
When Finnish Teachers Work in America's Public Schools - aarohmankad
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/11/when-finnish-teachers-work-in-americas-public-schools/508685/?utm_source=atlfb&amp;single_page=true
======
noobermin
_adjusts his seat in his armchair_ Yes, my uninformed opinion, but reading the
article, I think the quote from Marc Tucker towards the end is right:

>And the countries that give [teachers] more autonomy successfully are
countries that have made an enormous investment in changing the pool from
which they are selecting their teachers, then they make a much bigger
investment than we do in the education of their future teachers, then they
make a much bigger investment in the support of those teachers once they
become teachers.

Teachers in these institutions are given a level of respect we offer
scientists, lawyers, other professionals, so of course they are trusted to be
given autonomy. Imagine the same level of scrutiny given to such
professionals, if say we mandate every minute in a doctor's meeting from a
city authority, would they stand for it? When we talk about education, people
often highlight the fact we spend a lot of money per student compared to other
countries. This fact fits in with this hypothesis.

Once an institution gains that respect, the rest can follow. No, it may not be
causal (teachers being respected leads to higher pay, better quality teachers,
etc) but they are certainly correlated.

~~~
Haven_Monahan
Pretty Much Exactly That.

Of course, you might want to go further, and ask why this hasn't happened. Why
wouldn't some state or locality in the US demand that its teacher-training
candidates have a BS in, say, nursing (for primary schoolteachers) or
engineering (for highschool math and science) plus an appropriate score on an
IQ test like the wonderlic (serving as a sanity check on the required
credentials)? They would need these before being hired, even if they had a
degree in education.

Then, those teachers could demand higher autonomy (and better wages), and
school boards would be inclined to go along. Why aren't parents and the school
boards they elect willing or able to do this?

One issue is of course that schools of education in the US are not getting the
top cohort of high school graduating classes, and they work with what they
get. The young woman (and it is almost all young women) gets a degree, a
certificate, and gets to be in charge of your kids for six hours a day, even
though when she was in your English class in HS she would copy her answers off
of the test of your permanently-stoned buddies.

Who wouldn't want watch her like a hawk?

Next...the union. Some teachers can't teach, but they can for damn sure vote,
and pay their union dues to the NEA. The NEA isn't actually opposed to
education, but anything that diminishes the political clout of its lobby (no
matter how justifiable to parents, students, or even its individual members)
will be opposed w/ much firmness.

Finally, there are...legal obstacles. Less said about them, the better...but
they do exist.

~~~
fsloth
I'll have inject a remark viz one of your hyopotheses. IQ tests are absolute
bollocks - especially if gauging potential ability to teach.

~~~
Haven_Monahan
Citations, of course.

Or are you simply of the Nicholas Garaufis school of thought; namely, if the
test isn't perfect, it can't possibly be used as a hiring tool? After seeing
what Judge G did to the FDNY training program, I'd have half a mind to buy
extra smoke alarms and fire extinguishers if I lived in the city...

Like a lot of people, I know some persons who would probably be excluded by
the general approache I described upthread, and who ended up going into
teaching and being really, really good at their specialty. That's why there
should always be a way to make exceptions. That doesn't invalidate the
principle that "book smart" isn't a bad criteria for new teachers, and that
some tests can give a rough idea of how likely someone is to be so.

Cliched but true:

Tough cases make bad law. The plural of anecdote isn't data.

~~~
fsloth
"Grit" by Angela Duckworth contains excellent examples of the unfair outcomes
false negatives cause. She's also published research dealing with this topic:

[http://www.pnas.org/content/108/19/7716.abstract](http://www.pnas.org/content/108/19/7716.abstract)

People can get bad scores just because they are really nervous, etc. Now you
have a score, that does not display your innate abilities at all, but, it
blocks you from several activities you might excel and enjoy.

