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Liberia Needs Free Public Schools, not Privatization and Outsourcing of Its Responsibility to Children

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2016 //
4

Liberia is seriously considering a proposal to outsource its elementary schools to foreign investors, notably Bridge International Academies, backed by wealthy Americans.

 

This Nigerian-born, American-educated journalist and historian thinks privatization is a terrible idea.

 

C. Patrick Burrowes writes that the plan to privatize what should be a government responsibility is a boondoggle.

 

He writes:

 

Poor Liberia! Few countries in the world have been as ill served by its government officials, as Liberia has been.

 

In the 1920s, Liberia earned the opprobrium of the world when some selfish officials opted to supply laborers by force to private foreign contractors. The cries and protests of ordinary Liberians went unheeded by them, until international pressure brought an end to their heartless scheme.

 

If this government is allowed to outsource the entire elementary school system, Liberia will enter the annals of infamy once again. At stake is not just the future of education in Liberia. If this proposal is allowed to pass, it will be the beginning of the end for universal public education, a concept with roots dating back to 1647. At stake is the future schooling of children around the world.

 

The proposal must be blocked, not just as a matter of principle. It must be opposed because it is based on faulty logic. Furthermore, its advocates provide no evidence to support their radical and disruptive experiment with the nation’s school system. Instead, they offer ideological buzzwords like “privatization” and “technology.”

 

But technologies cannot teach; people do. The top three factors for ensuring student success in early childhood education are: good teachers, good teachers, and good teachers. In other words, the quality of teaching and teacher-support are the strongest predictor of quality. If successful Liberians are humble and honest, we will readily acknowledge that we owe whatever careers we have today to the foundation laid by good elementary school teachers.

 

Throughout its history, Liberia produced thousands of such dedicated and self-sacrificing educators. The late Albert Porte and Dr. Mary Antoinette Brown-Sherman are just two well-known examples. Each of us could name several others who impacted our lives directly. Those teachers worked with few, if any, advanced technologies. Yet, their impact in the lives of students was immeasurable. So, why the urgent need now for the outsourcing of curriculum delivery and classroom management by cell phones?

 

The main reason is this: The Liberian educational system over the last decade has been driven by donors’ agendas, with little systematic planning based on local needs. Donors love giving chairs, buildings and other concrete objects that they can slap their logos on for all to see. It is fine to accept those inputs, but government should have its own master plan. The plan should determine allocation of resources, not the other way around….

 

Moments arise in history that tests the honor and moral fiber of a people. The forced-labor scandal of the 1920s was one. This educational outsourcing boondoggle is another. By our actions, let us prove ourselves worthy of the respect we want from the rest of the world and from our descendants.

 

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, International, Privatization

OECD Education Chief: “Technology is Doing More Harm Than Good”

By dianeravitch
April 7, 2016 //
47

Andreas Schleicher, who is education director for the OECD and oversees the international assessment PISA, spoke recently in Australia. He was especially concerned about the overuse of technology in schools.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on his comments:

“Private, Catholic and public schools are reducing their reliance on laptops and tablets following a damning international assessment and concerns over the impact of social media on learning.

“The reality is that technology is doing more harm than good in our schools today,” the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s education chief Andreas Schleicher told world leaders at a global education forum this month.

“Last week, John Vallance, the principal of one of Sydney’s most expensive private schools, Sydney Grammar, said that laptops were not necessary in class and that more traditional teaching methods were more effective.

“Schools in the Catholic sector are also moving away from laptop centred learning after an OECD report found that countries which have invested heavily in education technology have seen no noticeable improvement in their performances in results for reading, mathematics or science.

“Australia has spent $2.4 billion putting laptops in the bags of as many schoolchildren as possible through the Digital Education Revolution of the Rudd and Gillard governments.

“Education is a bit like the stock market, it overshoots.” said St Paul’s Catholic College principal Mark Baker. “Computers have been oversold and there is no evidence that it improve outcomes. Giving out laptops was the educational equivalent of putting pink batts in people’s roofs”.

