Last week, I was invited by a former supervisor from the Alliance for Excellent Education (Alliance) to the Embassy of Finland in Washington, DC. I hurriedly packed by bags after my Wednesday classes and flew down to Dulles, so that I could attend the Thursday morning event, titled, "Finland: Education Superpower." Located at 3301 Massachusetts Avenue NW, the embassy is arguably one of the most cozy and beautiful buildings I've visited in the nation's capital. Built onto a forested hillside (a rare sight in DC), natural light floods through the glass panels onto the floor of the main seminar room, making it appear as if fluorescent light is absolutely unnecessary during the daytime. It is no wonder that this building won a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. The event was less designed to introduce the inner workings of the Finnish education system (they provided a brochure for that) and more dedicated towards discussing key themes that make it noticeably different from other education systems from around the world, including that of the United States. Please note that the speakers mentioned below were not necessarily suggesting that the Finnish system will also be successful in the United States. However, much can be learned from our friends in Northern Europe. Opening remarks were made by Antti Vänskä, Deputy Chief of Mission at the Embassy. Having worked with PISA analyses to author a few articles with the Alliance (which can be found here, under "Blog Posts"), I assumed that the event would begin with someone making statements about Finland's exceptional PISA scores. Mr. Vänskä affirmed my guess. Finland has been a consistent top performer on the PISA exam, an international assessment administered by the OECD of 15-year-old students in science, mathematics, and reading. Finnish students have scored above the OECD average since 2000, with below-average impact of socioeconomic status on performance. "However," Mr. Vänskä reminded the audience, "[these PISA results] were not achieved overnight." He then invited several guests onto the stage, each of whom discussed a core value of the Finnish education system that allowed their students to accomplish such feats. Core Value 1: Finland values its teachers. Two individuals addressed this point. First, Dr. Samuel E. Abrams from the Teachers College at Columbia University took a data-informed approach to argue why investment in public school teachers is of utmost importance. The PIAAC, also administered by the OECD, is an international assessment of literacy and numeracy skills in adults. While younger Finns, aged 25-34, scored relatively well on the PIAAC, older Finns did not exhibit this same pattern. Thus, there must have been a critical turning point that revolutionized the Finnish education system. Dr. Abrams attributed the results to changes in teacher preparation. The Finns decided to require a master's degree for its teachers, but rewarded them with a larger salary. Pre-service teachers began to be trained in how to differentiate instruction based on student needs. They were also taught a "learning through doing" model of instruction, where students take a hands-on approach to the material, with small amounts of teacher input. Dr. Taina Wewer, a teacher trainer from the Teacher Training School of Turku University, corroborated Dr. Abrams' argument with her own experiences. Pre-service teachers are subject to a rigorous curriculum, involving not only a practicum of pedagogical skills, but also participation in education research, so that they are experts in empirically-supported instruction methods by the time they step foot in the classroom. In-service teachers are required to polish their skills through mandatory professional development. Furthermore, a collaborative environment is encouraged among teachers, so that they may easily approach each other to gain additional skills. With such high standards, it follows that the Finnish general public has great respect for teachers and that many of their students also want to become teachers when they grow up. Core Value 2: Let children be children. Peter Vesterbacka, a Finnish entrepreneur formerly with Rovio (the company behind "Angry Birds"), remarked that he was "truly sad" to hear about the lack of play time for students in the United States. In contrast to American public schools, where students may have a single, short recess built into their school day (with recess disappearing entirely in middle and high schools), Finnish basic education (7- through 16-year-old students) features breaks regularly scheduled between lessons, where students are encouraged to socialize and play. Dr. Wewer elaborated on this point by mentioning that students' emotional health is cited multiple times in the Finnish National Core Curriculum. According to the national curriculum, students should experience a "joy of learning" at school, which can be manifested through physical activities and game-based learning. Core Value 3: Focus on learning, not testing. In the United States, The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, which reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, requires states to conduct mathematics and reading assessments every year in grades 3-8 and at least once in high school. In contrast, "[Finnish] assessment is part of the daily schoolwork," said Dr. Wewer. Finland does not have regular, national assessments like the United States. Teachers are given the autonomy to grade their students in a manner that they see fit (as long as it is aligned with the objectives outlined in the national curriculum). Can we replicate this system in the United States? Five million people live in Finland. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, that number is one-tenth of the population of K-12 students in the United States. Obviously, policies that work in a small, Scandinavian country are not going to directly translate to a large country where its students of varying needs come from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds. However, using more data, Dr. Abrams stated in his presentation why he hasn't given up hope just yet. Other Scandinavian countries, like Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, are similar to Finland in that they have small, homogeneous populations with egalitarian policies (e.g. universal healthcare). However, these countries are not top contenders on the PISA exam (their PISA performance is actually similar to that of the United States). Therefore, having a small, homogeneous population and implementing egalitarian policies are not prerequisites to the success of the Finnish education system, and some elements of that system could be replicated here to help American students. Small steps, modeled after the Finnish education system, can be taken relatively quickly. For example, we can begin by holding our educators to higher regards to increase their retention rates. No, that doesn't necessarily mean boosting their salaries by several thousand dollars tomorrow. No, that doesn't mean increasing teacher preparation standards to be even more rigorous than they already are, especially when several parts of the United States are experiencing teacher shortages. We can start by noting that their work is an invaluable contribution to our communities, as the DC public school system does by inviting educators to the Kennedy Center and celebrating their accomplishments. Then perhaps we can tackle more difficult issues, such as professional development activities, especially those embedded into a classroom setting, not just seminars that teachers have to set aside additional time and resources for. Also, perhaps we could look into restoring successful initiatives like North Carolina's teaching fellows program, which resulted in a high teacher retention rate, but failed to secure continued funding from a Republican state legislature in early 2015. I hope to visit a Finnish public school sometime in the future and get a first-hand insight into why the Finnish education system is revered by many from around the world.
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