Finland is generally recognized as one of the
world’s highest performing nations. Over the past decade, Finnish
students have been high performers on the international PISA exams.
In Finnish schools, students never take a standardized test. How is
their progress assessed? By their
teachers.
Finnish educators say that the key to
their success is the high quality of their teachers. Not just a
star here and there, but the profession as a whole has high
standards for entry and for preparation. There are no shortcuts to
becoming a teacher in Finland. Teachers are highly respected, just
as much as other professions.
Finland believes in
high-quality teacher education. Students apply to enter teacher
colleges at the end of high school. The small nation’s eight
teacher preparation institutions are highly selective. Only one of
ten applicants is accepted, based on multiple measures, including
an essay, an entry test, an interview, and evidence of a high
motivation to teach. In addition to studying liberal arts subjects
and the subjects they will teach, future teachers study pedagogy,
theory, and conduct research about education. They learn how to
teach students with disabilities.Tthey take the study of education
seriously. They practice teaching. Preparing to become a teacher
takes five years. Then and only then may they become
teachers.
Higher education is completely free.
Finland views education as a basic human right, and as such, free
of cost to students. Thus, graduates of higher education in Finland
have no student debt to pay off. They can get as much education as
they want at no cost to them, because it is good for
society.
There are no alternative routes into
teaching. There is no Teach for Finland. Nor would anyone be
accepted as a teacher with an online degree. Nor would someone who
had a degree in physics or history be allowed to teach in a Finnish
school unless they had the required pedagogical
preparation.
Once graduates of the pedagogical
institutions become teachers, they have wide latitude about their
daily work in the classroom. Within each school, the principal and
teachers together make many decisions about what and how to teach
The national curriculum provides guidelines, but does not intrude
upon the professionalism of teachers. Teachers are trusted to make
the right decisions about and for their
students.
Finland has a NAEP-style national
assessment, but it is (like NAEP) based on sampling and has no
consequences for students, teachers, or
schools.
Because there is no standardized
testing, teachers are never evaluated by the rise or fall of their
students’ test scores. There is no value-added assessment in
Finland.
Finnish schools have small classes (I
visited three schools and never saw a class with more than 20
students). Finnish teachers use technology as a matter of course.
The arts are very important in Finnish schools, as are recess and
physical education.
Almost every Finnish teacher
and principal belongs to a union. They belong to the same union.
The union represents the interests of the profession in discussions
of national policy. Once a person becomes a teacher, they have
lifetime tenure. Few people leave the profession for which they
have trained so rigorously. The working conditions are good. They
are held in high esteem by their fellow citizens. Why would anyone
want to leave?
In Pasi Sahlberg’s award-winning
book, “Finnish Lessons,” he says that the crucial reforms in
Finnish education were drawn in large part from American educators
like John Dewey. That is why the teaching profession is highly
valued, and the classrooms are student-centered, test-free, and
devoted to the full development of each child’s full
humanity.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
One caveat. They have a leveled economy where no one is poor or discriminated against.
We need to add this.
I don’t think your information is accurate, Joseph. It is very unlikely, unbelievable in fact, that any nation on earth has a “leveled economy where no one is poor or discriminated aganist”.
Diane’s point is correct. Finnish Education is successful and results from the fact that the Finns have found the correct approach (or at least a very good approach) to educating their children. Further, they developed their successful model from American educators like John Dewey. We have chosen to forget our own lessons from the past and embark on this crazy, test driven education disaster of NCLB and RTTT.
But yes, Al, it is certainly the case that we have forgotten the lessons to be learned from the astonishing SUCCESSES of the U.S. public school system.
But it is a fact that the economic playing field is much more level in Finland than in the U.S. and a huge factor in the success of their education system. The many social services provided in Finland have lowered the child poverty rate to 5.3 percent compared to 23.1 percent in the U.S., which is obviously one of the big reasons the Finnish education system has been so successful.
This difference in the child poverty rate is very, very important. That rate for African-American students is over 40 percent.
You are so correct
There is some truth in what Joseph is saying here, however. If one corrects for the socioeconomic levels of the students taking the international exams, our students perform as well as the Finnish students do.
There is no “correct” way to teach. That’s what the deformers think. Socrates did not teach in the same way that Yeshua of Nazareth did.
Questions: do they have a ‘bar exam’ for entry into teaching at the conclusion of their degree? or a national performance assessment scored by outsourced workers who do not know the teacher candidate? or are decisions about graduation and readiness to teach made by teacher education faculty?
No bar exam. You just have to graduate (master’s) from the university.
But significant selection to get into upper secondary and than post secondary education. Is that correct?
Finland has a core curriculum.
Click to access Standing-on-the-Shoulders-of-Giants-An-American-Agenda-for-Education-Reform.pdf
… we hasten to add that self-directed problem- and project-based learning can easily
turn into a poor substitute for deep mastery of the underlying subjects in the curriculum.
When the student lacks a firm command of the nuances of the core subjects in the
curriculum, project- and problem-based curricula often result in very shallow knowledge
gained in the classroom. What makes it work in Finland is the fact that these pedagogies
and learning methods rest on top of solid mastery of the core subjects in the curriculum,
acquired by Finnish students in the lower grades…
And dianerav calls for such a curriculum here.
Insider at Bloomberg DOE Spills the Beans About Failed Policies
By dianerav
September 8, 2013 //6
… provide schools with the Common Core curriculum and supports that teachers have been clamoring for, but that the current bureaucracy does not want to sully their hands developing, preferring to blame teachers for not doing it themselves.
This Finnish “core curriculum” consists of VERY BROAD outlines allowing for a great deal of autonomy on the part of local schools and teachers. This curriculum is NOTHING like the amateurish CCSS in ELA.
Another interesting fact about the Finnish system is that formal education does not begin until age 7. I used to teach Kindergarten and I always felt that the heavy academic push in Kinder put unnecessary stress on my students. Now Common Core is going to make Kinder and 1st even more “rigorous”! Whatever happened to the concept of a developmentally appropriate curriculum?
It may be that the authors of the CCSS in ELA where shooting for something like that, but if they were, they failed. Well, maybe a D -. There’s some great stuff in the Publishers’ Criteria issued with the CCSS. But don’t hold your breath waiting for the precepts there, many of which are wise, to be followed by our textbook publishing monopolies.
were, not where, of course
Of all the brilliant posts that I have seen from Diane Ravitch since the inception of this blog, this, I do believe, may be the very best. Professor Ravitch often shares “A Gift for You This Sunday.” What a gift to awaken to this wisdom! Would that a lot of educrats across the country would as well.
I’ve just downloaded several books by Dewey in an effort to go back in time and rediscover what was good about education in the past, which created the teachers who taught me. The generation of teachers who created in me and others a love of learning. And who also created an entire generation of creative thinkers. I attended school in the 60s and 70s, college in the 80s. When I graduated from college it was an exciting time to be a teacher. The pay was low and resources scarce, but we were respected and knew we were part of creating a future generation of democratic citizens. There was no fast track to becoming a teacher.
I also downloaded Amanda Ripley’s book. I am on a mission to get back to basics and to try to figure out what I need to know and do to educate kids without the hype. What is it that children really need? Access to books and knowledge and the ability to question and discover. They can learn how to figure out the unknowns of our future if we arm them with curiosity and open the doors to knowledge. I will let you know when I have all the answers. Until then I will enjoy the journey of discovery. 🙂
You want to get back to basics ? “The Republic” of Plato, “on Rhetoric and Poetry by Aristotle and Cicero’s Ad Hominem are foundational.
You can’t build a house without a foundation.
Your welcome.
You’re welcome (note spelling)!
I have an 8th grade math book from the early 1900s from my grandmother and the math is much harder than what we teach now at the same grade. Our 8th grade algebra teacher is using it to give students extra credit problems in class. I think schools should keep one copy of each book as they buy a new series (they are discarded anyway) to see how their curriculum has changed over time. I’d love to see the ‘new math’ books I used as a child in the 60s. We should learn from our past in education, imagine where we’d be if we only used the best from the past 100+ years in text book/curriculum design!
Compared to today, a small percentage of children in the United States made it to the 8th grade in 1900.
It will give me something to do while I wait impatiently for my preordered copy of Diane’s book to arrive.