To inject some qualitative opinions of my own, totally lacking of any
refrences:

IQ tests can be used to sieve through populations - with false negatives.
Their only utility in career context is as an arbitrary tool to reduce
candidate population. The only sane motivation for their use would be a
political or economic pressure to restrict number of candidates to make their
evaluation and processing cheaper downstream. The downsides are: arbitrary
unfair blocking of individual careers, potentially removing candidates that
would excel. If the point is to reduce the population, then generally, if the
cost function of candidate quality cannot be evaluated precisely, a completely
random process would likely lead to a better outcome than some arbitrary
numeric metric. (I'll need to dig through my algorithm resources to formulate
a precise reference if someone wants for this last statement).

------
jimmyswimmy
I found the perspective of the Finnish teachers quite useful and interesting.
I've been in electrical engineering for awhile and have been contemplating
teaching as a second career, as I know many engineers do. But so used to real
autonomy in my day to day or even week to week activities, I can't imagine
going from this life to that. Reading about NCLBA and common core and the like
never seemed burdensome but perhaps I was wrong. In any event, I don't foresee
teaching in my future anymore. Too bad. Perhaps in another country.

~~~
specialist
Anecdotally, as a second careerist, you'll be permitted more autonomy. Because
you can walk at anytime, the admins will have less leverage over you.

------
jimhefferon
This quote

 _“I feel rushed, nothing gets done properly; there is very little joy, and no
time for reflection or creative thinking (in order to create meaningful
activities for students).”_

seems to me to express both the current trend, and why citizens should care.
If highly educated and capable people feel that way, you can expect them to
migrate away.

------
fallingfrog
I can tell you right now why they do things this way: it reduces the
bargaining power of the teacher to demand a higher salary. If you want to
negotiate a salary with someone, the last thing you want is for them to be
able to claim to be unique- if their lesson plan is prescribed, the test are
prescribed, etc, then all you really need is to hire someone who can follow
instructions, and if that person doesn't follow their instructions they can be
easily replaced, on the cheap. Turning people into machines is what we
Americans do best.

------
thinkloop
Like everything there is a trade-off with autonomy. On the one hand, not
having it is dehumanizing and demotivating causing top performers to work sub-
optimally. On the other hand it reduces volatility and variation ensuring the
worst performers aren't as bad.

The smaller the organization the easier it is to give autonomy because the
natural feedback loop is tighter. In massive organizations (like the education
system) there are a lot of cracks to fall through.

Personally I can't work without extreme autonomy - luckily I'm a web engineer
where this is basically standard. I'm not sure what the right mix is for all
businesses, organizations, cultures, countries, etc.

~~~
eikenberry
> Personally I can't work without extreme autonomy - luckily I'm a web
> engineer where this is basically standard.

Do you work at startups? I moved from being a back-end web engineer towards
operations and systems programming to regain my autonomy as at mid sized and
larger companies (who pay better than startups) the developers were all micro
managed.

~~~
thinkloop
Good point, I do only work at startups, that's probably where the autonomy
comes from, rather than the web engineering.

------
criddell
Sounds like Chartouni is a great teacher. A lot of the things she is
complaining about (like rubrics) weren't put in place for teachers like her.
They are there for the 50% of the teachers that are worse than average.

------
deathEternal
Looking back on my school career, from elementary through high school, the
thing I hated most about school was all the fucking assholes I was force to
call classmates.

Then, looking back at all the shitty retail jobs I held, the thing I hated
most about work was all the fucking asshole customers.

Then, looking back at all the shitty office jobs I held, the thing I hated
most were my co-workers, above me, below me, and across from me.

But really, the thing that I've hated all along, is being forced to do
anything without first building the understanding behind why bothering at all.

Why am I going to school?

Fuck you, I'm a kid.

Why am I working this shit job?

Fuck you, for robbing me of my youth.

Why do I work at all?

Fuck you, can I have what's left of my life back please?

And then I fucking died.

~~~
teach
"If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you
run into assholes all day... maybe you're the asshole."

