Education Week reports that there was no significant difference between the performance of eighth grade students in Finland and the US in mathematics on the TIMSS.
Four American states had higher scores in eighth grade mathematics on TIMSS than Finland: Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Indiana.
This is not what you hear in the media, nor what you hear from the corporate reformers in these states, who are still crying wolf about the “crisis” in public education and the need to turn public schools over to private management as soon as possible.
Finland excels on the PISA exams, which tests have students use their learning to solve real-life problems. The TIMSS exams are aligned with the curriculum. Take your pick.
As I have written before and will write again, we should forget the horse race.
Once a nation reaches a certain level of economic and social development, the test scores predict nothing and are of far less importance than income inequality, poverty, and the physical and mental health of its people.
Why isn’t this on the front page of every newspaper?
Surely, this question is rhetorical in nature. Why, indeed. Even the cable news network’s MSNBC, once considered a “progressive” news site, almost completely avoids any discussion of public schools and the move, with Obama’s approval, to replace them with corporate-owned, for-profit, complexes of rightest hegemony. And now, if the nod is given to the NRA. they’ll have their own army of guns around their schools’ doors.
Other than Ed Schultz and the “Ed Show,” NBC and MSNBC avoids education or toes the “Education Nation” line.
I just forwarded this to Newsday, our local teacher bashing paper.
That Finland’s child poverty level is about 5.5% versus the US at around 22.3%, or that their adult literacy rate is 99% while US adults illiteracy level is between 19-22% apparently means nothing. And of course the social services or what we call wrap-around services for children are readily available for ALL kids in ways we can’t begin to imagine…none of this is ever considered. Oh, and yes, their very small and incredibly homogeneous population is so similar to ours, arguably one of the most diverse in the world is clearly irrelevant to how these comparisons are crafted.
Diane, you are so right about it! When I traveled the world in search of the Shangri-la in school education, and first visited Finland and other countries like Scotland, Flanders, and Sweden and even Switzerland, all of them high in PISA, I was surprised by the fact that how little importance the school community and the society gave to international or national test assessments. They were even less interested in ranking or league tables. Of course, they want to be successful, but they don’t brag about it! They are much concentrated in learning and teaching, and equality and the right cultural environment, than points in PISA or TIMSS or PIRLS. Education is not only about pedagogy; it is also about poverty, culture, transparency, equality and support!
It is telling that Diane refers to these international competitions as horse races. It’s also depressing that there is no international race to erase child poverty. Where are our priorities?
Thank you for staying the course.
For more proof of that, see today’s (Dec 23) NY Times front page story about three young, bright, motivated women from Galveston. “For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall.” Outstanding story that shows affluent students with low test scores fare better than low-income students with above average scores.
This is a case of classic reformist goal switching. We’ve done this quite a lot in Florida. Tests like PISA are all- important until students and teachers excel at them. Then the tests are deemed to be inadequate, without enough rigor, or flawed. The other strategy is to assume that if students and teachers do well they must have cheated. There is no way to win. If the tests are passed they are made more difficult and the bar is raised again and again. The only acceptable outcome is failure and demonization of teachers. There will never be good news about student performance because it doesn’t fit the reformist narrative.
Finland may not be relevant *now* because of their low child poverty but that is because they planned thirty years ago to reduce it through their social systems. One of their ways was all good schools and equity of access.