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.”
For months, Democrats have been squabbling back and forth as to what Barack Obama really believes on education. Is he a reformer? Is he for school choice, charters, accountability? Or is he a traditional democrat, who will echo the teacher’s unions positions on NCLB, merit pay and other issues?
The whole ”reformers vs. status quo” meme is a bit tired and something of a false dichotomy. You can favor accountability and still think NCLB is doing harm. There are legitimate reasons to oppose merit pay without being labeled a defender of the status quo. That said, those who thought Barack Obama was something new in the Democratic firmament are having an “uh-oh” moment with word that Linda Darling Hammond is Obama’s choice as his lead education advisor.
Fordham’s Mike Petrilli wonders if Obama will kill education refrom. Liam Julian, writing in National Review Online, looks at the appointment of the “self-described advocate of progressive education” and concludes that “so far, it seems, tradition trumps change.” American Prospect blogger Dana Goldstein calls the selection of LDH a conservative choice.
Not ideologically conservative, but rather, conservative in terms of what it says about Obama’s plans for education. Groups like Democrats for Education Reform – which favor charter schools and merit pay — have been hoping for Obama to embrace their agenda. And indeed, early in the primaries, Obama was booed at a teachers’ union event for saying he supported merit pay. But since he clinched the nomination, Obama’s statements on education have been more circumspect. The appointment of Darling-Hammond, a teacher quality expert who opposes merit pay and is more critical than supportive of NCLB, signals that Obama wishes to avoid a fight with the unions. He’ll spend his political capital on energy and health care instead.
My internet time waster of choice is the anagram server. Type in a name and in seconds it will summon up every conceivable acronym. It’s great for cheating at Scrabble. On a lark, I typed in Linda Darling Hammond. At the top of the list, it came up with: “Handmaid Ladling Norm.”
Time will tell.
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