We Need to Talk About Finland

The debates, discussions, forums and arguments about school reform in the U.S. most often include some reference to Finland. Why, you ask? Well, year after year Finnish 15- year-old students score at or near the top on the international survey of reading, math, and science test scores in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Meanwhile, American students are scoring somewhere in the middle of the pack.

For some involved in the U.S. school reform debate, winning an international competition like PISA is an obvious goal. So let’s talk about Finland – what we can learn from their educational system, as well as what works there but might not work in U.S.

According to the articles I’ve read,  The Children Must Play from The New Republic and What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland’s School Success from The Atlantic, there is a broad and balanced curriculum that includes labs, art, music, physical activity, along with math, science and reading. All students take the same broad curriculum, without tracking, until they choose to enter a university preparation curriculum.

No children must stay back a grade if they struggle, but instead are given extra tutoring help by specialized teachers. Those teachers are required to have a master’s degree and must pass rigorous certification standards. They are paid well, teach in small classes with plenty of time for preparation, and are given the freedom to design lessons and testing based upon their own creativity.

Something that stood out most to me when reading these articles is that there are no standardized tests to establish accountability. As a matter of fact, I learned that there is no word for “accountability” in Finnish. Finland also has no private schools; parents can choose the school their children attend, but all the schools are of the same level of quality. Regardless of where children live or their socioeconomic level, they all have access to a high-performing public school.

Like Finland, we need highly trained professionals and skilled workers in our educational system, and should reform our schools with the goal of removing inequality in education.

But, we cannot ignore our differences either – we are the direct opposite of Finland in terms of the demographic makeup of our students, which is much more diverse than Finland’s population. And if it is true that FAMILIES and not schools ultimately determine the educational destiny of our children, we face very different problems than Finland.

Perfect schools will not fix the influences of poverty. But they serve us well if you want to learn algebra. Apparently Finland excels at that.