“Mr Baker said every school in NSW has become a Google or an Apple school. “If I put McDonald’s signs all over the school saying McDonald’s was bringing you education, there would be an outcry.”

“The Manly school has banned laptops for one day a week in an effort to get pupils out onto the sporting field and away from LCD screens. “If you say that at an education meeting you are branded as an educational dinosaur,” the principal of 17 years told Fairfax Media….

“While laptops have brought a plethora of resources to the fingertips of students, educators remain concerned about their use as tools of distraction….

A new survey of 1000 young adults has found that 39 per cent obsessively compare their life and achievements to others on social media, according to the Optus Digital Thumbprint program.

Mr Baker believes that removing the centrality of the laptop in the classroom might be the first step in getting that balance back.

“Parents expect schools to have the technology,” he said. “The issue is the appropriateness. Anyone who says we should stop using textbooks is peddling dangerous nonsense.”

“Education leaders agree: “If we want our children to be smarter than a smartphone then we have to think harder,” Mr Schleicher said.”

Categories International, Technology, Testing

Education in Crisis: The Threat of Privatization Around the World

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2016 //
53

It has become conventional wisdom that “education is in crisis.” I have been asked about this question by many interviewers. They say something like: “Do you think American education is in crisis? What is the cause of the crisis?” And I answer, “Yes, there is a crisis, but it is not the one you have read about. The crisis in education today is an existential threat to the survival of public education. The threat comes from those who unfairly blame the school for social conditions, and then create a false narrative of failure. The real threat is privatization and the loss of a fundamental democratic institution.”

 

I thank Laura Chapman for pointing me to an excellent online resource sponsored by Education International, which advocates for teachers and free public education around the world. The online site gathers together news from around the world about the crisis I described, the corporate assault on public education, both in developed countries like our own and in nations where the public education system is rudimentary and severely underfunded.

 

As we have seen again and again, the corporate education industry is eager to break into the U.S. public education and turn it into a free marketplace, where they can monetize the schools and be assured of government subsidization. On the whole, these privatized institutions do not produce higher test scores than regular public schools, except for those that cherrypick their students and exclude the neediest and lowest performing students. The promotion of privatization by philanthropies, by the U.S. Department of Education, by rightwing governors (and a few Democratic governors like Cuomo of New York and Malloy of Connecticut), by the hedge fund industry, and by a burgeoning education equity industry poses a danger to our democracy. In some communities, public schools verge on bankruptcy as charters drain their resources and their best students. Nationwide, charter schools have paved the way for vouchers by making “school choice” non-controversial.

 

Yes, education is in crisis. The profession of teaching is threatened by the financial powerhouse Teach for America, which sells the bizarre idea that amateurs are more successful than experienced teachers. TFA–and the belief in amateurism–has also facilitated the passage of legislation to strip teachers of basic rights to due process and of salaries tied to experience and credentials.

 

Education is in crisis because of the explosion of testing and the embrace by government of test scores as both the means and the end of education. The scores are treated as a measure of teacher effectiveness and school effectiveness, when they are in fact a measure of the family income of the students enrolled in the school. The worst consequence of the romance with standardized testing is that children are ranked, sorted, and assigned a value based on scores that are not necessarily scientific or objective. Children thus become instruments, tools, objects, rather than unique human beings, each with his or her own potential.

 

Education is in crisis because of the calculated effort to turn it into a business with a bottom line. Schools are closed and opened as though they were chain stores, not community institutions. Teachers are fired based on flawed measures. Disruption is considered a strategy rather than misguided and inhumane policy. Children and educators alike are simply data points, to be manipulated by economists, statisticians, entrepreneurs, and dabblers in policy.

 

Education has lost its way, lost its purpose, lost its definition. Where once it was about enlightening and empowering young minds with knowledge, exploring new worlds, learning about science and history, and unleashing the imagination of each child, it has become a scripted process of producing test scores that can supply data.

