Friday, July 8, 2011
The Finland Phenomenon
When I heard the news last week that the Department of Education is aiming to subject 4-year-olds to high-stakes testing, all I could do is shake my head in disbelief and despondently mutter a slightly altered riff off "The Big Lebowski's" Walter Sobchak.
Four-year-olds, dude.
You don't have to be as dyspeptic as Walter to know this is madness. According to Stanford University's Linda Darling-Hammond, who headed President Obama's education transition team, though we already "test students in the United States more than any other nation," our students "perform well below those of other industrialized countries in math and science." Yet the Obama administration, backed by corporate foundations, is nonetheless intensifying testing at all levels, as if doing the same thing and expecting different results is innovative "reform" rather than what it's always been: insanity.
In light of this craziness, it's no wonder we're being out-educated by countries going in the opposite policy direction.
Though bobo evangelists like David Brooks insist—without data, of course—hat reduced testing "leads to lethargy and perpetual mediocrity," Hammond notes that "nations like Finland and Korea—top scorers on the Programme for International Student Assessment" have largely "eliminated the crowded testing schedules used decades ago when these nations were much lower-achieving."
Finland's story, recounted in the new documentary "The Finland Phenomenon," is particularly striking. According to Harvard's Tony Wagner, the country's modernization campaign in the 1970s included a "transforming of the preparation and selection of future teachers."
"What has happened since is that teaching has become the most highly esteemed profession (in Finland)," says Wagner, who narrates the film. "There is no domestic testing ... because they have created such a high level of professionalism, they can trust their teachers."
The inherent parallels between Finland and the United States make the former's lessons indisputably relevant to us. As Wagner says, Finland is a fellow industrialized country "rated among the highest in the world in innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity." And though Finland is more racially homogenous than America, Wagner points out that "15% of the population speaks a second language"—meaning the country's schools face some of the same cross-cultural challenges as our schools.
That said, for all the similarities, Finland finds its comparative success in how it chooses to differ from us.
Where Finland rejects testing, nurtures teachers, and encourages its best and brightest to become educators, we fetishize testing, portray teachers as evil parasites and financially encourage top students to become Wall Streeters.
Just as important, Finland's tax and social welfare system have made it an economically equal society, and its education quality doesn't vary across class lines. By contrast, America's low taxes and meager social safety net have made it the industrialized world's most stratified nation—and our Separate And Unequal education system is better funded and better performing in rich neighborhoods, and grossly underfunded and therefore underperforming in poor areas.
This is the ugly secret that America's education "reformers" seek to hide.
As Joanne Barkan reports in Dissent magazine, data overwhelmingly show that "out-of-school factors" like poverty "count for twice as much as all in-school factors" in student achievement. But because economic inequality enriches wealthy titans like Wal-Mart's Walton family, and because those same titans fund education policy foundations and buy politicians, the national education debate avoids focusing on economics. Instead, it manufactures a narrative demonizing teachers and promoting testing as a panacea.
It's certainly a compelling fairy tale. Unfortunately for "reformers," Finland, Korea and other successes prove the story's dishonesty—and too bad for America's kids that those successes are being willfully ignored.
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota
Four-year-olds, dude.
You don't have to be as dyspeptic as Walter to know this is madness. According to Stanford University's Linda Darling-Hammond, who headed President Obama's education transition team, though we already "test students in the United States more than any other nation," our students "perform well below those of other industrialized countries in math and science." Yet the Obama administration, backed by corporate foundations, is nonetheless intensifying testing at all levels, as if doing the same thing and expecting different results is innovative "reform" rather than what it's always been: insanity.
In light of this craziness, it's no wonder we're being out-educated by countries going in the opposite policy direction.
Though bobo evangelists like David Brooks insist—without data, of course—hat reduced testing "leads to lethargy and perpetual mediocrity," Hammond notes that "nations like Finland and Korea—top scorers on the Programme for International Student Assessment" have largely "eliminated the crowded testing schedules used decades ago when these nations were much lower-achieving."
Finland's story, recounted in the new documentary "The Finland Phenomenon," is particularly striking. According to Harvard's Tony Wagner, the country's modernization campaign in the 1970s included a "transforming of the preparation and selection of future teachers."
"What has happened since is that teaching has become the most highly esteemed profession (in Finland)," says Wagner, who narrates the film. "There is no domestic testing ... because they have created such a high level of professionalism, they can trust their teachers."