Good for you Bridget! I too went back and took a look at the works of John Dewey. They have some real answers for today’s educators. I recommend his book, “Experience and Education”. It is available at Amazon on Kindle.
Thanks. I’ll check it out. Love my Kindle. Instant gratification!
Does anyone know if the 1 in 10 figure for admission is drawn from the 42% of students that take the national matriculation exam (a truly high stakes standardized exam) .
Of those who take an entrance exam for teacher studies, and yes, most of them have taken the matriculation examination.
Worth noting about Finnish education: Pasi Sahlberg has commented about the oddity of Americans visiting Finland to see what they are doing there when so much of what they are doing is based on the work of people in America, people such as John Dewey and Linda Darling-Hammond.
I recently saw a lovely Canadian film (not a documentary) called Monsieur Lazhar. The film deals with a an Algerian immigrant who misrepresents his credentials to get a job as a schoolteacher. I was struck by this bit from one part of the film: The students start correcting M. Lazhar, their teacher, on grammatical terminology. The students have clearly been taught, up to that point, using terminology from contemporary scientific syntactic study. Their teacher uses terminology from the primitive folk theory of syntax that dates back to before the renaissance that occurred in linguistics after the publication of Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures. Amusingly, the oh-so-new Common Core in ELA not only uses that prescientific, folk language in its Language sections, but it also assumes a LOT of prescientific nonsense about how kids acquire language skills.
The CCSS in ELA were misconceived, I think, at the most fundamental level, at the level of the categorical description of what a “standards” should be in the various domains covered. That description should vary enormously across domains and within them. The job of preparing these “standards” was not approached with anything like the high seriousness that it required given what was at state.
And the new CCSS in ELA weren’t vetted. And they weren’t tested. And they weren’t subjected to critical scrutiny by the education community as a whole before they were foisted on us all. Instead, a small group of appointed amateurs was given the authority to overrule every teacher, curriculum coordinator, and curriculum designer in the country with regard to what the outcomes to be measured in the various ELA domains should be.
cx: of what “standards” should be
of course
I never let school stand in the way of my education-Mark Twain
For the motivated and inquisitive a teacher is irrelevant-Aristotle
Finland -the Edutopia! Sounds like lake Wobegon. So they don’t track their students in Finland? And there are no tests? So I guess there are no janitors, laundresses-nobody rakes the leaves in Finland and they have no school shootings. So only the top third are allowed to teach-In the States its the bottom third.
Lastly, the American Dept’s of Equal Outcomes-known as Education Departments are a joke. Subject matter knowledge, literacy, a dose of Plato and Cicero-patience, humility and a sense of humor are the stuff which makes a great teacher-but even Finland can’t teach all those things-there must some incompetent and boorish teachers in Finland.
Grow-up Ravitch-you really don’t expect adults to believe this tripe.
let’s see, your comments on this thread demonstrate not only your prejudice but also your ignorance, but don’t let that stop you. To start with, in Finland education is more of a right that it is in the United States, but you can ignore that. Cremins,who supervised Ravitch’s dissertation, is pretty generally considered the best historian of education, as Diane is for this generation. You are entitled to your opinions, however devoid of a factual basis they may be, but the lack of a factual basis is why I suspect you will be ignored by most readers of this blog, who prefer a fact-based discussion.
Diane:
I haven’t been to Finland yet, though I am planning a trip to see friends next Spring. I too am intrigued by what they have accomplished in their schools. I would simply add that
(a) Finnish Schools are significantly smaller than the average US school. This makes effective parental involvement, student management, staff management and building management more feasible. There are also no sports teams, no marching bands, no extra-curricular activities, and no school busing system except in rural areas. (There are plenty of community based sports clubs, etc.)
(b) There is a standard matriculation exam similar to those in France and Germany and A-levels in the UK. Success in this exam along with University entrance exams are important for determining which University a student can attend.
(c) Compulsory schooling stops at 16, which presumably means that problem students can be asked to leave. Does anyone know how frequent this is? . I spoke to two Finnish acquaintances last Fall. They both viewed disruptive students as a major issue in Finnish High Schools.
(d) After 16, about 40% of the age cohort go on to a HS program designed for entry into Research Universities or Polytechnics. Teachers attend Research Universities and essentially are drawn from the best students.
(e) While University is tuition free, student living expenses are covered in part by a student stipend for students in good standing and in part from family or personal funds. Stipends are stopped for university and polytechnic students who are not performing.
(f) Finland emphasizes language skills from early on reflecting its three national languages: Finnish, Swedish and Sami.
Bernie, I very much hope that when you return you will share what you learn there. I know that I learn from your posts all the time. Thank you.
Heya Bernie-so they track their students in the edutopia known as Finland? And perfection doesn’t really exist there because it is as rare as a perfect game in baseball. Why try to present it as otherwise?
I think the main difference is that Finland(and others) regard education as a privilege and a gift -not a right or a demand. They might even devote some time for the classics like The Republic-or even public speaking-which are not required in American Dept’s of Equal Outcomes-otherwise known a Education Dept’s.
You can’t teach patience, humility or a sense of humor so there are incompetent and boorish teachers in Finland as well as in America. Teaching is a calling-it really can’t be taught.
Have a safe trip-I hear the fishing is good in Finland.
James:
wrt tracking, yes and no. There appears to be little tracking through the 9 years of compulsory education. However, based on the conversations I had with Finnish acquaintances there is sometimes fierce competition to get into the best schools at all levels.
I have no idea about the detailed curriculum.
The size issue interests me from an organizational management point of view.
I believe principals in Finnish schools are expected to teach a number of classes.
Principals are expected to teach classes? Wonderful. That’s just wonderful.
Bernie, Read Pasi Sahlberg’s excellent book, “Finnish Lessons.”
Diane:
I did some time ago and provided an Amazon review.
It was pretty good, but outrageously expensive for a short paperback.
How is the fierce competition any different than America. That is the same here too. I don’t understand why people keep looking to Finland. The country is markedly different than the US. It only has about 5 million people.
you don’t understand why we look at Finland?
Because they are eating our lunch on international comparisons. And what is really interesting is how many of their ideas they got from us, from as far back as John Dewey, a point Pasi Sahlberg makes repeatedly.
Because they have only about 5% children in poverty, and when we adjust our test scores by degree of poverty we do about the same or even better than they do, which reminds us of the importance of societal support outside of school as a precondition for success in school – our performance not only correlates with degree of poverty, we have had programs in the US which demonstrate clearly that addressing poverty and segregation improves school performance.
By the way, Finland is a lot more diverse than people realize, and they offer support to their language minorities, which includes a chunk of people whose primary language is still Russian. They do not insist upon monolingual education as some have unfortunately imposed here.
Many states, and the vast majority of school districts, where the control of education lies in the US have fewer than 5 million inhabitants, and are just as homogenous. We have a lot to learn from Finland, but lack the professional culture and administrative structure and respect.
Bernie, mostly correct and accurate. University students are all getting a similar stipend, based on the fact that they have been accepted to the University. They are also all entitled to a bank loan guaranteed by the state. The terms used to be very good during the days of high inflation, but nowadays many students prefer part time jobs, especially during summer holidays.
An object lesson on why the leading charterites/privatizers don’t understand—and often go to great lengths to not understand—the “lessons of Finland” is this piece by Joel Klein in The Atlantic that appeared at the beginning of this year.
Read Diane’s posting above. Read Joel Klein on Finland. Make up your own mind.
Link: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/the-case-for-a-teacher-bar-exam/267030/
And for those still on the fence, google “Pasi Sahlberg, Diane Ravitch, blog” and click on some of the links.
Joel Kelin Word Salad may be the happy hour offering at EduFraud Bar & Grille [you get charged an extra $5 to have Joel Klein look-a-likes throw the food in your lap] but the rest of us aren’t buying in.
Rheeally.
🙂
We must respect the teachers so that we can achieve more quality education
So wonderful to see this excerpt in Slate. Let the discussion that we should have had before rushing heedlessly into these “reforms” begin! Diane, thank you.
I lived in Finland in the ’80s and have visited many times since. It is a wonderful country and very interesting in many ways; progressive and conservative at the same time. In education. the undeniable essential qualities of teachers and administrators are competence and collegiality. When a principal walks into a lounge, it is to converse and greet. It is like family. This has been the model and practice for many decades. There is no evidence whatsoever that US education is remotely interested in following this model or practice in any widespread way, under any structure; and there has never been a movement toward this since Dewey, regrettably he is paid more lip service here than put into actual practice.
