
What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools? - wallflower
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/15/what-if-finlands-great-teachers-taught-in-u-s-schools-not-what-you-think/
======
edthrowaway
As someone with a spouse who has taught for over 10 years in an impoverished,
inner-city school, and who has won a very impressive array of grants, awards,
certifications and national-level recognition, I could not agree more strongly
with this editorial.

Americans are under the misapprehension that all of their school woes stem
from poor teachers. But even in poor districts like the one my spouse teaches
in, which have accumulated a whole layer of apathetic teachers, the impact of
both poor and excellent teachers is way overestimated, and the impact of poor
and excellent administrations (both the school principal and the district
leadership) is tremendously underestimated. A good principal, particularly one
with strong school board backing, can almost single-handedly turn an entire
school around (I've seen this happen twice now). An excellent teacher with a
poor principal and negligent school board can do very little other than
provide a strong role model for the most promising students, and (with great
effort) pull a handful more of failing students up to the barely passing level
than their less talented peers.

Primarily, good principals act just like good engineer managers in
corporations. Just as good managers keep engineers isolated from the bullshit
of upper management and adjacent managers, and give good engineers space to do
their jobs, so do good principals let their good teachers do their job, and
intervene when poor teachers fail to meet expectations.

Regarding the other factors mentioned, I do think poverty is a major hurdle,
and the author of this piece rightly underlines its importance in poor school
performance, but poverty is primarily an issue in that high-levels of poverty
correlate strongly with lack of parental support and engagement (and not
always due to a lack of care; often it's because these are single-parent
households where that one parent is working all the time). But here an
excellent principal can also make a major impact by rallying formerly
disengaged parents around their kids and their kids' teachers, and supporting
single-parent households where the parent is working multiple jobs.

It makes me sad to see all this rhetoric around teachers in the U.S., not only
because it's depressing for my spouse to be so unappreciated by people outside
the teaching profession, but also because I know it will do little to fix the
main problem: school poor administrations. Nor will it address any of the
other major contributing factors, like poverty and the lack of respect in high
school academic excellent so prevalent in our culture, rich and poor alike.

~~~
jwmerrill
Really insightful comment.

> the impact of both poor and excellent teachers is way overestimated, and the
> impact of poor and excellent administrations (both the school principal and
> the district leadership) is tremendously underestimated.

Why do you think this happens?

I'll speculate: most people form their opinion about what's important in a
school by reflecting on their experience as a student.

Most students attend only one school of each kind (e.g. elementary, junior,
and high school), so they don't have a great frame of reference about the
results of different school administrations.

But everyone experiences many different teachers, and as a student, you really
perceive the differences between the better ones and the worse ones.

I bet if you reflect on your own experience as a student, leaving aside the
context of your spouse's experience as a teacher, you will have much more
vivid memories and opinions about teachers than administrators.

I totally agree that it's likely to be much more effective to try to create
environments that help all teachers do their jobs more effectively than it is
to try to change who we're hiring. I wonder what the best way is to make
people "feel" the difference between good administrators and bad ones like
they "feel" the difference between their favorite teachers and their least
favorite ones.

------
MarcScott
I've worked as a teacher in both the UK and in Papua New Guinea, and from my
perspective, the largest performance indicator of a child's success is the
value their parents place on education.

Maybe this is one of the reasons the Finnish education system works so well.
If teaching is an occupation that is culturally considered in high esteem,
then it probably follows that schools are considered an important aspect of a
child's life. Children are therefore encouraged to do well in schools.

In PNG, students had to pay to go to school. Often a single child was
supported through their education by their extended family. Some villages
could only afford to send a few students to school. Those students worked
exceptionally hard, knowing that it was incumbent upon them to achieve, and
eventually payback their family from the proceeds of their future careers.

When working in rural schools in the UK I have encountered many students whose
parents, and therefore their children, place little value on education. Often
the attitude comes down to the single phrase "I've managed and I did badly at
school". Regardless of whether the parent's are rich or poor, the children of
these parents often struggle, and achieve below expected results in national
examinations.

If we want to raise standards in our schools (both in the UK and in the USA) I
think the key is in changing cultural attitudes towards education. This means
that we need to stop heaping blame on teachers, administrators, schools and
local authorities for perceived inadequacies. We need to make sure that our
children value the free education they are receiving.

edit - for clarity of country name

~~~
aikah
> the largest performance indicator of a child's success is the value their
> parents place on education.