 

Education is in crisis. And we must organize to resist, to push back, to fight the mechanization of learning, and the standardization of children.

 

 

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, International, Privatization

British Teachers Fight Privatization Plan

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2016 //
16

The Minister of Education Nicky Morgan has proposed turning all British schools into “academies,” akin to our charter schools. She has decided that removing all schools from local control will improve them.

 

The British National Union of Teachers has threatened a one-day strike to protest this step towards mass privatization. Morgan, however, says she won’t change course.

 

 

“The Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has told teachers she has no intention of backing down, warning another teachers’ union, the NASUWT, that there is no “reverse gear” on the proposed reforms.

 
“Mrs Morgan was heckled and faced shouts of “rubbish” from delegates during her speech arguing that the compulsory academy policy would raise standards.

 
“The National Union of Teachers is no stranger to challenging government education policies – and a call for strike action might also have been as predictable as bad weather over a bank holiday weekend.

 
“But on the issue of the government forcing all schools to become academies, regardless of the views of parents, the NUT clearly feels it is tapping into a much wider sense of unease.
The union’s leadership thinks the government has wrong-footed itself over this, antagonising grassroots Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, as well as its more traditional left-wing supporters.

 
“Town hall Tories are a much trickier target for the government than what they would see as conference hall Trots [Trotskyites]. And there are murmurings of concern about what academy chains would mean for village schools and faith schools.

 
“The element of compulsion could aggravate parents and there might be difficult questions about the merits of successful local schools being handed over to an unfamiliar academy chain….

 
“The NUT annual conference in Brighton has supported calls for a sustained campaign against compelling schools to be academies, including a ballot for a one-day strike.

 
“The union’s treasurer Ian Murch said it would see schools being “stolen” from local communities by “arrogant ministers”.

“He challenged the handing over of schools to academy chains, saying that it would be a step towards privatisation.

 

“Mr Murch said schools should be seen as a “public service and not a business opportunity”

 
“Hazel Danson from the union’s executive said the policy of making all schools academies would cause “absolute chaos” at a time when there were more pressing priorities such as teacher shortages.

 
“She said the plans would “remove parental voice as well as parental choice”.

 
“The NUT wants to build a wider coalition of opposition to the academy policy.

 
“A number of Conservative party representatives in local government have spoken out against the plans which would remove the role of local councils.”

 

Indeed, the plan faces opposition from more than the teachers’ union.

A group of officials from all three national parties–Conservative, Labor, and Liberal–spoke out against the plan in a letter to The a Observer.

 

“The Observer letter, signed by Conservative councillors as well as those from opposition parties, says:

 

“There is no evidence that academies perform better than council maintained schools.

 

“Where a school is failing, there is no question that action must be taken – but converting every school, regardless of performance, to an academy will not tackle those issues.”

 

It goes on: “Schools value the option to become academies – and the support they receive from their local councils to do so – where they believe this is in the best interests of their students and communities.

 

“Forcing the change upon every school goes against, in many cases, what parents and teachers want, and there will be a large financial implication for local authorities at a time when communities are already suffering the impact of significant budget cuts.”

 

 

Categories Education Reform, International, Privatization

Liberians Oppose Privatization of Their Schools

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2016 //
13

As previously reported here, the Liberian government is considering a plan to privatize and outsource control of its schools. The good news is that Liberians are fighting back against this proposal.

 

“Local and international experts have planned to fight tooth and nails to ensure that a plan by the Government of Liberia to outsource all primary education here to a private company do not push through.

 
“Liberia’s plan is to privatise all primary and pre-primary schools over the next five years. Public funding will support services subcontracted to a private company – the Bridge International Academies, a company incorporated in the United States under the name New Globe School Inc.

 
“Already the Liberian Government through Education Minister George Werner has signed a Memorandum of Understanding or MOU with the Bridge International Academies to kick start the process-a pilot project is said to be ongoing with 70 schools.