One thing which isn’t clear regarding Finland is whether the testing/sampling includes all tracks or only the academic. There have been reforms, but generally vocational students follow a divergent path from the early teens, so they possibly may not be included in these interenational rankings. Would love to see a link to the facts on that. (And thanks for your comments, bernie1815.)
PISA is taken in 9th grade of comprehensive school (where everybody goes together; it is only after the 9 years you choose whether you want to go to a more academic high school or to a vocational school).
Finnish high schools are tracked, from what I understand, but their high school start later (in the equivalent of our 10th grade) and are somewhat akin to our community colleges. There is no tuition. I also understand that despite the fact that secondary education is not mandatory in Finland, most students chose to attend either the academic or technical tracks. Few “drop out.” They are also allowed to switch tracks. I also understand that since the universities are state funded and controlled they can limit or increase the amount of enrollees in a given field, according to what they think the economy of the country requires – thus, say (assuming this is true), if they need more primary care doctors or math teachers, they can provide for this with free board and tuition for prospective candidates. Thus, it is not entirely left up to the institution or individual student, not to day desire for prestige of a particular school.
Something also should be said about the importance of music education in Finland. Music study is considered a beneficial and prosocial activity (like the Victorian view of team sports, sadly still prevalent here) a human right, even, and is stressed from the earliest years. Finnish music teaching is much influenced by the theories of the modern Hungarian composer and educator Zoltán Kodály, as adapted for Finnish needs by one of his pupils. There are music conservatories in virtually every town where children can go after school. All of these are state supported.
There is an Organization of American Kodály Educators, OAKE, which describes its mission as: “to support music education of the highest quality, promote universal music literacy and lifelong music making, and preserve the musical heritage of the people of the United States of America through education, artistic performance, advocacy and research.”
How I wish our billionaires would disinterestedly fund that instead of ham-handedly interfering with public education, as they have been doing. But the fact is, they are not disinterested. Neither are they benevolent — disruption, poisoning the wells — draining the swamp — they will stop at nothing in pursuit of their goals.
Oh my!
What a great post!
Thank you Harold.
Music is a Universal Language …
Thank you for this information
Finland isn’t perfect but it does serve as a counter example to what our education reformers are trying to do. It isn’t choosing a market solution to problems. Like most European countries it has a strong social system that has lowered the levels of poverty. We need to stop thinking that there is a market based solution to everything. If you want maximum profit, that is a perfect way to get there, but the market doesn’t work for everything else. Just look at the market based solution to recreation. We have very expensive theme parks, expensive movie theaters. The non-market based solutions, such as national parks, wildlife refuges, state parks are cheaper and more available to all.
Jerry:
I agree that the market does a poor job where there high levels of externalities. I know the PR (for and against) is emphasizing that the current reforms are market oriented – but for me it is a matter of providing the customers with more choices and re-aligning the viewpoints of entrenched interest groups. Unfortunately some of the proposed methods are misdirected and counterproductive. This is why the Rick Hess’s piece in the National Review deserved a more balanced look than that provide by Paul Thomas.
As for your comments about recreation, I doubt that your assumptions about the full costs of private and public recreation are accurate when they are both fully costed.
you start with a philosophical lens, that market solutions are the answer. I’m not sure you can even justify that from Adam Smith, who presumed the market worked when everyone had perfect information, which they do not.
Further, many of the Founders would strongly disagree with that proposition. If I may, I am going to quote from part of the Massachusetts Constitution written by John and Samuel Adams and James Bowdoin, although the words in question were apparently from John Adams – and I will be quoting these in my review of Diane’s book”
Clearly a man like Adams, who also supported the necessity specifically of providing for PUBLIC schools at the expense of all for the benefit of all, would not agree that the solution to all of our problems was a free market, or that key public functions should be privatized and subject to market forces rather than provided by the government. Jefferson strongly supported public schools. Franklin benefited from public school (Boston Latin – also attended by Sam Adams and John Hancock).
I am of a generation where we still had a draft. We understood that there were things that were required / provided by the government which were not subject to choice. We paid taxes for police, even if we hired additional private security guards. You could choose to keep your child from public school but you still had your societal obligation to pay taxes for public schools for ALL of our children.
Ultimately, we do not have a totally free market nation, and never had, nor do we have total choice. After all, a free market would allow anyone to enter any market, the Constitution provides for the protection of copyrights and patents, both of which exclude totally free entry. Our economy has always been mixed.
So have been the approach to education, to personal security, to many other functions. You could choose to pay for something additional/different on your own, but you had a requirement to pay the taxes for basic public services.
And until recently, the notion of privately run prisons was considered alien to the American tradition, even if we had an additional tradition of creditors using the criminal justice system to imprison debtors.
We used to have an ability to free oneself from unrepeatable debt through bankruptcy, now even that has been distorted to benefit the lenders even if their lending has been predatory.
Put simply, competition and free market ideology notwithstanding, certain public functions should remain public if all of the people are to be served.
teacherken:
In this instance, I do not think I was starting with any philosophical lens. I was stating one well accepted limitation on a pure market based economy. With Jerry, I certainly don’t believe that there is a market based solution to everything. Even so, I believe that John Adams was sufficiently pragmatic as to know that the art of government was involved in defining the boundaries on the actions of all, including property rights. I guess you say the same thing in the rest of your comment.
You are probably right about the cost of private vs the complete cost of public parks. Still the private sphere doesn’t provide what the public does in that area.
You are leaving out the high stakes standardized exams that the students take.
the only tests with any stakes in Finland are for admission to university. There are NO tests that would qualify as high stakes in the US for either graduation from high school or promotion from grade to grade. Nor are tests EVER used as the primary metric for evaluating either teachers or schools.
I am not sure why matriculation exams are not considered high stakes. Students must take and do well on them in order to attend any state academic universities. There are no tests like that in the US.
What is your definition of high stakes? Mine is that the future of the test taker is shaped in part by the outcome of the test.
TE:
As another data point, I can assure you that every student who takes A-levels in the UK (Scotland has/had a different system) considers them “High Stakes”. The movie the History Boys does a nice job capturing the angst and consequences.
teacherken: when you let facts get in the way of proof by assertion…
I’ll keep reading.
Thanks for keeping it real.
Not rheeal.
🙂
Perhaps it might be useful to come up with a definition of a high stakes exam. Mine is one that could have a large impact on the student’s future. What is yours?
Yes, TE. But we are talking apples and oranges here. For a long, long time, in the U.S., we’ve had the SAT, which basically served as a filter for college admissions. The new exams in the U.S. have stakes of a very different kind. Teachers and schools are being evaluated on the basis of these, and so what’s on these tests what’s in the standards [sic] being tested have become all important. They are driving everything that is being down in our schools now. The lousy tests and the lousy standards have driven out a lot of good pedagogy and a lot of good curricula and have replaced these with junk–junk lesson formats created by educrats who don’t know a damned thing about teaching English.
The amateurs who created the CCSS in ELA are ruining our profession, but they are just continuing what was already well under way as a result of the state testing to standards that followed upon NCLB. I am very, very willing to get into specifics here. I can show you, in lesson after lesson after lesson, in textbook after textbook after textbook, one egregious example after another of the ways in which these standards [sic] are, ironically, producing precisely the opposite of the intended result. We have turned our schools into test prep machines, and English teachers and curriculum coordinators and everyone I know in the textbook industry who has any real knowledge of his or her subject area knows exactly what I am talking about here.
cx: everything that is being done.
I really need to start editing these notes before posting them.
But one cannot talk about this stuff in the abstract. One has to look at the lessons and see the ways in which the standards [sic] ironically distort and trivialize the lesson. Here’s a place from which to start thinking about this: Now, because of the standards-based testing in ELA, every publisher begins every project by making a spreadsheet that contains the CCSS ELA in one column and the lessons where those are “covered” in the other. And in EVERY case, writing the lessons to these asinine standards [sic] trivializes the lesson or destroys its coherence or forces one to ignore what’s really key in the text under consideration and to concentrate on whatever happens to be specified in the standards for reading informative texts or reading literary texts GENERALLY for that grade. And as E.D. Hirsch, Jr., pointed out on this blog a few days back, the ELA standards and the math ones differ because the former is a list of generalized “skills,” while the latter is a description of content of the subject. This emphasis on a few abstract skills encourages the creation of “and now for something completely different” curricula because the content doesn’t matter, only the skill does, and that in itself is enormously distorting. Add to this the fact that the publishers have an interest only in showing that those skills have been “covered,” and you get teachers with textbooks in their hands that have not approached any subject in a coherent manner. And topping all that off, the skills descriptions themselves in the new CCSS in ELA completely misconceive the domains they purport to describe. They are founded in a lot of really counterproductive, prescientific notions about the domains that they cover–profound misunderstandings of how kids acquire vocabulary, say, or the syntactic fluency or a large body of discourse structures to choose from when writing.