+100

> This means that we need to stop heaping blame on teachers, administrators,
> schools and local authorities for perceived inadequacies.

Well sometimes authorities are to blame. Look, in my country,being a teacher
used to be like being a lawyer or a doctor.

It used to be a prestigious profession.

Then some politicians,influencial thinkers came in and said,"we need to focus
on children,they have special needs,they are always right and if they cant
learn properly it's the adults fault". 30 years forward and the education here
is totally broken,teachers are despised both by students and parents who want
instant gratification no matter how dumb their offspring is.

But hey,they cant be wrong,they've been told all their life they are "special"
and always right ...

> Regardless of whether the parent's are rich or poor, the children of these
> parents often struggle, and achieve below expected results in national
> examinations.

The big difference is rich people can literally buy a career for their
offspring even if they perform poorly at school. At worse, they'll have a job
at mom and pop's business.

~~~
javert
> The big difference is rich people can literally buy a career for their
> offspring

Details? Where do I go to buy a career? I'm not being sarcastic, I actually
want to know.

~~~
jackvalentine
Mom or Dad to business partner: if you want to make this deal with me, give my
kid a management position somewhere on the project.

Or "if you give my kid an internship then I'll give you the keys to my ski
lodge for this season"

~~~
javert
That is not buying a career. That's making a deal. The guy said:

> rich people can literally buy a career

I'm not being sarcastic here. It used to be possible to purchase a commission
in the military. That is speaking historically.

I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't careers today you can literally
purchase. Franchising comes kind of close, and running a taxi in NYC comes
close. In ancient times, you could purchase the position of tax collector.

Anyway, that person should not have said "literally" unless he meant it.

~~~
jackvalentine
Pedanticism of this nature is literally the key to living a frustrated and
lonely life. You asked for a good faith reply and I gave it to you. You then
decided to play your "trick" and point out that you're actually making a
totally unrelated grammatical dispute with the original poster.

I won't be falling for this again and replying to you further in the future.

I hope it feels good to be "right" all the time.

~~~
javert
I wasn't playing a trick. There are times when using "literally" in the
figurative sense actually makes sense, even though I don't approve. But this
is not one. So I thought maybe the person actually meant it in the non-
figurative sense.

If you want evidence that I'm an honest person, look at my comment history. I
don't go around tricking people and trying to win arguments by deception. In
fact, I frequently call people out for being nasty in various ways, much like
you are doing here.

I can understand why you think I'm trying to trick people and I was worried
that would happen. That's why I talked about historical and quasi-examples of
people buying careers. I didn't want you to think or feel that I was playing a
trick.

~~~
throwawaymsft
Please realize language has ambiguities and is not a program that is compiled.
Deliberately nitpicking the meaning of words from someone who is generously
offering to clarify a statement for you looks like a sign of bad faith. Use a
charitable interpretation and figure out the idea he/she was getting at.

Clearly, money/power/fame/beauty can "buy" things even if there is no currency
changing hands. That is the point the previous poster was making. Wealth is
influence, and influence gets you favors, like a foot into a career.

~~~
kybernetikos
I disagree. aikah made a statement, which Javert wanted more detail on.
jackvalentine claimed to explain what the other poster had said, but it didn't
actually match up. He was probably right about what was meant, but maybe he
wasn't and there's no real reason for the rest of us to assume it's an
accurate clarification of what aikah meant.

If it had been the original poster making the clarification then moaning about
'literally' would have been pedantic, but it was not, and so therefore it was
justified - it was making the point that the interpretation given by
jackvalentine did not actually clarify the statement as made, and that Javert
had assumed something else, more interesting was being said. At that point the
conversation depressingly quickly devolves into name calling, threats and
patronisation.

> Clearly, money/power/fame/beauty can "buy" things even if there is no
> currency changing hands. That is the point the previous poster was making.

According to you. Javert was actually using a charitable interpretation when
he assumed that the original maker of the statement meant what they had said.

As far as I can tell this entire subthread consists of people uncharitably
failing to spot that Javert was _not_ in fact trying to score points, (or
believes that language is a program to be compiled, or would benefit from a
list of topics to meditate on about the evolution of language) and was merely
asking for more detail, and getting upset that he is skeptical their trivial
'explanations' actually explain what was originally meant.

It's mainly a lot of people freaking out about their hot button topics without
actually spending any brain power on understanding what the other person is
saying and why.

------
danso
> _Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the
> whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the
> education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel
> that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers._

As a layperson, I agree with the OP...The focus on the quality of teachers --
and firing "bad" ones and hiring just the "good" ones -- has always seemed to
me to be overemphasized, as it makes for a sexy, easily digestible political
debate. Not that good teachers (whatever your definition of "good" is) aren't
worth having, but it's doubtful that they alone can have a significant impact
on student outcomes...in the way we should be doubtful that the well-behaved,
well-equipped cops from a rich crime-free suburb would, when moved to the
Detroit PD, would have a significant impact.

I lived with a teacher and my best friend is a teacher, both are young and
about my age and who work at impoverished schools, and I've been constantly
amazed at how much of their talk is not about how bad the kids are, but how
bad the administration is...over things such as playing favorites (among
teachers) and squabbles over office space and, of course, having to buy their
own supplies and books (some of which is reimbursed at the end of the year).
You can chalk some of this dysfunction to the educational hot topics of the
day: the power of teachers unions, teacher pay, standardized testing...but the
bottom line is that passionate, effective teachers can be nullified by a weak
system...in the same way that a great programmer may be ineffective in an
engineering environment with poor testing/documentation processes and a
terrible office environment.

