform, we should make sure that people moving here will only be those capable of contributing to our society (i.e., high IQ) and shut off the flow of illegal Mexican and other Latino immigrants (who have a lower average IQ than the White population here). |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by Fred G on Thu Jan 5 10:05:06 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by GP38/R42 Chris on Thu Jan 5 07:34:12 2012. Seriously, I attended Catholic school for 12 years and I'm far from elite as well LOL.your pal, Fred |
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Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Thu Jan 5 10:08:16 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What the Education Establishment keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Concourse Express on Thu Jan 5 00:11:25 2012. >>>Polices that incentivize voluntary sterilization of low-IQ individuals might actually be too expensive to implement (or they may not be, I haven't done the math)...which would be advantageous how, relative to other solutions? What's your cutoff for low IQ, anyhow? If I were to implement this sort of program, I wouldn't use an IQ cutoff per se, I'd use a success cutoff. Not all low-IQ people are unsuccessful nor are all high-IQ people successful (since there's more to success than IQ). If a person is a high-school dropout, has little record of decent employment, and has been a receiver of welfare for a long time (a few years say), I'd make them eligible for a one-time payment of $10,000 in exchange for undergoing sterilization. That doesn't sound exorbitantly expensive (less than a year's welfare payment) and reduces the number of future welfare recipients. Or for men with little job prospects or education but who owe tons of child support for armies of illegitimate children, I'd forgive his debt and offer say $5,000 for them to undergo sterilization. Or for any person with a criminal record, especially for violent crime, they could be offered $2,000 and a reduced sentence to undergo sterilization. This would apply to people of all races (even some races will be more represented than others as per IQ). And would the risk of discounting the presence of other positive traits or attributes in such people outweigh the benefits of improving education? Methinks not. Positive traits such as? One can argue that the fact that many European countries import foreign (and lower IQ) labor to do their grunt work is a sign that such individuals are needed, but not all of them do. Japan has virtually zero immigration and their society functions just fine. I suppose you'll favor replacing standardized tests with age-adjusted subject/IQ tests? Yes, I would do away with standardized tests and I would certainly end making teacher and school funding dependent on such tests, owing to IQ. I'd be in favor of making IQ testing used earlier to help identify gifted students in otherwise under-performing populations and get them out of there earlier. Kinda like Bronx Science and the like, but at the middle school level. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by JayMan on Thu Jan 5 10:09:58 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by 3-9 on Thu Jan 5 03:31:05 2012. Are you sure the private schools are siphoning the higher scoring (students), or are they siphoning away the teachers?Both. But since SES is the an expression of IQ, this is to be expected. |
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Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success |
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Posted by GP38/R42 Chris on Thu Jan 5 10:12:21 2012, in response to Re: OP-ED: What Americans keep ignoring about Finland's school success, posted by Fred G on Thu Jan 5 10:05:06 2012. My high school, at the time, was just about one step above a public high school. It was the cheapest one in the area at the time, and was FAR from elite, lol. |
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