The devil here, TE, is in the details. These discussions always take place at some Laputa-like level of abstraction dealing with matters like whether we should, as a general matter, have high standards and good metrics. The people who wrote these standards [sic] clearly had no idea how complex the domains they were dealing with are, and they had no notion that measurable outcomes in these domains have to be conceptualized, at the genus level, very, very differently from one another. They have produced a document that is causing a horrific distortion of pedagogy and curricula. The state standards that come before the CCSS did as well, but now the intensity of the teach-to-the-standards mandate has increased enormously and so these problems with the process as conceived are magnified, enormously. The CCSS in ELA will set back education in the English language arts enormously, in the name, ironically, of raising standards and introducing more rigor. I have been shocked that these amateurish standards [sic] have not been met by a resounding chorus of derision. Clearly, anyone who thinks that these are at all well conceived hasn’t thought carefully about teaching in the various domains that the standards [sic] cover.
I very much wish that I had the time and resources to write a book about just why these standards are so awful and what the many, many alternatives to them might look like, but, alas, I have to earn a living, and taking a few months off to do that just isn’t in the picture.
@Robert,
The basic point of my posts here is not about the merits of particular exams, but the use of the term “high stakes”. Reading the comments posted here it is tempting to conclude that “high stakes” exams are defined as exams that have an impact on teachers, exams that only have an impact on students are not seen as being “high stakes” exams at all.
TE, the whole point is that these tests, by distorting the ways in which we measure teachers and schools, are having a very high and very negative impact on kids. It may come as a surprise to some, but a lot of teachers give a damn about what they are doing, care about teaching well, and it makes them sick, sick to death, to have to bastardize what they do to teach to the test. And, BTW, kids do get held back because of the test scores.
Quality flows from the bottom up. Something else flows from the top down. The state departments are telling the districts, you have to get with these new standards. The districts are pushing trainings onto their teachers. The principals are having to force their teachers to follow the orders from the top. Everyone’s working under a new culture of fear. And yet the standards are dreadful–amateurish crap–and the standards-based lesson plans are also dreadful–just the kind of junk that you would expect committees of bureaucrats to develop. And every training begins with the trainer basically saying, “We’re not interested in hearing your issues with any of this. No NEGATIVITY here. We’re here to improve our kids’ education, and this is how you are going to do it. The conversation takes the form of orders.” And all this is just like me telling a room full of plumbers that they have to follow my detailed instructions for plumbing. Well, I don’t know crap about plumbing, and the people who designed the CCSS in ELA don’t know crap about teaching English.
Robert:
Can you point to a curriculum that reflects your views of how teachers should approach ELA? How would you approach assessing progress or attainment for this curriculum?
Bernie, thanks for asking this. It’s a big question, and unfortunately, I am up against another deadline right now.
For the early grades, in reading and lit, I am a big fan of the Core Knowledge Sequence, if it is supplemented by a good phonics program of the kind described by Diane McGinness in her superb books Why Our Children Can’t Read and What We Can Do about It and Early Reading Instruction: What Science Really Tells Us about How to Teach Reading. I would make changes in the CK Sequence, certainly, but it’s quite strong. I haven’t seen the Core Knowledge phonics program, but about the importance of content-building read-alouds, they are absolutely on target. Matt Davis’s Reading: The Two Keys is a brilliant and completely overlooked little book about early reading instruction that everyone needs to read.
However, and this is important, no one is doing a good job, now, of vocabulary, grammar, and writing instruction–one based in what we now know of language acquisition. And there is a lot of very important cognitive science bearing on instruction in reading literature and nonliterary texts that has not found instantiation in any program. We haven’t seen much, at all, of what we’ve learned about learning in these domains instantiated in standards and curricula because mandating invariant standards has absolutely KILLED any scientifically informed innovation in ELA curricular design. Believe me, I have been to the meetings, with every publisher in the business. No one is interested in learning about how kids learn in any of these domains and instantiating that learning in new curricula. They are ONLY interested in aligning to the standards because that’s what will sell given the current climate. It was not always so. There was a short period, in the late seventies and early-to-mid eighties when there was a lot of site-based management and there was a lot of innovation in textbook publishing.
When people push for these invariant standards I always think, “God forgive them for they know not what they do.” If we hadn’t had these, if we had had real competition among competing visions, there would be much better answers to your questions–ones based in real science, not in pie-in-the-sky theories.
One of the things I love about the CK Sequence, BTW, is that it is meant to take up about 50% of class time, giving lots of room for local innovation and autonomy. Another key is that it is content-based, not skill based, though it is very important for people to understand that a program must impart both world knowledge (knowledge of what) and procedural knowledge (knowledge of how), and CKF could do better with regard to the latter.
One thing that the CCSS in ELA got right, amid a lot that is wrong: kids need to do sustained work in particular knowledge domains. We’ve been taking a “and now for something completely different” approach for quite a while now because of standards formulated as descriptions of highly generalized, abstract skills. BIG mistake.
Sorry that this is so rushed. Deadline today.
Bob
Bob:
No problem. Been there many, many times. I am interested in your answer or anyone else’s for that matter.
Oh, and Bernie, have a look at my essays here:
Click to access Natural_Prototypes_2.pdf
and here:
Click to access Naturalism_and_Grammar_Instruction.pdf
I sent you a couple links to essays I wrote about grammar and writing instruction. They are awaiting moderation. I’m sure that Diane will approve them when she gets the time to do so.
Teaching economist, I don’t know what whom you addressing or what you mean by: the statement “You are leaving out the high stakes standardized exams that the students take.”
If you are referring to Finland, there are no high stakes exams in Finnish elementary or secondary schools. Here is a link to a PDF about the matriculation exam. It is not compulsory and not outsourced by the government to be administered by a private, fee- based corporation with its own agenda, as our tests have been. Finnish universities also have entrance exams, as ours used to before they outsourced them.
Click to access th-exam.pdf
You don’t think the exam is high stakes for the students taking it?
The matriculation examination is high stakes and really quite a test. Ordinary lessons stop early in February and the students start preparing for the tests that start a month later. The students do not attend school during the spring at all, they only come back to receive their diploma and celebrate the end of school.
If a student wishes to take the common six tests, that will mean six six hour test within two weeks. Nowadays it is possible to divide the burden and take the tests in two parts. Anyway, the matriculation exam is a major happening and people remember it for the rest of their lives.
The ACT and SAT are basically the entrance exams.
There are many universities like mine, a public research university, that do not require the SAT or ACT exams. It appears that all candidates for Finish higher education must take the matriculation exam.
nope – increasing numbers of colleges/universities are SAT optional. More elite/prestigious private colleges/universities may look at SAT/ACT scores but have no fixed cut-off (such cut-offs are largely found at large state universities) and a significant number of colleges/universities will take almost all students who apply.
Here is more about the matriculation exam:
Note: for those taking other sections of the multipart test, the Finnish language section is compulsory (i.e., required). Obviously, also, the matriculation test influences the lower school curricula, just as our SAT does, even though not all students take it. Thus all students who wish to go to university in Finland must have studied three languages, mathematics, and humanities (including history, and science).
http://www.ylioppilastutkinto.fi/en/
Excerpt:
THE TESTS
Required and optional tests
The examination consists of at least four tests; one of them, the test in the candidate´s mother tongue, is compulsory [required] for all candidates. The candidate then chooses three other compulsory [required] tests from among the following four tests: the test in the second national language, a foreign language test, the mathematics test, and one test in the general studies battery of tests (sciences and humanities). As part of his or her examination, the candidate may additionally include one or more optional tests.
The headmaster of the upper secondary school will check to see whether the candidate fulfils the requirements laid down concerning participation in the examination and in the tests that are part of it.