~~~
TwoBit
Reminds of how NFL coaches are so frequently fired when their teams do poorly.
It makes for good press, but the teams usually do the same under the next
coach.

~~~
bennettfeely
FiveThirtyEight examined this in the NHL.

> _Teams that fired their coaches performed exactly the same on average in the
> following season as teams that kept their coaches. Notably, teams that were
> sub-.400 performed 20 percent better on average the following season
> regardless of whether they fired their coach or not._ [...] _Playoff
> performance is no better under new coaches. Non-playoff teams go an average
> of 0.5 playoff rounds the following season, whether they fire their coach or
> not._

[http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-predicts-if-an-
nhl-...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-predicts-if-an-nhl-coach-
will-be-fired-and-whether-it-matters/)

~~~
cheepin
Shouldn't team performance decrease the season after a coach change since the
players have to learn a new system? This seems to say that the cost of firing
a poor coach is zero because at worst you will do the same as before in the
short term, with a great potential upside for longer time spans.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
These teams have large coaching staffs that don't get fired and change more
slowly. I would guess that a coach's impact is often more long term (in
training, recruitment of players and staff).

------
bko
> Finland is not a fan of standardization in education. However, teacher
> education in Finland is carefully standardized. All teachers must earn a
> master’s degree at one of the country’s research universities.

I don't think the author makes a convincing point as to why standardization is
bad for students but somehow beneficial to teachers.

> There is another “teacher quality” checkpoint at graduation from School of
> Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach
> unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals
> necessary to be a successful teacher.

So prospective teachers would be tested on teacher quality prior to graduation
in an academic sense but not while they're actually teaching? Not sure if you
can test on paper or by demonstration whether someone is an effective teacher.
It is certainly more easily visible in the field.

It's a shame many in America don't respect teachers. Perhaps the resentment is
due to the fact that most in America don't have a choice as to the primary
school they attend. Like most Americans, I've had terrible teachers in the
past and did feel some resentment. It was less infuriating in college since at
least I had some choice as to the classes and school I attended.
Coincidentally, I notice professors get a lot more respect.

~~~
pavlov
_I don 't think the author makes a convincing point as to why standardization
is bad for students but somehow beneficial to teachers._

I felt the author's case was clearly presented, so I'll try to summarize...

Standardized tests for students are bad because they encourage bogus metrics
like "teacher effectiveness".

Requiring high qualifications for teachers is good because it improves public
perception of the profession and reduces churn. (Initiatives like "fast track"
teacher training increase churn, and this is bad because it can lead
administrators to believe that churn is part of the solution: all they need to
do is somehow weed out the bad teachers and replace them with good ones.)

~~~
mattmcknight
You have to understand that the publisher of this piece (the blog curator,
Valerie Strauss) is a paid supporter of the teacher unions. That is her
primary agenda, and the agenda of many opposed to teacher evaluation via job
effectiveness.