The inherent parallels between Finland and the United States make the former's lessons indisputably relevant to us. As Wagner says, Finland is a fellow industrialized country "rated among the highest in the world in innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity." And though Finland is more racially homogenous than America, Wagner points out that "15% of the population speaks a second language"—meaning the country's schools face some of the same cross-cultural challenges as our schools.
That said, for all the similarities, Finland finds its comparative success in how it chooses to differ from us.
Where Finland rejects testing, nurtures teachers, and encourages its best and brightest to become educators, we fetishize testing, portray teachers as evil parasites and financially encourage top students to become Wall Streeters.
Just as important, Finland's tax and social welfare system have made it an economically equal society, and its education quality doesn't vary across class lines. By contrast, America's low taxes and meager social safety net have made it the industrialized world's most stratified nation—and our Separate And Unequal education system is better funded and better performing in rich neighborhoods, and grossly underfunded and therefore underperforming in poor areas.
This is the ugly secret that America's education "reformers" seek to hide.
As Joanne Barkan reports in Dissent magazine, data overwhelmingly show that "out-of-school factors" like poverty "count for twice as much as all in-school factors" in student achievement. But because economic inequality enriches wealthy titans like Wal-Mart's Walton family, and because those same titans fund education policy foundations and buy politicians, the national education debate avoids focusing on economics. Instead, it manufactures a narrative demonizing teachers and promoting testing as a panacea.
It's certainly a compelling fairy tale. Unfortunately for "reformers," Finland, Korea and other successes prove the story's dishonesty—and too bad for America's kids that those successes are being willfully ignored.
David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota
© 2011 Creators.com
"our Separate And Unequal education system is better funded and better performing in rich neighborhoods, and grossly underfunded and therefore under-performing in poor areas"
"ugly secret that America's education "reformers" seek to hide"
Wow - what a mouthful!
Is it any wonder that Eisenhower integrated schools in 1954 as a "national security" agenda, that our class division makes us weak internationally?
I've been in business long enough to know that "testing" is seen as wasteful and "non-value added". If you do your work right, routine testing is not needed. Testing by itself does not make anything better, but it can be wisely used to initially qualify if a suppliers goods is acceptable to be used in a business's production. Yet, why did my job building machinery for GM, Toyota, and others, always include "testing stations" to check that every single little assembly line operation was done correctly? Most times, this "test" was built into the assembly operation itself, to the point that it operated at zero cost and in zero time. They found that waiting until the SUV is built before you found it has a problem was VERY expensive to remedy! (Like consumer car repair)
Apply that to schools. If the incoming "raw materials" (students) is consistent and all on the same level playing field, no testing is needed. Thanks to Finland's "socialist" system, they feel confident that all the incoming children are ready, are equal. Perhaps they also had some "Montessori" like ideas, that children learn when they are ready to learn, rather than expect them to plod along in German military lock-step.
However, when you have so much variance in the raw materials as in our country, in our state, 4 year old testing is a flat out admission that we have a class problem in how our children are raised! There once was "HeadStart", I don't hear much about that anymore. Did it flat out fail? Or has the political will turned and said "You, over there, you are not going to be chosen to participate in American life... ever!" -- (If only "grandma" had been killed before she gave birth to your mother, then we wouldn't have this problem today)
"America's low taxes and meager social safety net have made it the industrialized world's most stratified nation—and our Separate And Unequal education system is better funded and better performing in rich neighborhoods, and grossly underfunded and therefore under-performing in poor areas."
"ugly secret that America's education "reformers" seek to hide"
-- Wow, what a mouthful! --
In capitalist business, "testing" is seen as wasteful and "non-value added". Routine Testing does not make the product any better, you were supposed to do everything right the first time, purchased all your incoming materials from quality suppliers. Yet, testing is still used to qualify a supplier, to verify that their materials to be purchased can be used without harming your own product quality. When I was making machines for GM, Toyota, and others, a test station was always used to verify each operation in the assembly process. They actually had the tests done during the assembly operation, so that it appeared like zero cost and zero time. They had found that waiting until the SUV was finished was too expensive to go back and fix the problem. (How expensive is consumer auto repair?)
What testing of 4 year-olds means is a flat out admission of a problem in this country, a class problem, a failure of the parent(s) to bring the student to a level ready for school. We once had HeadStart to try to solve this problem, I don't hear much about it anymore. Did it fail? Or did our political will change, so that we say "You! Over there! You will not be chosen to participate in American society!" -- as if we really meant to say "If we had only pulled the plug on Grandma before your mother was ever born."
Sorry about the repeat, the first attempt did not (appear to take.)