The levels of the tests
Tests are arranged at two different levels of difficulty in mathematics, the second national language and foreign languages. The levels in mathematics and foreign languages are the advanced course and the basic course, and in the second national language the advanced course and the intermediate course. The candidate may choose which level of each of the above-mentioned subjects he or she takes, regardless of his or her studies at the upper secondary school. The candidate must take a test based on the advanced course in at least one compulsory test. The candidate may take only one test in the same subject on the examination.
Descriptions of the tests
The mother tongue test is arranged in Finnish, Swedish and Saami. The Finnish and Swedish tests have two parts: a textual skills section and an essay. In the textual skills test the candidate`s analytical skills and linguistic expression are measured. The essay focuses on the candidate`s general level of education, development of thinking, linguistic expression and coherency. The weighted sum of points determines the candidate`s grade on the mother tongue test. In the Saami language only an essay test is arranged. A candidate whose mother tongue is not Finnish, Swedish or Saami can replace the mother tongue test with the Finnish or Swedish second language test. These two tests include reading comprehension and written production sections.
The second national language tests and the foreign language tests include sections for listening and reading comprehension and sections demonstrating the candidate’s skill in written production in the language in question. The candidate may also take the mother tongue test in Finnish or Swedish in place of the second national language test in that language.
In the mathematics test the candidate must complete ten questions. The candidate is allowed to use calculators and books of tables that have been approved by the Board as aids.
The general studies battery includes tests in Evangelical Lutheran religion, Orthodox religion, ethics, philosophy, psychology, history, social studies, physics, chemistry, biology, geography and health education. Furthermore, the tests incorporate questions which cross the boundaries of these disciplines. Depending on the test in question, the candidate answers six or eight test items. –End/excerpt
Thanks for the post. It sounds like a very challenging exam for graduates of the upper secondary school. Does anyone know about the admission standards for upper secondary school? I have read that it is based on GPA in comprehensive school and in some cases exams, but was hoping for more detail.
For vocational schools, it’s a combination of GPA and some practical subjects such as home economics, woodwork or sports, for the more academic upper secondary schools, it’s the GPA of “non-practical” subjects and for some special schools, even interviews etc.
It looks like there is no entrance exam for upper secondary school, but I could be mistaken. Would appreciate hearing from someone with first-hand knowledge.
http://www.minedu.fi/OPM/Koulutus/lukiokoulutus/?lang=en
However, it looks like there are demanding admission criteria for both the academic and polytechnic universities (higher ed), so that a secondary school student, whether academic or vocational, had better study hard and do well.
As far as the nomenclature, there is an English translation issue here that causing puzzlement, to me, at least. Just as the literature uses the word “compulsory”, where, in English, “required” would be more precise, it also calls secondary (i., e., high school) “upper secondary school” although it seems there is no “lower” secondary school–or “middle” school, for that matter. Universities, of course, represent “higher education.” Thus, as I interpret it, Finnish education has three levels only: “Comprehensive”, “Secondary” and “Higher”, with higher denoting college.
Harold, there used to be lower secondary, called keskikoulu (middle school) but it is now included in the comprehensive. Upper secondary is not used in Finnish, it is toisen asteen koulutus or ‘second level schooling’. The term upper secondary is used in translations to give an idea of the level. Your idea of just three levels is cor rect.
There are no entrance exams to ordinary secondary schools. Vocational schools may have tests and interviews, and also high schools that are specialized have tests. (music, arts, etc.) In most cases the GPA is all that matters. Higher education entrance exams are in most fields really demanding, and students accepted can be as few as 10% (teaching), 5% (architecture), or less (medicine).
There is no high stakes testing except the matriculation exam, but 8th and 9th graders already understand that if they dream of getting to university they should pay attention to what teachers are saying. The good thing is that the curriculum has so many required subjects that nobody can accidentally lose the path to university by making wrong choices.
Here is a good link about China destressing students in elementary school, giving onky experiential homework. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/03/china-education-regulations_n_3862080.html?ir=Education&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003
Isn’t it true that the idea of an ostensible gestalt of material to be learned across the country is good, but to have a curriculum forced on states and then schools punished according to standardized mastery of it are two very different things? There were already national standards states could adopt, so I don’t really see why we needed CCSS. CCSS and all that goes along with it is taking it too far. Finland having a core curriculum is, seemingly, more like a state having one. That makes sense. But for the entire United States to have CCSS (those who signed up for it) with huge, oppressive penalties for not all being on the same page in terms of standardized numbers feels unAmerican to me.
Really. I am a reasonable person. I understand taking one for the team. But I know when something is rotten in Denmark and CCSS feels that way to me. It’s a hunch substantiated by what I learn reading this blog. Is there hysteria over it? Possibly. But I know it bothers me. It bothers me as much as a creationism approach would bother me (and I am a church goer raising my son in faith circles). Why? Well, I am still trying to figure out how to articulate my perceptions (again, the reason I visit this log daily), but right now what I surmise is that any time propaganda surrounds something to the extent it has CCSS, I step back and question the original incentive and intent of the creators, pushers, backers and users. And it isn’t even with a lunch and talk about CCSS (much as a pharmaceutical sales rep might present a new drug); instead it is mandates and extreme penalties. That ain’t right. Somethin’ ain’t right. And you throw in talk about national security and I really scratch my head.
There seems to be a generation who have become so overwhelmed by the computer age that in order to make sense of it, they want it over-valued and over-emphasized in child and adolescent raising (notice I did not say development because development is something we respond to, raising is more pro-active. . . planted, not scattered, and certainly not inherited). Anyway, national security. Really? In kindergarten? If this is so then America is not what it should be. If what Kindergarten children learn is determined by national security, well then we really do live in a different world than the one I was raised in. But I am not sure I am ready for that to be the view of the world I accept for my child and my family. And, perhaps, therein lies some of my restlessness with CCSS.
So with Finland being the point of comparison, I say we view Finland more like one of our US states, and not like the entire country. And take cues at that level.
If anyone with any power or persuasion cared to ask me what I think, I would tell them. And I would be compelling and convincing. But so far I cannot find that person (people).
Joanna,
The national security thrust in the Common Core debate is startling and difficult, I agree. But I want to try to explain why I am a political progressive and at the same time an educational conservative, supportive of the CCSS. I am thrilled to read teacherken’s writing here about Adams’ and Jefferson’s strong support of public education. It’s my understanding that the founding fathers who believed in universal public education believed it would make the difference in whether or not our democracy survived. I believe the social progressives of post WWII Finland believed that as well. I believe Eisenhower was right in saying that ONLY an alert and KNOWLEDGEABLE citizenry could prevent the disastrous rise of misplaced power represented by the military industrial complex. I believe the founding fathers cared about what the average American citizen knew. I believe they cared about what an education consisted of. And I think most Americans currently care about what our children learn in public school.
I don’t know if the CCSS represents what most Americans would agree are components of an essential education. But I believe there are essentials. I would say that we can’t stand up to Monsanto if we don’t understand what they do. Does that mean I think every American has to be a genetic engineer? No. But I believe most Americans have to know what genetic engineering is and how, essentially, it is done. We cannot effect the challenges inherent in climate change if we do not understand how it is happening, much less what to do about it. Whether we like it or not, we have unleashed a global situation in which knowledge is essential in the work saving our world.
It seems like the discussions take off in a direction that makes the conversations hit walls. There are times and places for abstractions and contemplating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but time is of the essence. I think there are slightly different viewpoints coming from primary, intermediate, middle, high school, and college teachers. Our experiences are unique, yet there is a thread of commonality.
I have taught most of my years in 3rd and 4th grade, so I have a different perspective than someone who teaches high school English or college math or kindergarten. At each grade level, the standards need to be examined for appropriate application into the curricula and into the tests. To do this rapidly and without consideration of developmental learning, sequential learning, and grade/age appropriate vocabulary, concepts and applications.
The CC can’t be some document that “sounds great on paper” because it is a “neat little package” all wrapped up and tied with a bow. It has to be a living document with room to breathe and grow. It needs to adjust to those using it.
There may be some very specific flaws in the scope of the content for high school. Maybe the developmental learning doesn’t seem necessary to those on that level. But, if students in the first grade (in NY) are expected to be able to perform as traditional 6th graders, there are 4-5 years of preparation missed for those students who are slammed with this ridiculous mindset. And, if they are being expected to succeed on this level, what demands are being imposed on the 6th graders in NY?