If teacher effectiveness can't be measured, teachers can't be fired for
performance. Union win.

~~~
rustynails77
If you don't standardise testing for students, you can't benchmark them. If
you look at the relative performance of different countries, the US is WAY
down the list of performers - and the relative scores of the US are
_significantly_ behind. Start with this link for reference,
[http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pisa-
rankings-2013-12](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pisa-rankings-2013-12)

On reading and my own indepth observations, I've come across the same themes,
\- teachers must be respected as professionals \- teachers must challenge
themselves, constantly looking for better approaches to education \-
principals must actively support the development and training of teachers to
help them grow \- parents must support the teachers by re-enforcing the
importance of education \- parents and teachers MUST treat the students as
young adults rather than treating them as children ... I can't emphasise this
enough.

Based on my own experiences, one school we were at had terrible teachers and
an average principal ... and terrible results. The other school was
progressive and built confidence into everything the students did (eg. a
school fair fund-raiser was completely organised and run by ALL of the primary
school students). I now live in an area with one of the highest academic
performance relative to the wealth of the families, Index of Community Socio-
Educational Advantage (ICSEA). The attitude of parents, teachers and students
is staggeringly different to the previous school we were at. It's no surprise
that it's one of the best performing schools in Australia. You'll also notice
that Australia is one of the better performing countries in the world. If you
assume the problem is the teachers, or the parents, you're off the mark. You
need ALL of them to work together.

------
Panino
> _Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the
> whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the
> education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel
> that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers._

This is the exact opposite of my (previous) experience teaching high school,
where the main purpose was clearly to provide daycare.

------
tokenadult
I wonder what really would happen if the experiment were tried. It would be
difficult indeed to find any credentialed United States schoolteachers who
speak Finnish well enough to teach in Finland (but not insuperably difficult
to find Finnish teachers who speak English well enough to teach in the United
States, which tells us something right there). I would like to include a few
more countries in the mix. Indeed, that is what I like about the new book _The
Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way_ ,[1] because the book
follows some American exchange students over to other countries (Finland, yes,
but also Korea and Poland) and examines a lot of different trade-offs that
different school systems around the world have to deal with. The boy who
traveled over to Korea to be an exchange student and was profiled in the book
traveled over from the same school district in Minnesota I have lived in since
I had children. Finland is not the only model of a different system, and we
should be studying a lot of different models to make sure we aren't missing
out on lessons we can learn from practice elsewhere.

P.S. I am a teacher by occupation, and I know that the research shows that
teacher characteristics matter for learners. The parental involvement or value
placed on education by parents mentioned in several comments that preceded
mine here are important, but I deal often (just today, in fact) with trying to
help parents who are involved in their children's educations but are
frustrated by what's happening to their children in United States public
school classrooms.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Smartest-Kids-World-
They/dp/145165...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Smartest-Kids-World-
They/dp/145165443X)

------
thrownaway2424
The author's case is sensible and clearly presented but lacks context for the
intended audience of the USA. It's pointless to say that Finland has a unified
teacher preparation program, implying that other countries do not. There are
in fact uniform teacher training regimes in the USA that are comparable in
scale to the one in Finland. The New York City Department of Education has as
many students as Finland has. LAUSD isn't much smaller. So instead of asking
what lessons we could learn from Finland, would it make as much sense to
cherry-pick some successful school districts from within our own country and
learn lessons from them? Because that's essentially what you're doing when you
use Finland as your exemplar instead of a similar-population area of Europe.
How are the schools doing in Slovenia these days?

------
stcredzero
_...education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness
than on teacher effectiveness. This indicates that what schools are expected
to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than
teachers working individually._

Or, as Hillary Clinton put it, "It takes a village." I suspect that it's a
part of the plight of many immigrant parents who live in isolation from an
ethnic/cultural community, to feel like asking, "What's wrong with you?" of
their kids, because they keep noticing that things their kids don't know
things that they "should know." My parents expected me to know many things I
would've picked up in my environment, had I grown up in the same one my
parents did. This kind of knowledge is illustrated in Frank McCourt's _Angela
's Ashes_ when the city born lads see a cow for the first time, and onlooking
adults wonder if they are mentally deficient. "What are Cows!? Cows are cows!"

Another example of this kind of knowledge: When my family engages in
activities, like going somewhere, we generally imagine what all of the others
are doing and optimize our activities to minimize crossing paths and causing
each other wait times. This isn't something we were ever explicitly asked to
do. My sister and I just picked it up from our parents. In stark contrast, an
ex-girlfriend of mine would instead only perform narrowly delegated tasks and
discharge whatever task I delegated as quickly and directly as possible,
without regard for how that would impact my activities, even if that would
mean covering a cutting board I was using with another ingredient. Apparently,
her father would punish initiative as a matter of the principle of obedience,
and order around his family like robots.

Yet another example of this: in Japanese homes, people are expected to remove
their shoes and arrange them in a neat and orderly array, optimized for
exiting with a minimum of fuss and socks contact with the foyer floor.

Also very significant, in Finland: _" teaching is regarded as an esteemed
profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering."_ In the US, teachers
are regarded as occupying a class between the working and professionals,
esteemed lower than professions like medicine, law, and engineering. It says
much about our society's priorities, that we say, "Those who can't do, teach."

 _becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic
practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would
require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically
impossible._

This is somewhat the inherent dilemma of hiring for any skilled profession.
Mentoring is probably key here.