 
“The cash scrap government of Liberia is expected to spend around US430 million over the five years period. There is also a question as to whether the PPCC rules were followed in awarding such contract to Bridge International Academies.

 
“International and local experts say such arrangement is not only a blatant violation of Liberia’s international obligations under the right to education, and have no justification under Liberia’s constitution, but will also deny indigents and poor access to quality education.
Mrs. Hester Williams Katakaw is the Proprietress of the Levi Williams School System and a former deputy education minister for instruction under President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s first term. She says education stakeholders here will not allow such arrangement to push through.

 
“We will resist it and make sure that it does not go through at the National Legislature”, Mrs. Williams Katakaw told this paper Wednesday. She says government has a responsibility to ensure that all children here are educated and that pushing such responsibility on a foreign firm is not in the best interest of Liberian children.

 
“Mrs. Katakaw questions the performance of Bridge International in other countries saying, “they have failed miserably in other countries and we are not going to allow them to come do the same here”. She says Liberian children at those tender ages should be educated by Liberian teachers and not foreigners.

 
“Education Minister Werner appears very defensive on this arrangement. In his letter dated March 3, 2016 addressed to the Secretary General of the National Teachers’ Association of Liberia or NTAL, Mr. Samuel Y. Johnson, Sr. following the launched of a pilot project involving 70 schools, he said the pilot project is a private partnership and not privatization.

 
“…I must correct your characterization of the pilot as privatization, and somehow threatening the provision of free education. As we have communicated to your members including at the January meeting, the pilot will not involve any privatization of education…”

 
“However, following this communication an agreement was entered into with Bridge International. When this paper contacted officials at the Ministry of Information Wednesday, its Communications Director Maxim Bleteen handed copies of the minister’s letter to the NTAL saying the minister had requested him to give a copy to any reporter seeking information on the privatization deal.

 
“He claimed that the letter addressed the issue of the Public Procurement Concession Commission rules but nothing of such was mentioned. “It is completely unacceptable for Liberia to outsource its primary education system to a private company”, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Kishore Singh said Tuesday in Geneva.

 
“This is unprecedented at the scale currently being proposed and violates Liberia’s legal and moral obligations,” he said. “Such arrangements are a blatant violation of Liberia’s international obligations under the right to education, and have no justification under Liberia’s constitution,” the Special Rapporteur stated.

 
“This also contradicts political commitments made by Liberia and the international community to the fourth UN Sustainable Development Goal which is on education and related targets.” He cautions that public schools and their teachers, and the concept of education as a public good, are under attack with such arrangements.

 
“Provision of public education of good quality is a core function of the State. Abandoning this to the commercial benefit of a private company constitutes a gross violation of the right to education,” Mr. Singh emphasized.

 
The human rights expert noted that “it is ironic that Liberia does not have resources to meet its core obligations to provide a free primary education to every child, but it can find huge sums of money to subcontract a private company to do so on its behalf.”

 
“These sums could be much better spent on improving the existing system of public education and supporting the educational needs of the poor and marginalized,” the Special Rapporteur suggested. Mr. Singh called on the Government of Liberia to approach the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for technical assistance and capacity building, instead of entering into such partnerships with for-profit providers in education, “devoid of any legal or moral justification.”

 
“Before any partnership is entered into, the Government of Liberia must first put into place legislation and policies on public private partnerships in education, which among other things, protect every child’s right to education,” Mr. Singh said.

 
“There also needs to be an independent body or institution established to receive complaints of potential violations of the right to education that might result from this development,” he added. The Special Rapporteur emphasized that “education is an essential public service and instead of supporting business in education, governments should increase the money they spend on public educational services to make them better.”

 
“In a letter addressed to President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf dated March 21, 2016, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-Africa) called on president Sirleaf to halt the planned outsourcing of primary education here.

 
“…this policy will seriously undermine the right to educate and eclipse opportunities for indigent and poor individuals, families and communities to use education to claw out of poverty and hardship,” the letter signed by Kwasi Adu -Amankwah, ITUC-Africa General Secretary said .

