Finland, widely seen as the top-performing school system in the world, has merit pay and teachers unions and tenure. It has school choice and a national curriculum. “American education reformers across the political spectrum have lauded the Finns’ investments in parental leave, early childhood education, and national curriculum standards,” writes Dana Goldstein at the American Prospect. ”Education liberals point to the value the Finnish system places on teacher autonomy, while conservatives and libertarians laud Finland’s ability to coax excellent achievement out of students despite large class sizes and relatively few hours in the classroom.”
A close look at Finland “does more to quiet than to fan the flames” of U.S. education reform debates, Goldstein concludes.
The point of studying other nations’ school systems is not to find the silver bullet but to realize that there isn’t one. In the United States, the education debate has been framed as a zero-sum game. We’ve been told again and again that we need to make hard choices between labor protections and doing what is best for children. But a good education system can include merit pay, as well as strong unions and tenure. It can have relatively short school days and large classes but also national curriculum guidelines. Teachers can have autonomy in lesson planning while simultaneously being held to high professional standards. Universal day care and pre-school on one end of the education spectrum can be matched by a commitment to vocational preparedness on the other.
If the United States committed to taking education as seriously as the Finns do, Goldstein concludes, “the universe of possibilities would open up wider than most of us can imagine. That is a long-range project but one whose goal should remain in the back of education reformers’ minds, even as they fight out the day-to-day political battles sure to come.”
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