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I don't get why Americans have to reinvent the wheel here. There are countries in the world (Finland, Singapore...) who have public education figured out. Just

I don't get why Americans have to reinvent the wheel here. There are countries in the world (Finland, Singapore...) who have public education figured out. Just put aside your pride and do what they do. It involves less testing, hiring and retaining better teachers, and making sure kids are not in poor broken homes.

jff 11y ago
> It involves less testing, hiring and retaining better teachers, and making sure kids are not in poor broken homes. ah, hide the hard one at the end :)
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > ah, hide the hard one at the end :) Income equality isn't "hard" if you look at it logically versus emotionally. Raise taxes, ensure a proper social safety net, widen the middle class. Then again, this is America. We try everything else first before the right way (apologies to Churchill).
  - Goladus 11y ago
    > Income equality isn't "hard" if you look at it logically versus emotionally. Raise taxes, ensure a proper social safety net, widen the middle class. Income equality is hard when you start tracing where the income actually comes from. Furthermore, the parent said "broken homes," not merely income inequality. A poor household can still be a stable and positive environment.
tbrownaw 11y ago
It might have to do with the difficulty of changing from a large country with somewhat varied standards of living, into a small relatively uniformly rich country. And I suppose that trying to impose uniform policies on a not-culturally-uniform group doesn't help either, especially when you add in hypersensitivity and the polarization that comes from everyone not knowing everyone else.
peterfirefly 11y ago
The funny thing is that Finland and Singapore are not doing the same thing. Both select for teachers of above average intelligence but the way those teachers are taught is very different. The kids in poor broken homes thing is something Finland is having more of, due to recent not-so-sensible immigration. There's very little one can do about it without draconian measures -- handing out money doesn't help.
- tormeh 11y ago
  Finland has virtually no immigration. Singapore is very ethnically diverse, though. Maybe you thought of Sweden?
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
In all honesty, if you run an American school exactly like in the US, with American teachers, course material, homework etc, and put it in Finland and have local kids attend, guess what happens. You get much better outcomes than in the US and probably pretty similar to outcomes in Finland. I do agree with you though, there's things that can be learned from these countries with respect to things like demanding more of teachers (master's degrees) and rewarding teachers more (not just decent, but great salaries which involves seeing teachers like you see doctors). That makes a lot of sense. Our requirements and rewards for doctors are a lot higher, despite the fact every single child is raised and educated for half of every working day's waking hours for more than a decade, teachers have absolutely insane levels of influence on something many of us value to extreme levels (children), in Finland resources are allocated accordingly, in the US not always. So I agree there, but I still think differences between e.g. Finland and the US have much more to do with your last point: making sure kids aren't in poor broken homes, which isn't a direct educational policy theme and requires mostly deep socioeconomic policy changes outside of education.

jff 11y ago

> It involves less testing, hiring and retaining better teachers, and making sure kids are not in poor broken homes. ah, hide the hard one at the end :)

toomuchtodo 11y ago
> ah, hide the hard one at the end :) Income equality isn't "hard" if you look at it logically versus emotionally. Raise taxes, ensure a proper social safety net, widen the middle class. Then again, this is America. We try everything else first before the right way (apologies to Churchill).
- Goladus 11y ago
  > Income equality isn't "hard" if you look at it logically versus emotionally. Raise taxes, ensure a proper social safety net, widen the middle class. Income equality is hard when you start tracing where the income actually comes from. Furthermore, the parent said "broken homes," not merely income inequality. A poor household can still be a stable and positive environment.

tbrownaw 11y ago

It might have to do with the difficulty of changing from a large country with somewhat varied standards of living, into a small relatively uniformly rich country. And I suppose that trying to impose uniform policies on a not-culturally-uniform group doesn't help either, especially when you add in hypersensitivity and the polarization that comes from everyone not knowing everyone else.

peterfirefly 11y ago

The funny thing is that Finland and Singapore are not doing the same thing. Both select for teachers of above average intelligence but the way those teachers are taught is very different. The kids in poor broken homes thing is something Finland is having more of, due to recent not-so-sensible immigration. There's very little one can do about it without draconian measures -- handing out money doesn't help.

tormeh 11y ago
Finland has virtually no immigration. Singapore is very ethnically diverse, though. Maybe you thought of Sweden?

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

In all honesty, if you run an American school exactly like in the US, with American teachers, course material, homework etc, and put it in Finland and have local kids attend, guess what happens. You get much better outcomes than in the US and probably pretty similar to outcomes in Finland. I do agree with you though, there's things that can be learned from these countries with respect to things like demanding more of teachers (master's degrees) and rewarding teachers more (not just decent, but great salaries which involves seeing teachers like you see doctors). That makes a lot of sense. Our requirements and rewards for doctors are a lot higher, despite the fact every single child is raised and educated for half of every working day's waking hours for more than a decade, teachers have absolutely insane levels of influence on something many of us value to extreme levels (children), in Finland resources are allocated accordingly, in the US not always. So I agree there, but I still think differences between e.g. Finland and the US have much more to do with your last point: making sure kids aren't in poor broken homes, which isn't a direct educational policy theme and requires mostly deep socioeconomic policy changes outside of education.