 
“The ITUC-Africa (www.ituc-africa.org) is a Pan African trade union organisation representing over 17 million workers in 49 African countries, including Liberia. In its letter ITUC-Africa further stated “ITUC-Africa is supporting and strongly reiterating the calls by the National Teachers’ Association of Liberia (NTAL) and the Educational International (EI) urging your government to halt the proposed measure to outsource Liberia’s primary education system to private for-profit actors.”

 
“ITUC-Africa therefore urges Madam President to use her good offices and goodwill to stay action on the implementation of this policy,” the union added. The PPCC Director of Communications Nathan Bangu promised to return a call requesting information on as to whether Minister Werner got the PPCC barking before signing an MOU with Bridge International Academies.”

 

 

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, International, Privatization

Liberia: Government Nears Agreement on Privatization of Its Schools

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2016 //
8

The Liberian government is close to signing an agreement with private, for-profit corporations to provide education.

 

The teachers’ union called on the government to consult with all concerned parties before agreeing to privatize and outsource the nation’s schools.

 

As we have seen in earlier communiques (see here and here), Western corporations are focused on Africa as fertile territory for low-cost, for-profit education, using ill-trained teachers who read from a script.

Categories Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, International

Are Our Students the Dumbest in the World?

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2016 //
19

Last week, NPR had a story about how “dumb” our students are, compared to those in other countries. The story title said that our high school graduates are on par with high school dropouts elsewhere on international tests.

 

For myself, I always wonder how critics can say in one breath that we live in the greatest nation in the world, and in the next breath say that we have the worst schools and dumbest students in the world. This bizarre logic then leads to the rephormer claim that we must cut the budget for public schools and push for the transfer of funds to religious schools (not known for teaching STEM simubjects) or to brand-new charters run by corporations or amateurs. You might think that only a knucklehead could believe in such truly foolish ideas but our major foundations–Gates, Walton, Broad, Arnold, Helmsley, and others–relentlessly push this line of baloney.

 

One reader referred to the story and blamed “bad” teachers. Another reader who is both teacher and parent, responded here:

 

 

“Let me give you a different perspective, assuming you are willing to listen.
“All schools are not “failing.” I worked years in industry (high tech) and can assure you, on a aggregate level, America’s graduates far exceed the capability of most other countries. I can’t count the number of H1bs I hired that, while good employees, lacked the adaptability and critical thinking required to solve problems. In those countries that ARE on par with us, they support their schools, respect and value teachers, and believe in both a strong college OR vocational pathway. Are some schools “failing”? Sure, but the reasons rarely have to do with teacher competence.
“Now I teach math. So you are free to blame us evil math teachers for your child’s struggle. I’ve heard it all before. Here’s the reality. I teach students who are “high risk” in math. Often, I battle a accumulation of years of external issues – poverty, health problems, learning challenges, disinterested parents, violence, drugs, mental health – the list goes on. I have never abandoned a student, but many parents have. Politicians blame teachers, but then cut social programs, employment opportunities, and health programs. Business complains, but then wiggles out of financially supporting schools, ships good jobs overseas, and pushes job training onto schools. Keep in mind, too, that k-12 works to retain and teach ALL students. Post secondary operates by screening out and eliminating students. Very different missions.
“The students do lack various math skills. I see seniors unable to add fractions trying to solve trig problems. One common thread in math illiteracy is these students are reluctant learners and avoid math. Math is not sesame street. It takes careful study and practice. I can make it “entertaining” and I’ll try my best with a 150+ student roster to “differentiate” and individually reach out to each student, but America does not want great teachers, only inexpensive ones.

 

 

“I am also a parent of a struggling student. Unlike you, I took responsibility from kindergarten for his learning. I followed his progress and alphabet soup of diagnoses. I didn’t just sit back and blame teachers, I actively worked with teachers. I learned about new subjects to help him through school. I reached out and showed interest. I even lost a job focusing on my kids’ well being. Were all teachers perfect? No, they are human. But I made it work. My kid is going to college. He still struggles, but the journey doesn’t end with some kids when they become adults. Think before unfairly indicting a profession.

