As the Hechinger Report explains, Finland doesn’t give standardized tests, yet its students excel on the international standardized tests. Finland has this idea deeply grounded in its education system: it trusts its teachers to make their own tests and to decide how well students are doing.
By contrast, we trust no one and test everyone.
We waste billions of dollars on testing even as budgets are cut, teachers are laid off and class sizes grow. Worse, we waste a large number of weeks of instruction on testing and preparing to take tests. Kids are practicing to satisfy Pearson instead of learning new skills and knowledge.
Will our leaders ever come to their senses? Probably not until millions of parents withhold their child from the testing machine. Probably not until thousands of superintendents and principals speak out. Probably not until thousands of school boards say no.
Probably not until entire school districts refuse to give the tests or refuse to send the results to the state.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, you are so right, it is a culture of trust everywhere: the government trusts local authorities, local authorities trust principals, principals trust teachers and teachers students; but a as whole there is this culture of trust where prima facie everyone, even foreigners, are trusted. So the feeling of confidence is everywhere creating a very positive ethos inside and around schools! This is what I understand as a “powerful cultural learning environment” EA
Politicians do not see the money spent on testing as a waste because some of it ends up back in their pockets as campaign contributions from testing companies and the hedge fund managers who want to kill traditional public schools and replace them with the Blackwater of education.
If we made it impossible for private companies to deliver public education, politicians would lose interest in the issue altogether.
Exactamundo❢
All of this reform has come out of the fact that we do so badly on this international test, and to compete in a global world we have to do better. Even Michelle Rhee has said it. Instead of following the way the one country that always ranks high on this test (Finland) does it. We completly do the opposite, why? If we want to do better wouldn’t it be logical to follow Finlands blue print on education. If these people really were doing this for the children (like they like to profess) wouldn’t they at least introduce some of Finlands ideas. I’m sorry I am really having a hard time believing that people can be so cold, that people can be willing to destroy childrens lives for money, but I am starting to see the light and it’s hard.
You are so right. Why make an attempt year after year after year to reform education according to federal guidelines, to no avail. What’s wrong with getting ideas from other successful countries? Finland would be a good start.
Awww……but that would mean admitting some OTHER country besides the great U. S. of A. knows how things should be done. Can the egos of our leaders handle that???
All snarkiness aside, can we compare Finland to the U.S.?? I haven’t done any research but comparatively speaking are we alike? Or, even if we impose some of their education methods, would it make it difference?
One has to wonder.
Once again, it is FALSE that we do poorly on international standardized tests IF you control for poverty. Education is NOT the problem – poverty is.
Here’s how the situation was described in 1999. Have schools improved dramatically since then?
I have more. Sometimes I wonder could I be so cold if I was offered enough money. Does every one have a price, I want to believe no, but I also want to believe that people are decent. I may have more.
several other things about Finland that the reformers miss include that fact that the teaching force is completely unionized, that the primary focus of school administrators is to support the teachers, and that to fully become a teacher one not only has to have been a high-ranked student, but go through a process that takes several years before one is completely on one’s own and is the equivalent of getting a Masters degree here. No 5-week wonders who are only planning to teach for 2 years – about the time in training and increasing responsibility before Finnish teachers are fully on their own.
Oh, and one other thing – In Finland being a teacher is to belong to one of the most highly respected professions in the country.
Lots we could learn from Finland, but we won’t.
And I should also add that Finland’s education system is something those of us who really care about education have paid attention to long before it became fashionable, and many of us have spent time talking with Pasi Sahlberg and probably all of us acknowledge the brilliance of his coming up with the label Global Education Reform Movement, or “GERM” – as a means of describing the “reform” movement that is detrimentally infecting real education
Diane, you have a contradiction to sort out here.
Given how often you bash standardized tests (including part of this very post), who cares whether Finland excels on such tests? If such tests aren’t really and truly measuring something valuable about education, then Finland’s success on such tests doesn’t make Finland a model for us after all.
On the other hand, if you agree (as this post also seems to suggest) that standardized test performance is crucially important, then are we really just all debating about the best MEANS to do better on standardized tests?
actually there is no contradiction. THe issue isn’t whether or not a test is standardized, but whether or not it is being used for high stakes purposes. International tests like PISA and TIMMS carry no consequences for test takers, teachers, or schools. American standardized tests do. As soon as consequences are attached to tests being merely measuring the results, one begins to get distorted results as is predicted in Campbell’s Law.