And, then teachers are “weeded out” based on this. It makes no sense. That isn’t to say that all teachers are great or were great students themselves.
For me, though, I’d rather have a sweet, motherly, “B” student teaching my child the alphabet, reading vocabulary, and how to be a good citizen than to have some “A+” whiz kid teaching them how to do the same using a computer all the time and who may or may not have a motherly, nurturing bone in his/her body.
I suppose we all want different things for our kids. My kids turned out fine. Made great grades, but I did not put them through the stress that this causes and I did not micromanage their lives. Some wish to do this.
Sometime, though, it would be nice if everyone got “on the same page” so we could go forward in some fashion with the ability to confront this whole testing mess head on. There are many critics of us for criticizing it. The facts we present must be coherent and show some kind of solidarity. Veering off topic and getting “personal” at times doesn’t help the process. Sometimes, though, it seems we need to be reined in.
On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 11:39 PM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> ** > Linda Wood commented: “Joanna, The national security thrust in the > Common Core debate is startling and difficult, I agree. But I want to try > to explain why I am a political progressive and at the same time an > educational conservative, supportive of the CCSS. I am thrilled to r” >
Linda. I appreciate your perspective. My point is more on the urgency and consequential implementation, the over-reliance on technology, the one size fits all and the rampant testing. Of course I want kids to know about GMOs. And they will. CCSS or not.
The debate continues. I am not sold, as you are, on CCSS.
As a southerner whose peeps came to Virginia in 1643, education trends are beginning to remind me of china patterns. At the end of the day, it is the decoration we put on a cup and saucer. So long as it holds our tea, I simply look forward to the next design. Some stand the test of time, others do not. (This is coming from a lady with over 25 patterns of tea cups from over the years). That may sound trite, but I have to compartmentalize in order to keep on keeping on. Politics surrounded tea, and politics surrounds CCSS.
One of my grandmothers was born in 1881. She was 43 when she had my mom. She went to school until 8th grade, took the test, and passed. She said she knew she was ready when she knew as much as the teacher, her uncle. My other grandma was born in 1901. She also took and passed the 8th grade graduation test. They were only taken by some since not everyone, esp girls, went to school. My grandpas did likewise. In any case, education was not all that widespread, esp in rural areas of WV.
I predict we will learn nothing from Finland, and I predict I would not complain if I never heard another word about what we can or can’t learn from Finland. But maybe it’s just me!
The DEFORMERS went to Finland to learn, and what they found out is not what they want our citizens to know. Those DEFORMERS who went to FInland and had a wonderful vacation in this country, pure and simple, at tax payers dollars or to write off re: their taxes.
Yvonne:
Do you have any evidence whatsoever to support your assertions?
When they come back, how many education “reformers” do you hear mention what works in Finland: strong teacher unions, no child poverty by political design, 24 hour- drop-in childcare starting at 9 mos., no premature academics, plenty of supervised play and arts (esp. music), no tracking, no short school year, no homework, no standardized tests, no charters, no vouchers? This goes so against the punitive, essentialist, and hypercompetitive mindset of the reformers, with its emphasis on boot-straps individualism and “grit”, that they apparently can’t even process it. So they say “but they have tracking” (they don’t), “they have highschool entrance exams” (I don’t believe they do), they don’t have “minorities”, “can’t apply to us”, “look over there, forget Finland.”
correction, should read “short school year” not “no short school year”! They have the shortest school year of any industrialized country, as I understand it. They want their citizens, including children to have a life outside of school and work.
In Finland you go to “high school” at age 16, after 9th grade (or you can take 10th grade to raise your GPA). High school takes three years from age 16 to 19. When I went in 1995 the GPA with which you got into my school was about 7.8 out of 10.0. (You get grades from 10 to 4, with 4 being a failing grade.) The was indeed no test to get into high school, but there sometimes is if you choose the vocational option, it depens on what type of vocation you’re interested in.
All children in Finland are guaranteed a good comprehensive education. All children are sampled for the international tests. As Pasi Sahlberg likes to say, “we aimed for equity, and we got excellence.” I strongly recommend his book “Finnish Lessons.”
I don’t know how many different kinds of fasteners there are, but certainly there are thousands. Several organizations issue standards to ensure that fasteners from different places are interchangeable and of acceptable quality. So, for example, the ISO issues standards for specification of threads on metric screws and bolts. Because of these, a manufacturer of ships in Greece can use bolts made by a manufacturer of bolts in China.
In Iron Age Britain, there were a few types of fastener in common use: the straight pin, the barbell fastener, the hook and eye, and the fibula, or brooch. Since then, hundreds of thousands of types of fastener have been invented, and each is a little miracle of invention.
If the ISO fastener standards were like the new CCSS in ELA, then they would say that all fasteners must be straight pins, barbells, hooks and eyes, or brooches, and the first two of these should be made of bone, tempered wood, iron, or bronze. The new standards [sic] seem to have been put together in complete obliviousness of what has been learned about language acquisition in the past fifty years or so and in almost complete obliviousness of best practices in the various ELA domains that they cover. The NCLB-inspired state standards that preceded them weren’t much better, and, indeed, the CCSS in ELA simply attempt to standardize the previously existing egregious, curriculum and pedagogy distorting state standards [sic].
It is my fervent hope that teachers of reading, writing, speaking listening, literature, and thinking will find ways to teach English well and to continue to innovate in their practice IN SPITE OF the amateurish CCSS in ELA and IN SPITE OF the terrible curricula and pedagogy that will be designed to “teach the new standards” in preparation for the new junk science assessments.
And, by the way, kids are not nuts bolts. They are not interchangeable parts to be identically milled by some universal standards-and-testing machine designed by some Common Standards and Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
Kids may not be nuts and bolts, but they are sorted into bins based on age and imaginary lines drawn on the ground by local polititions.
Yup, and both are crimes. I could not agree with you more, TE.
A few cxs in that post:
I don’t know how many different kinds of fasteners there are, but certainly there are thousands. Several organizations issue standards to ensure that fasteners from different places are interchangeable and of acceptable quality. So, for example, the ISO issues standards for specification of threads on metric screws and bolts. Because of these, a manufacturer of ships in Greece can use bolts made by a manufacturer of bolts in China and nuts made by a manufacturer in Japan.
In Iron Age Britain, there were a few types of fastener in common use: the straight pin, the barbell fastener, the hook and eye, and the fibula, or brooch. Since then, hundreds of thousands of types of fastener have been invented, and each is a little miracle of invention.
If the ISO fastener standards were like the new CCSS in ELA, then they would say that all fasteners must be straight pins, barbells, hooks and eyes, or brooches and that the first two of these must be made of bone, tempered wood, iron, or bronze. The new standards [sic] seem to have been put together in complete obliviousness of what has been learned about language acquisition in the past fifty years or so and in almost complete obliviousness of best practices in the various ELA domains that they cover. The NCLB-inspired state standards that preceded them weren’t much better, and, indeed, the CCSS in ELA simply attempt to standardize the previously existing egregious, curriculum-and-pedagogy-distorting state standards [sic].
It is my fervent hope that teachers of reading, writing, speaking, listening, literature, and thinking will find ways to teach English well and to continue to innovate in their practice IN SPITE OF the amateurish CCSS in ELA and IN SPITE OF the terrible curricula and pedagogy that will be designed to “teach the new standards” in preparation for the new junk-science assessments.
And, by the way, kids are not nuts and bolts. They are not interchangeable parts to be identically milled by some universal standards-and-testing machine designed by some Common Standards and Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
yikes, one more:
A few cxs in that post:
I don’t know how many different kinds of fasteners there are, but certainly there are thousands. Several organizations issue standards to ensure that fasteners from different places are interchangeable and of acceptable quality. So, for example, the ISO issues standards for specification of threads on metric screws and bolts. Because of these, a manufacturer of ships in Greece can use bolts made by a manufacturer in China with nuts made by a manufacturer in Japan.
In Iron Age Britain, there were a few types of fastener in common use: the straight pin, the barbell fastener, the hook and eye, and the fibula, or brooch. Since then, hundreds of thousands of types of fastener have been invented, and each is a little miracle of invention.