~~~
fennecfoxen
_It says much about our society 's priorities, that we say, "Those who can't
do, teach."_

Is that the root cause of our society's teaching-related woes, or is the
aphorism itself a consequence of glut of bad teachers?

~~~
stcredzero
I'm saying neither. I'm saying that it's an indication of our society's true
attitudes towards education.

------
MisterMashable
If Finland's great teachers were to teach in U.S. schools, they would
encounter significant pressure to conform from students, parents and
administrators. The ones who tow the line and preserve the status quo would
get to keep their jobs while the others would be mobbed, manipulated and
discarded. Administrators would fabricate a false narrative using negative
performance review. Parents would blame the teacher for failing to "teach"
which means graciously ignore their child's poor behavior and hand out high
grades. This is what would happen to the great majority of great Finnish
teachers were they to work here in America. The few who by good fortune places
themselves in American school communities which closely resemble Finland would
fit right in.

------
guelo
One of the ways racism expresses itself in the US is in child poverty. We
can't offer public assistance to poor children because it creates "welfare
queens", which is a stereotype that whites have about blacks that they are
lazy and will cheat.

~~~
javert
Child poverty is not a result of racism. Child poverty is a result of people
choosing to have children that they cannot support. They choose to do this
with the foreknowledge that society will not provide for those children. At
least, not enough to life them out of poverty.

People need to stop blaming everything on racism, and calling lots of things
racist that simply are not. Conflating the issues hurts on all fronts.

In other words, it makes it harder to identify and solve the real problem, and
it makes "racism" meaningless in the public dialog.

~~~
artsrc
Let's imagine you care about educational outcomes and child poverty, what
kinds of things would help?

Certainly free and easy access to sex education, contraception and abortion is
something that is a good policy.

People, even poor people, have always, and will always want children.

Once children are born to poor parents, you need to address that poverty, or
you will get poor educational outcomes for those children.

Certainly stigmatizing poor people, rather than focusing on bad luck they have
had, will provoke different policy outcomes.

~~~
javert
I didn't stigmatize poor people. If you consider stating facts of reality to
be stigmatization, you are fighting reality, and that is no way to deal with
it.

> rather than focusing on bad luck they have had

One of the main point of the article is precisely that being poor is not bad
luck: overall, it happens because a person didn't take education seriously
because they were not taught to do so by their parents.

I mean, you can say it's bad luck to be born to such parents, and I would
agree there.

------
mschuster91
I believe that the background of students is the most important factor when it
comes to education success.

When you put a "world-class teacher" in front of 30 students who have totally
different things on their mind that are NOT school-related - like e.g. having
to support their drug-addicted parents, their own addictions, having to care
for siblings, for food or sometimes even for a place to sleep - then even a
squad of the best teachers will not help any of these kids achieve "good
grades".

Putting the blame for fucked up environments on teachers (like it seems to be
done very often in the US) is unfair and stupid, because the teachers are in
no position to change their situation.

------
cryptlord
It always amazes me when these articles about the finnish education system pop
up. I'm finnish and I've dropped out of high school twice, I don't consider
myself dumb and have done very well in my life (Thank you, internet). A lot
better than my peers, most of them are dropouts as well. The only people who
have even got to an university level are people who already were from
wealthy/academic families.

It's the same thing everywhere, but I admit that education being free is a big
deal, but it doesn't fix social problems.

------
xacaxulu
There was an interesting study of IQs by college major, showing disciplines
such as social work, education and gender studies being at the lowest end of
the IQ spectrum. Seems like it would be counter intuitive to ask quite so much
from members of those demographics when it comes to educating our children.
[http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-
students...](http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students-by-
college-major-and-gender-ratio/)

~~~
djur
The post you link to points out that the IQ values are estimated from SAT or
GRE scores, and that most of the difference is explained by the quantitative
section of the SAT. What that ends up showing is that social work and
education are low-paid, low-prestige fields, which tend to employ more women.

------
TwoBit
Why is it that poor students fail so much more at education?