Finnish students have only one standardized test with consequences, that for college admissions. American students are regularly faced with standardized tests that have consequences. Yet despite that, Finnish students overall outperform American students.
Now, there are other factors.
Percentage of US students in poverty >20%, in Finland <5%.
IF we look at US schools with 10% or less poverty, they outperform Finland. But then, when we look at those schools, they also tend to spend more per student on instruction, have stable teaching staffs, and smaller class sizes.
Finland is a less diverse country than the US to be sure, but Finland is multi-lingual in a way that most Americans cannot grasp.
Further, Finland more readily identifies students with special needs at younger ages, and a higher percentage receive assistance, which means that unlike the US where often we do not identify things like learning disabilities before the Middle grades, Finnish students are not wasting time in classes lacking the support necessary for them to succeed.
I’m sick of hearing about tests, and Finland, and what’s wrong with America’s schools. But it’s been a national pastime for at least 30 years, and unfortunately I don’t anticipate any of it waning.
Exactly…and some of the politicians even visited the Finnish schools. Guess their trip was just a junket.
Your post here, Diane, makes the unlikely assumption that Finish teachers=USA teachers, who are equally reliable as the teachers in Finland. I, of course, agree about the deleterious effects of the hyper testing we are experiencing, but the absence of such testing in Finland perhaps arises from the greater homogeneity of the student body, the greater prosperity of the parent body, and the much higher and more professional level of education of the teaching cadre in Finland. Eliminating the testing regimen here won’t produce education of the quality of Finland, as you seem to imply. We need to link the effects with their true causes.
No one mentioned the almost nonexixtence of childhood poverty in Finland.
non-existence of childhood poverty is not quite accurate. Finland has a child poverty rate of around 4%, as compared to the US with more than 20%. Yes, that is an important factor to consider but we do not need to pretend there is no poverty in Finland
Finland has a much lower child poverty rate BUT Finland also ADDRESSES the very poverty that in the US almost guarantees that many poor kids come to kindergarten already behind their peers – and never catch up. Finland makes sure that all kids have access to high-quality play-based preschools and give them lots of times to be CHILDREN in stimulating environments, whereas the US does not; Head Start serves only a tiny fraction of the population that would benefit from it, and even so is more academic and less play-based than is appropriate for that age. Here in the US, if a child gets a quality preschool experience, it’s pretty much because the family can afford it – and with our child poverty rate so high, that is a LOT of kids who are left out. 😦
If anyone is interested, here is a link to a website, louisianavoice, that encourages Louisiana parents to use FERPA to inform the state that they do not have permission to share their child’s information, including test data. One father sent a letter. Let’s see where this leads.
Nice idea. FERPA is usually put in play to deprive the public of information. Turn the tables!
Knowing how to write a test question is an indispensable competency for educators. When was the last time your kid’s teacher wrote a test?
Both my kids’ teachers still occasionally do, but when was the last time they were ALLOWED to write their own tests above and beyond the odd spelling test? Been a while. 😦
H.J. Rosen, since you mention test questions, how about we examine the manner in which questions on standardized test questions are constructed? They often use vocabulary that is not age appropriate, and give options that are designed to confuse children. I have been in groups that write tests and have protested this fact. Quite often the questions posed are not straight forward questions about the standard they are supposedly measuring, but also involve the child’s ability to sort through the wording of a question that is designed to confuse them. Does Pearson really know how to write a test?
I humbly submit to you the following: buy [it’s inexpensive] and read Todd Farley’s MAKING THE GRADES: MY MISADVENTURES IN THE STANDARDIZED TESTING INDUSTRY (2009).
Warning: even though it is very well written, prepare for an unsettling experience as you take a tour through the wilds of standardized testing. You may even find yourself alternately sickened and angry.
But it’s well worth the discomfort. It is an excellent antidote to the advocates of expensive high-stakes standardized testing.
I have examined those Pearson test questions and often times there is no way even for an educated adult to figure out which would be the correct answer out of the multiple choices given. That is why teachers feel the need to teach test taking strategies to figure out what the question is really asking. I once asked a state official if he thought he could pass our eighth grade high stakes test and he said sure, if the teacher taught it to me. What a waste of time.