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There is another very glaring difference between the Finnish and American educational system that the article ignores - there are no private schools in Finland.

There is another very glaring difference between the Finnish and American educational system that the article ignores - there are no private schools in Finland. Everyone in Finland, no matter how wealthy or politically connected, sends their kids to the same schools. It shouldn't be surprising that powerful people in Finland care so deeply about the quality of their public school teachers when those teachers are responsible their own children's education. In America, nearly all of the upper class send their children to private schools, so why would our congresspeople/senators/grovernors/mayors/etc. care about public schools when their own kids don't go there?

powertower 13y ago
There are many public schools with Olympic sized swimming pools, and funding that would rival the better private schools any day of the week. Money and funding are not the problem... In Detroit, teachers get paid much more than the national average. And we know how well that school system does. The problem is that for the last 40 years in the US, to bridge the gap between student groups to 1 standard deviation: the only thing that has worked was the systematic dumbing-down of teaching content and testing material (for example: with the elimination of written answers by multiple-choice questions, and 30-40 point curves on each test). Everything else failed. No matter how much money was thrown at the problem, no matter how many teachers were fired and replaced, no matter how many experts and better management staff were brought in from other parts of the nation, it just got worse. So now we have one of the worst public education systems in America, all because no one could go into a class-room and ask the students that wanted to learn to raise their hand. And then present more challenging material to that group (relative to the other groups). And I'm not talking about what we already have now - a few Advanced Placement classes, I'm talking about the entire education system being free to cater differently to A) students that want to learn and compete, B) students that need simpler material, and C) students that want to clown around. Instead, we have a system that caters to the lowest-common-denominator (C) in the room at the expense of every other student. So no one get's taught anything that enhances the mind or prepares him/her for the challenges ahead.
AndyNemmity 13y ago
In my opinion a more important effect of this is that the upper class children with better role models do not become role models for the other children.
- Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
  In my opinion a more important effect of this is that the lower class children do not become role models for the other children.
wyclif 13y ago
Another difference between Finnish and American schools that make it difficult for both easy 1:1 comparisons and reproducing Finnish results is the fact that the US, unlike Finland, is not a homogeneous culture (BTW, I know there are Swede-speaking Finnish citizens, but that's an ethnolinguistic difference and not quite the same thing). So making such comparisons isn't quite so simple. This has been discussed endlessly in previous HN threads. I encourage you to search for them and read them; there's some interesting discussion there about this, so I won't rehash it here.
vukk 13y ago
This is simply not true. Private schools do exist, they have to follow the state program though. Also the politicians do not like to allow new licenses for private schools, thus many private schools operate under the licence of another private school, which distorts some statistics.

powertower 13y ago

There are many public schools with Olympic sized swimming pools, and funding that would rival the better private schools any day of the week. Money and funding are not the problem... In Detroit, teachers get paid much more than the national average. And we know how well that school system does. The problem is that for the last 40 years in the US, to bridge the gap between student groups to 1 standard deviation: the only thing that has worked was the systematic dumbing-down of teaching content and testing material (for example: with the elimination of written answers by multiple-choice questions, and 30-40 point curves on each test). Everything else failed. No matter how much money was thrown at the problem, no matter how many teachers were fired and replaced, no matter how many experts and better management staff were brought in from other parts of the nation, it just got worse. So now we have one of the worst public education systems in America, all because no one could go into a class-room and ask the students that wanted to learn to raise their hand. And then present more challenging material to that group (relative to the other groups). And I'm not talking about what we already have now - a few Advanced Placement classes, I'm talking about the entire education system being free to cater differently to A) students that want to learn and compete, B) students that need simpler material, and C) students that want to clown around. Instead, we have a system that caters to the lowest-common-denominator (C) in the room at the expense of every other student. So no one get's taught anything that enhances the mind or prepares him/her for the challenges ahead.

AndyNemmity 13y ago

In my opinion a more important effect of this is that the upper class children with better role models do not become role models for the other children.

Kudzu_Bob 13y ago
In my opinion a more important effect of this is that the lower class children do not become role models for the other children.

wyclif 13y ago

Another difference between Finnish and American schools that make it difficult for both easy 1:1 comparisons and reproducing Finnish results is the fact that the US, unlike Finland, is not a homogeneous culture (BTW, I know there are Swede-speaking Finnish citizens, but that's an ethnolinguistic difference and not quite the same thing). So making such comparisons isn't quite so simple. This has been discussed endlessly in previous HN threads. I encourage you to search for them and read them; there's some interesting discussion there about this, so I won't rehash it here.

vukk 13y ago

This is simply not true. Private schools do exist, they have to follow the state program though. Also the politicians do not like to allow new licenses for private schools, thus many private schools operate under the licence of another private school, which distorts some statistics.