~~~
rayiner
My wife was briefly a teacher on an Indian reservation. There were few jobs on
the reservation and many of the kids' parents were unemployed, and even the
ones that were rarely were in a position that required any education. That's a
huge demotivator for kids--why sacrifice for education when you can't see in
front of your face that education might yield any benefits? Then there was, of
course, the social ills associated with poverty, which distracted kids from
school: alcoholism, drug abuse, crime, domestic violence, and sexual abuse.

I'm personally enormously skeptical of the idea that education is a solution
to poverty,[1] at a large scale. There is a game theory problem in play. The
fact is that it's unlikely that education will lift an individual inner city
kid "out of the hood." A relatively excellent outcome for diligence and hard
work would be going into debt to attend a third rate college, for the
privilege of fighting for a low-paying service job. So it's totally rational
for kids to be more preoccupied with whether joining the right gang will keep
them from getting harassed on the way home from school.

But if everyone worked hard and got educated, what might happen is that
economic opportunities could be created "in the hood." That's the prisoners
dilemma--the individually rational decision to devalue diligence and education
leads to a globally worse outcome. This is where culture comes in. You see
this with poor immigrant communities. They have little capital, but have
cultural mores that create an incentive for education and hard work. A kid
might not leave the neighborhood through education, but he'll get social
standing in the community, among authority figures and peers. When everyone
has that incentive, that creates economic opportunities within the
neighborhood. After all, there are neighborhoods in Bangladesh far poorer on
an objective scale than the worst ghettos of Chicago, that nonetheless have
bustling local economies.

[1] Poverty is, of course, relative. But I'm not talking about utopia, but
just about raising the plight of the poor here in the U.S. up to that of some
places in Western Europe.

~~~
james1071
I am not sure what you are saying. Those who are able to learn will do so,
given the right environment. Those who cannot, will not, whatever help you
give them. Poverty has nothing to do with it, though those who lack the
ability to learn may well also be poor.

~~~
pixl97
It's unfortunate you are incorrect, statistically speaking.

In general giving people a stable, appropriate calorie diet is the best way to
increase IQ over a population. Poverty has a whole lot to do with that.

Next, after you lift people out of poverty you still have the education
problem. Uneducated parents don't have educated kids, statistically speaking.
The first few years of life, before kids are ever sent to school define a
person's learning capacity hugely. Babies that have working parents and have
less personal care, less emotional closeness, and less exposure to a wide
range of language are going to be disadvantaged to those kids that do.

~~~
james1071
I am from London, in the UK.

Pretty much everyone has enough calories (too many in most cases).

As for schools-of course the rich people send their children to much better
schools.

Those who can't send their children to local schools. What happens there
depends on how bright they are, how hard they work and how committed their
parents are to education.

In the case of some ethnic groups there is a strong aversion to educating
their girls properly.

None of this has much to do with poverty, emotional closeness or whatever else
you claim.

~~~
barrkel
_Pretty much everyone has enough calories (too many in most cases)._ Sure;
foods high in sugar and fat have no effects on concentration levels versus
healthier food, right?

 _Those who can 't send their children to local schools. What happens there
depends on how bright they are, how hard they work and how committed their
parents are to education._ This is deeply ignorant. What happens when a smart
kid is in the middle of a class filled with kids who have no interest in
learning? Do you think the teacher will craft a whole special course specific
to that kid? Or do you think the teacher will try to get something basic to
stick at the lowest level, so almost all the kids get at least something from
their education?