If the ISO fastener standards were like the new CCSS in ELA, then they would say that all fasteners must be straight pins, barbells, hooks and eyes, or brooches and that the first two of these must be made of bone, tempered wood, iron, or bronze. The new standards [sic] seem to have been put together in complete obliviousness of what has been learned about language acquisition in the past fifty years or so and in almost complete obliviousness of best practices in the various ELA domains that they cover. The NCLB-inspired state standards that preceded them weren’t much better, and, indeed, the CCSS in ELA simply attempt to standardize the previously existing NCLB-era egregious, curriculum-and-pedagogy-distorting state standards [sic].
It is my fervent hope that teachers of reading, writing, speaking, listening, literature, and thinking will find ways to teach English well and to continue to innovate in their practice IN SPITE OF the amateurish CCSS in ELA and IN SPITE OF the terrible curricula and pedagogy that will be designed to “teach the new standards” in preparation for the new junk-science assessments.
And, by the way, kids are not nuts and bolts. They are not interchangeable parts to be identically milled by some universal standards-and-testing CNC machine designed by some Common Standards and Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
Bob:
You raise an interesting question. Growing up in the UK, I never recall being in a class of less than 30 until I was in advanced math classes when I was 17. Beyond age 10, I do not recall any individualized instruction though most teachers certainly knew each student by name. Up until 11 we had the same teacher for all subjects.
I can see where a teacher who is teaching the same group of students in multiple classes/subjects can focus on the “whole” child, but once the teachers teach multiple classes/subjects how does that work? Even if there are small classes – say 15 – the time per student is vanishingly small. My wife teaches ESL at a local University with relatively small class size of 15 and the only way for her students to get enough air time is to use group exercises. Essentially they “teach” each other. It seems to me that even with modest class sizes so long as the contact time with students is limited to less than 90 minutes per day there is structurally little scope for personalization unless there is a move back to teachers teaching multiple subjects through Grade 8. Class size is but one parameter in this equation. In short, we may not treat children as interchangeable parts, but the way we structure and staff our schools forces that to be the case.
One way of having more personalization is if teachers have time and the resources (such as assistants in the classroom) to consult with each other and with other important adults in the child’s life about what is needed for their particular students. Learning problems that are identified could be nipped in the bud that way instead of being allowed to snowball. This is especially important where there is a cumulative curriculum.
Harold:
I assumed that your response was directed at my last comment to Bob – if not, my apologies.
Additional resources just as smaller classes may help, but I see the issue as more systemic. What is so hard about the subject matter through 8th Grade that a single teacher could not handle multiple subjects? Why wouldn’t Spanish be the only specialists?
University of Helsinki – Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, Department of Teacher of Education Research Report No 347 Authors: Jarkko Hautamäki, Sirkku Kupiainen, Jukka Marjanen, Mari-Pauliina Vainikainen and Risto Hotulainen
Signs of declining results 15 y
The change between the year 2001 and year 2012 is significant. The level of students’ attainment has declined considerably.The difference can be compared to a decline of Finnish students’ attainment in PISA reading literacy from the 539 points of PISA 2009 to 490 points, to below the OECD average.
‘Since 1996, educational effectiveness has been understood in Finland to include not only subject specific knowledge and skills but also the more general competences which are not the exclusive domain of any single subject but develop through good teaching along a student’s educational career. Many of these, including the object of the present assessment, learning to learn, have been named in the education policy documents of the European Union as key competences which each member state should provide their citizens as part of general education (EU 2006).
In spring 2012, the Helsinki University Centre for Educational Assessment implemented a nationally representative assessment of ninth grade students’ learning to learn competence. The assessment was inspired by signs of declining results in the past few years’ assessments. This decline had been observed both in the subject specific assessments of the Finnish National Board of Education, in the OECD PISA 2009 study, and in the learning to learn assessment implemented by the Centre for Educational Assessment in all comprehensive schools in Vantaa in 2010.
The results of the Vantaa study could be compared against the results of a similar assessment implemented in 2004. As the decline in students’ cognitive competence and in their learning related attitudes was especially strong in the two Vantaa studies, with only 6 years apart, a decision was made to direct the national assessment of spring 2012 to the same schools which had participated in a respective study in 2001.
Girls performed better
The goal of the assessment was to find out whether the decline in results, observed in the Helsinki region, were the same for the whole country. The assessment also offered a possibility to look at the readiness of schools to implement a computer-based assessment, and how this has changed during the 11 years between the two assessments. After all, the 2001 assessment was the first in Finland where large scale student assessment data was collected in schools using the Internet.
The main focus of the assessment was on students’ competence and their learning-related attitudes at the end of the comprehensive school education, but the assessment also relates to educational equity: to regional, between-school, and between- class differences and to the relation of students’ gender and home background to their competence and attitudes.
The assessment reached about 7800 ninth grade students in 82 schools in 65 municipalities. Of the students, 49% were girls and 51% boys. The share of students in Swedish speaking schools was 3.4%. As in 2001, the assessment was implemented in about half of the schools using a printed test booklet and in the other half via the Internet. The results of the 2001 and 2012 assessments were uniformed through IRT modelling to secure the comparability of the results. Hence, the results can be interpreted to represent the full Finnish ninth grade population.
Girls performed better than boys in all three fields of competence measured in the assessment: reasoning, mathematical thinking, and reading comprehension. The difference was especially noticeable in reading comprehension even if in this task girls’ attainment had declined more than boys’ attainment. Differences between the AVI-districts were small.
Decline of attainment
The impact of students’ home-background was, instead, obvious: the higher the education of the parents, the better the student performed in the assessment tasks. There was no difference in the impact of mother’s education on boys’ and girls’ attainment. The between-school-differences were very small (explaining under 2% of the variance) while the between-class differences were relatively large (9 % – 20 %). The change between the year 2001 and year 2012 is significant. The level of students’ attainment has declined considerably. The difference can be compared to a decline of Finnish students’ attainment in PISA reading literacy from the 539 points of PISA 2009 to 490 points, to below the OECD average. The mean level of students’ learning-supporting attitudes still falls above the mean of the scale used in the questions but also that mean has declined from 2001. The mean level of attitudes detrimental to learning has risen but the rise is more modest.
Girls’ attainment has declined more than boys’ in three of the five tasks. There was no gender difference in the change of students’ attitudes, however. Between-school differences were un-changed but differences between classes and between individual students had grown. The change in attitudes—unlike the change in attainment—was related to students’ home background: The decline in learning-supporting attitudes and the growth in attitudes detrimental to school work were weaker the better educated the mother. Home background was not related to the change in students’ attainment, however. A decline could be discerned both among the best and the weakest students.
Deeper cultural change
The results of the assessment point to a deeper, on-going cultural change which seems to affect the young generation especially hard. Formal education seems to be losing its former power and the accepting of the societal expectations which the school represents seems to be related more strongly than before to students’ home background.
The school has to compete with students’ self-elected pastime activities, the social media, and the boundless world of information and entertainment open to all through the Internet. The school is to a growing number of young people just one, often critically reviewed, developmental environment among many. The change is not a surprise, however. A similar decline in student attainment has been registered in the other Nordic countries already earlier.
It is time to concede that the signals of change have been discernible already for a while and to open up a national discussion regarding the state and future of the Finnish comprehensive school that rose to international acclaim due to our students’ success in the PISA studies.’
Source: University of Helsinki – Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, Department of Teacher of Education Research Report No 347 Authors: Jarkko Hautamäki, Sirkku Kupiainen, Jukka Marjanen, Mari-Pauliina Vainikainen and Risto Hotulainen
Here’s my approach:
Enjoy! 🙂
Over the years, there has been an assumotion, in middle America, at least, that elementary teachers “just” teach “the basics” and that, since they aren’t subject specific, they are less informed than secondary teachers. When I got my masters I was asked if I niw knew enough to teach high school, for example. And, there has been a disconnect among the curricula of elementary and secondary teaching demands and job difficukty.
These attitudes have changed drastically in the last 15- 20 years. However, as many objectives are found to need roots in the elementary grades, teachers have had to educate themselves beyond being “generalists” as the content has shifted downward.
My point: there needs to be a call for more intensive one-on-one attention to students as the receive their foundational education. Smaller class sizes need to be one focus in order for this to occur. Once students have a very strong foundation, the teachers in upper grade levels would be able to truly impart more content to the students.