Categories Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, International, Standardized Testing, Students

Call for Investigation of Gulen Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
March 7, 2016 //
40

California BATS are calling for an investigation of the Gulen charter chain. They invite people to sign their petition. Their post includes a list of Gulen schools, which have different names in  different states but are allied with a reclusive Turkish imam who lives in the Poconos. Fethullah Gulen is a controversial leader of a political movement in Turkey, which is opposed by the Turkish government.

 

There are 155 Gulen schools, which makes the chain either the largest or second to the largest charter chain (after KIPP) in the nation. Gulen schools in certain states have been investigated by the FBI. They have paid for legislators to take trips to Turkey. The boards of their charters typically consist of Turkish nationals.

 

Some people hesitate to criticize Gulen schools for fear of appearing anti-Muslim.

 

But this makes impossible to have a rational discussion of the wisdom of turning over public schools to a chain controlled by foreign nationals. Would it make sense if Russian citizens began operating tax-supported charter schools in the US? Or Ecuadorians? Or Cambodians? Or any other nation?

 

It seems we are outsourcing public education to citizens of another nation, with no public debate about it.

 

Why does it matter? The primary purpose of public education is not college-and-career readiness. It is not getting high test scores. It is not global competitiveness. The primary purpose of public education is to prepare young people for citizenship in American society. That’s why taxpayers are responsible for them. Can schools operated by foreign nationals teach the essentials of American citizenship?

 

If foreign nationals want to open private schools in the US, that’s fine. If parents want their children to attend those schools or schools in other nations, that’s their right. They will pay for it, because it is not a public responsibility to send children to a lycee or a gesampschule.

 

But it is strange indeed to see a chain of schools operated by foreign nationals replacing a community’s public schools and paid for with taxpayer dollars. Public schools should be integrally connected to the society and communities they serve. The Gulen phenomenon is puzzling.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, International, Privatization

England: Why Teachers Are Abandoning the Profession

By dianeravitch
March 2, 2016 //
17

The schools in England are experiencing a “brain drain,” not unlike schools in the United States, and the reasons are not all that different. It is not just the pay, although low pay compared to other professions doesn’t help. It is the degradation of the profession by the government and the media. More teachers are leaving the schools than are graduating from teacher preparation institutions.

 

Francis Gilbert, a lecturer in secondary English at Goldsmiths, University of London, writes that:

 

Over the past decade, teachers have had to endure constant, chaotic policy change. These have included changes to school structures, through the introduction of academies and free schools, changes to the curriculum and exams, changes to the inspection framework, changes to policies for children with special needs, and much more.

 

Central government has put unprecedented pressure on schools to attain “top” exam results, with those schools failing to achieve certain benchmarks threatened with takeover or closure.

 

The issue here is that even the government itself has pointed out that many of these exams are “not fit for purpose”: they do not lead to productive learning in the classroom, but rather mean that teachers are forced to teach to the test.

The high-stakes nature of England’s current testing system means that teachers I’ve worked with and interviewed feel oppressed by the mechanistic ways in which they are obliged to assess students. The bureaucracy involved in creating the data needed for assessment can be very time-consuming.

 

This pressure comes to a head with visits from the schools inspectorate Ofsted. Teachers often work in fear that they will be judged as failing by the inspectorate or even by someone acting out the role of inspector – school senior leadership teams frequently run “Mocksteds” whereby teachers have to undergo a “mock” Ofsted, usually run by senior staff.

 

Government policies have encouraged candidates to see the profession as a short-term career option. Teach First is a classic example of this: the very name “Teach First” suggests that its graduate trainees should try teaching “first” and then move on to something better.

 

“Teach First” is the British version of TFA. Its recruits are likelier to leave the classroom more often than a traditionally trained teacher, who is in teaching as a career.