What happens when a kid's peers mock the kid for being a swot? How socially
integrated is the kid going to be, when all his friends do things in the
evenings, and the kid's stuck doing homework and study? Ever heard of peer
pressure? Gangs? Do you have any memories of growing up in a state school in a
poor area, of the risk of being beaten up if you venture into the wrong area,
wearing the wrong uniform?

~~~
james1071
It's always a pleasure to interact with people who respond emotionally, based
on some other issue, than the one that is being discussed, so I congratulate
you for your response.

I presume that you're upset with life being unfair, which it most certainly
is.

It does not change the fact that lack of calories is not a significant factor
in poor educational attainment in the UK.

There are also many reasons for a pupil not getting top grades-but being
dragged into gang life by anti-intellectual peers is not one that ranks
highly.

More common, in my experience, are boys wasting hours on playing computer
games and smoking dope.

As for getting beaten up by entering into the wrong area-I don't see how that
stops them from doing their homework in their bedroom.

------
saranagati
there's a lot of talk here about teacher/school standardization but I dont see
any talk of what that standardization is, only whos at fault. students dont do
poorly in school because the information to learn isnt there or even because
its not encouraged by the students parents (speaking of the us education
system). students fail at school because of how much its geared to teach
square pegs when many students arent a square peg.

sure some teachers may teach for square pegs while others teach for round pegs
but the students dont get the option of attending the class for round pegs
instead of the square peg class. instead the student is thrown into a teachers
class and has to conform to however that teacher wants to structure and grade
the class. class A may be graded mostly on tests while class B may be mostly
on homework and even still class C may be a mix of both homework and tests.
then other teachers like to throw artifacts such as attendance to skew the
grade even more.

finally theres the problem of subjects that people just arent good at or dont
care for because they provide little real world use. subjects such as history
or soke more advanced english or math. these turn into something that a
student is not only forced to attend and contribute to but also be judged on.

for a personal anecdote and one of ky sources of critisms, when I was a
freshman in high school I was in an algebra class and aced both finals with
the highest grade in the class while getting A's and B's on all of my tests.
one thing I never did though was the homework (I turned in maybe two homework
assignments the entire year). end of the year comes and I fail the class
because I didnt turn in the homework and I had a habit of sleeping in the
class.

to top off all of that there are teachers who just suck and/or dont get along
with certain students. teachers who are condescending to soke students or try
to keep students in class during lunch. its not a teachers job to punish kids
in any way. if the student is disruptive to the class then they should dismiss
the student from the class and have the school take care of problem students.

------
tiatia
"Competition to get into these teacher education programs is tough" Let me
guess. They give their teachers a decent pay?

------
icantthinkofone
I would presume they would teach as well as great teachers from the US.

------
bobcostas55
Something worth noting whenever Finland and education come up: Finnish-
Americans in America do better than Finns in Finland.

~~~
arjie
Isn't that generally the case income-wise? Immigrants are a self-selecting
bunch. Picking up and moving to a different country is hard and you need to be
fairly dedicated to cross that gulf and put up with all the differences in
order to make it work. South Asian Indian-Americans are one of the highest
earning ethnic groups in the US, earning about twice the median national
household income. But the median income in India is awful.

~~~
bobcostas55
That's a very interesting question, and the answer isn't straight-forward. On
the one hand, obviously we should expect some selection effects. On the other
hand, there is a relative status effect counter-acting it. Long story short,
people prefer to be relatively rich in a poor country than relatively poor in
a rich country, even if their absolute level of wealth would increase. Stark &
Taylor (1991)[0] for example found that, at least when it comes to Mexico, the
relative preference trumps the absolute preference: poorer households were
more likely to migrate.

[0]
[http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2234433?sid=2110552233...](http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2234433?sid=21105522338573&uid=2&uid=3738128&uid=4)

------
platz
You'd need a lot of Finnish teachers

------
james1071
Haven't read the piece, but will say this (which is blindingly obvious to
everyone except those in control of the system):

All you need to do to get a good secondary education system is to hire good
graduates,train them and support their professional development.

What does not work is hiring idiots, de-skilling the job, filling the day with
busy work and other pointless nonsense.

~~~
GabrielF00
I am suspicious of any comment about American education that contains the
words "blindingly obvious" and "all you need to do".

The problems that exist in American education are incredibly complex. We've
tried a lot of big new things based on a simple, reductive approach (examples:
testing and accountability for schools and for teachers, small schools,
charter schools, Teach for America). I don't think any of these big new ideas
have transformed a low-performing urban public school system into a system
where educated white professionals would send their kids.

~~~
james1071
Well,each to their own. The US has proved spectacularly inept in a number of
areas (healthcare, obesity, guns and education) and the causes are indeed
blindingly obvious to anyone who is not an American.

~~~
adventured
It's worth noting that 3/4 of the problems you list didn't exist 30 years ago.

The US had a highly functional, cost effective healthcare system until the
early 1990s, when costs began to soar. In fact it still has the best hospitals
and doctors in the world to this day, along with the best technology and best
drugs. The US also has by far the most innovative healthcare tech and pharma
industries.