For years, secondary teachers have complained that it isn’t “their job” to teach basic s to students who are poor readers and lacking mathematical skills. This is why the focus of much of the CC seems to be upon informational text in elementary grades, in order to teach kids how to read the kinds of things that they will be prepared to tackle in the content areas. While reading for enjoyment is also necessary, we are finally beginning to delve into how to read textbooks and current events with young children in a more direct fashion. I don’t disagree with this change.
In any case, we need to consider how to better prepare young students to succeed. It can’t be accomplished with a huge class of children who have nutritional, sleep, personal, or learning deficits from the day they are born. Can we reach everyone? No. NCLB’s mandate for proficiency for all was never achievable. It won’t be with any “reform” that fails to address the fact that ALL stdents from ALL backgrounds and economic levels can benefit from investing in SMALL classes. The issue has always been “money”. Currently, it seems that the preference is to invest in computer technology and TFA to avoid paying professional educators a living wage.
I am wondering why there can’t be advocacy for specifically addressing the real needs instead of focusing on gutting education in America. Why can there be an OUTCRY for smaller classes? Why can’t this society invest as much money into excellent education as it wastes on war?
This society is currently focused so much on hatred, suspicion, and spreading lies to protect the money of the few that they fail to realize that education is the basis for the future of the middle class which has been the backbone of America prior to the lie of “trickle down” that turned on he thinking caps of those who want power and conntrol. They seized the opportunity to defund society and they continue to get followers by claiming that anyone who isn’t a free market capitalist without conscience is un-American and a “socialist” by their uninformed definitions.
The education community needs to lead, not follow society, back to the ideas that will include appropriate learning environments for ALL students, not just for the few, and not forcing the same expectations on every student.
The problem with erasing individuality is that it erases creativity and innovation. Pushing the same expectations on everyone is counter-productive to the future of this nation.
So, thank you Diane Ravitch for seeing the light and spreading the word. I hope many people are going to listen and stand up for ALL kids, not just for their own.
A dream system that is real over there.
It is pretty important to know that a country, like Finland is going to leave its best treasure to the humnan beings;the childhood and the teens able to face problems in a smart way, instead of making war.
Something wonderful happened, when the Incas from Peru in South America left us the best heritage, their honesty, their work and the people still live thanks to them even the time. In Incas time the children were thought in values, but we still need a truly education system because we were very bad on the PISA evaluation.
I hope and wish we had a better quality of education.
Thanks for sharing your sucessful education with the world, because when people think in humans there is nothing hidden behind or under the Sun!
I am very much glad to know that Finland how much think about their nation and education.
University of Helsinki – Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, Department of Teacher of Education Research Report No 347 Authors: Jarkko Hautamäki, Sirkku Kupiainen, Jukka Marjanen, Mari-Pauliina Vainikainen and Risto Hotulainen
Signs of declining results 15 y
The change between the year 2001 and year 2012 is significant. The level of students’ attainment has declined considerably.The difference can be compared to a decline of Finnish students’ attainment in PISA reading literacy from the 539 points of PISA 2009 to 490 points, to below the OECD average.
‘Since 1996, educational effectiveness has been understood in Finland to include not only subject specific knowledge and skills but also the more general competences which are not the exclusive domain of any single subject but develop through good teaching along a student’s educational career. Many of these, including the object of the present assessment, learning to learn, have been named in the education policy documents of the European Union as key competences which each member state should provide their citizens as part of general education (EU 2006).
In spring 2012, the Helsinki University Centre for Educational Assessment implemented a nationally representative assessment of ninth grade students’ learning to learn competence. The assessment was inspired by signs of declining results in the past few years’ assessments. This decline had been observed both in the subject specific assessments of the Finnish National Board of Education, in the OECD PISA 2009 study, and in the learning to learn assessment implemented by the Centre for Educational Assessment in all comprehensive schools in Vantaa in 2010.
The results of the Vantaa study could be compared against the results of a similar assessment implemented in 2004. As the decline in students’ cognitive competence and in their learning related attitudes was especially strong in the two Vantaa studies, with only 6 years apart, a decision was made to direct the national assessment of spring 2012 to the same schools which had participated in a respective study in 2001.
Girls performed better
The goal of the assessment was to find out whether the decline in results, observed in the Helsinki region, were the same for the whole country. The assessment also offered a possibility to look at the readiness of schools to implement a computer-based assessment, and how this has changed during the 11 years between the two assessments. After all, the 2001 assessment was the first in Finland where large scale student assessment data was collected in schools using the Internet.
The main focus of the assessment was on students’ competence and their learning-related attitudes at the end of the comprehensive school education, but the assessment also relates to educational equity: to regional, between-school, and between- class differences and to the relation of students’ gender and home background to their competence and attitudes.
The assessment reached about 7800 ninth grade students in 82 schools in 65 municipalities. Of the students, 49% were girls and 51% boys. The share of students in Swedish speaking schools was 3.4%. As in 2001, the assessment was implemented in about half of the schools using a printed test booklet and in the other half via the Internet. The results of the 2001 and 2012 assessments were uniformed through IRT modelling to secure the comparability of the results. Hence, the results can be interpreted to represent the full Finnish ninth grade population.
Girls performed better than boys in all three fields of competence measured in the assessment: reasoning, mathematical thinking, and reading comprehension. The difference was especially noticeable in reading comprehension even if in this task girls’ attainment had declined more than boys’ attainment. Differences between the AVI-districts were small.
Decline of attainment
The impact of students’ home-background was, instead, obvious: the higher the education of the parents, the better the student performed in the assessment tasks. There was no difference in the impact of mother’s education on boys’ and girls’ attainment. The between-school-differences were very small (explaining under 2% of the variance) while the between-class differences were relatively large (9 % – 20 %). The change between the year 2001 and year 2012 is significant. The level of students’ attainment has declined considerably. The difference can be compared to a decline of Finnish students’ attainment in PISA reading literacy from the 539 points of PISA 2009 to 490 points, to below the OECD average. The mean level of students’ learning-supporting attitudes still falls above the mean of the scale used in the questions but also that mean has declined from 2001. The mean level of attitudes detrimental to learning has risen but the rise is more modest.
Girls’ attainment has declined more than boys’ in three of the five tasks. There was no gender difference in the change of students’ attitudes, however. Between-school differences were un-changed but differences between classes and between individual students had grown. The change in attitudes—unlike the change in attainment—was related to students’ home background: The decline in learning-supporting attitudes and the growth in attitudes detrimental to school work were weaker the better educated the mother. Home background was not related to the change in students’ attainment, however. A decline could be discerned both among the best and the weakest students.
Deeper cultural change
The results of the assessment point to a deeper, on-going cultural change which seems to affect the young generation especially hard. Formal education seems to be losing its former power and the accepting of the societal expectations which the school represents seems to be related more strongly than before to students’ home background.
The school has to compete with students’ self-elected pastime activities, the social media, and the boundless world of information and entertainment open to all through the Internet. The school is to a growing number of young people just one, often critically reviewed, developmental environment among many. The change is not a surprise, however. A similar decline in student attainment has been registered in the other Nordic countries already earlier.
It is time to concede that the signals of change have been discernible already for a while and to open up a national discussion regarding the state and future of the Finnish comprehensive school that rose to international acclaim due to our students’ success in the PISA studies.’
Source: University of Helsinki – Faculty of Behavioral Sciences, Department of Teacher of Education Research Report No 347 Authors: Jarkko Hautamäki, Sirkku Kupiainen, Jukka Marjanen, Mari-Pauliina Vainikainen and Risto Hotulainen
Personally, I see the problem with North American teaching being passion. Becoming a teacher has become far to easy. In some places yes it is a 4 year degree but for a large majority of teachers it may only be a 1 year program. A 1 year program that speaks to almost every graduate of university out there looking for work. Why not be a teacher? I cannot find a job currently in my field and it is only a 1 year degree. BAM, the influx of thousands upon thousands of skilled individuals most of which may or may not be passionate for teaching kids. Can’t find work locally because you are not that great at teaching, the answer is going to a remote community where they are desperate for teachers. Then after working a few years there jump back to the town you want and not many will argue with someone with experience. Once they get in the system there may not be much we can do to get them out. Now we are hurting the next generation of learning without really knowing it.
I like what Diane states about Finland and how they must all go through pedagogical training, I am curious however to the extent of that training for a person with a degree coming in.