 

He adds:

 

There are other pressures too, and the expectations of parents and students have become increasingly unrealistic. Education has become marketised: teachers are expected by the government, parents and many students to be more like “customer service agents” delivering a product – a good grade for a student – rather than entering into a meaningful dialogue with learners and their carers about the best ways to learn.

 

Parents and students have come to expect “results on a plate” and can become very angry with teachers who “don’t deliver”. Over the last few years, pedagogues have endured rising numbers of unwarranted complaints from parents and students. I know of a brilliant, experienced teacher who was verbally abused and threatened at a recent parents’ evening by an angry mother who felt that this teacher should have “got” a better result for her child. The onus has shifted away from students to work for themselves and instead has been placed on the teacher to do the work for the student.

 

The pundits have taken to referring to teachers as “lazy” and “incompetent.”

 

It all sounds sadly familiar.

 

This is the work of GERM, the Global Education Reform Movement, the oligarch’s effort to turn schooling into a free market and to reduce the status of teaching so that costs may be cut by pushing out experienced teachers.

 

This is foolish, stupid, mad. The corporate reformers have bamboozled the public, and they are destroying education. No teachers, no education. A parade of new teachers, inferior education.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories International, Teachers and Teaching

William Doyle: What Makes Finnish Schools So Successful?

By dianeravitch
February 29, 2016 //
28

William Doyle recently returned from a Fulbright year in Finland, and he spent his year studying education. His own child attended a Finnish school.

 

He wrote about some of the lessons he learned in this article that appeared in the Hechinger Report.

 

Here is the big takeaway:

 

If you want results, try doing the opposite of what American “education reformers” think we should do in classrooms.
Instead of control, competition, stress, standardized testing, screen-based schools and loosened teacher qualifications, try warmth, collaboration, and highly professionalized, teacher-led encouragement and assessment.

 

When American reformers refer to “personalized learning,” they mean that every child should have his/her own laptop. Finnish teachers use the concept of “personalized learning,” but they mean person-to-person learning:

 

While the school has the latest technology, there isn’t a tablet or smartphone in sight, just a smart board and a teacher’s desktop.

Screens can only deliver simulations of personalized learning, this is the real thing, pushed to the absolute limit.

 

Instead of walking in lines, remaining silent, blowing a bubble instead of speaking, and maintaining perfect order, as our reformers prefer:

 

Children are allowed to slouch, wiggle and giggle from time to time if they want to, since that’s what children are biologically engineered to do, in Finland, America, Asia and everywhere else.

 

Teachers in Finland have the freedom to teach and are encouraged to innovate:

 

Here, as in any other Finnish school, teachers are not strait-jacketed by bureaucrats, scripts or excessive regulations, but have the freedom to innovate and experiment as teams of trusted professionals….

 

Children at this and other Finnish public schools are given not only basic subject instruction in math, language and science, but learning-through-play-based preschools and kindergartens, training in second languages, arts, crafts, music, physical education, ethics, and, amazingly, as many as four outdoor free-play breaks per day, each lasting 15 minutes between classes, no matter how cold or wet the weather is. Educators and parents here believe that these breaks are a powerful engine of learning that improves almost all the “metrics” that matter most for children in school – executive function, concentration and cognitive focus, behavior, well-being, attendance, physical health, and yes, test scores, too.

 

But is there something about Finland that makes it inappropriate as a point of comparison? Does it succeed because of a homogeneous population? Doyle says no:

 

There are also those who would argue that this kind of approach wouldn’t work in America’s inner city schools, which instead need “no excuses,” boot-camp drilling-and-discipline, relentless standardized test prep, Stakhanovian workloads and stress-and-fear-based “rigor.”

 

But what if the opposite is true?

 

What if many of Finland’s educational practices are not cultural quirks or non-replicable national idiosyncrasies — but are instead bare-minimum global best practices that all our children urgently need, especially those children in high-poverty schools?

 

 

Categories Childhood, International
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