The US did not have an obesity _problem_ until the last 20 or 30 years.

The US still has by far the best universities on earth. There isn't even a
close second. Make a list of the top 20 universities and the US will take 17
of those slots. It had a tremendous public education system, again, until
about 20 years ago. And even now, half the country still does have an
excellent public education system.

If the US is so inept at education, how come US universities stand so far
above the rest of the world, and have for decades? Quick, name five
universities of equal quality to Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Yale, Princeton -
anywhere on earth, eg: Sweden, Switzerland, Norway.

~~~
james1071
Proving the point that Americans are totally blind to what everyone else can
see.

1 Obesity-apparently not a problem because it didn't exist 30- years ago.

That, I find hard to believe if I remember my first trip to the US in the late
1980s and the free food restaurants in Las Vegas.

2 Healthcare -an obvious disaster, due to lack of access and the lifestyle of
a large part of the population. Oh, it will also bankrupt the country without
major reforms.

3 The universities-rankings are based on research, which in turn are based on
buying in talent.Don't kid yourself that they reflect the quality of
undergraduates that are turned out or the population as a whole.

4 As for guns-no need to bother with that one.

~~~
adventured
I never said obesity isn't a problem, so right off the bat you're misleading
on what I said.

In fact the US did not have an obesity problem in the 1980s. Between 1980 and
2000, the obesity rate doubled among adults in the US, per the CDC. What I
originally said is accurate and easy to prove.

The obvious point, is that America has only become "inept" in the last 20 to
25 years on obesity. It's a very recent problem. It can be reversed and solved
as quickly as it become a problem. I'd argue that peak obesity has already
occurred, the causes have almost all been clearly identified, and over the
next 20 years Americans will get less obese measured by every five years that
go by.

2) Total healthcare costs stopped increasing several years ago. In fact it's
more likely that healthcare costs as a % of GDP and income will decline for
the next 20 years. It's not going to bankrupt the country without major
reforms. Not even remotely close. The US has among the highest disposable
income levels in the world, healthcare expenses are a very manageable problem
even at these elevated cost levels.

Americans do not have a healthcare access problem. In fact Americans are the
most over-doctored, over-tested, over-treated people on earth, and it's a huge
contributing factor for why Americans spend so much on healthcare. Americans
consume more healthcare services than any other people. Nearly 90% of
Americans have health coverage now, and the majority of those in the 10% that
do not, choose not to. The poor in America have had complete coverage for a
very long time, via state medicaid, among a dozen other programs.

Saying something is so, does not prove it. If you're going to make outlandish
claims (the US will be bankrupted by healthcare costs), you should back them
up.

3) The universities in the US outrank their peers in other countries across
the board on a direct comparison basis (top vs top, middle vs middle). It's
embarrassing how far ahead the US has been for the last 40 years. It's
universally accepted that the US has by far the best universities. There's no
debate to be had here, at all.

~~~
james1071
As I said, this is pretty much complete nonsense and a classic example of the
phenomenon of American blindness to their problems.

Take your ludicrous assertion that healthcare costs will decline as a % of GDP
over the next 20 years.

You are on another planet to the rest of us.

~~~
adventured
And yet I'm the one backing up my position, meanwhile you stick to hurling
insults.

We're already at a point where healthcare costs as a % of GDP will begin
declining. With the expansion of the ACA, the US Government has begun doing
what every country in Europe does: squeezing unnecessary costs out of
healthcare any way they can.

You claimed healthcare costs would bankrupt the US without reforms. Now let's
see you prove what you said, instead of relying on ad hominem attacks in place
of actual data points.

Per capita healthcare expenditure growth has been falling for about 12 years
now, and is down to low single digits:
[http://i.imgur.com/5ARcJ1s.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/5ARcJ1s.jpg)

"Medical Costs Register First Decline Since 1970s"
[http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/06/18/medical-costs-
regi...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/06/18/medical-costs-register-
first-decline-since-1970s/)

"CBO: Declining Health Care Costs Will Lower US Budget Deficit"
[http://www.voanews.com/content/us-cbo-estimates-slightly-
low...](http://www.voanews.com/content/us-cbo-estimates-slightly-lower-
deficits-as-health-subsidies-fall/1893114.html)

"Republicans Hurt By Slowing Costs in Health Care In the 2014 election,
Democrats seize on opportunity to talk about Medicare."
[http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/26/republicans-h...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/09/26/republicans-
hurt-by-slowing-costs-in-health-care)

