For the past decade, 15-year-old Finnish students have consistently been at or near the top of all the nations tested in reading, mathematics, and science. And just as consistently, the variance in quality among Finnish schools is the least of all nations tested, meaning that Finnish students can get a good education in virtually any school in the nation. That’s equality of educational opportunity, a good public school in every neighborhood.
What makes the Finnish school system so amazing is that Finnish students never take a standardized test until their last year of high school, when they take a matriculation examination for college admission.
Their own teachers design their tests, so teachers know how their students are doing and what they need. There is a national curriculum — broad guidelines to assure that all students have a full education — but it is not prescriptive. Teachers have extensive responsibility for designing curriculum and pedagogy in their school. They have a large degree of autonomy, because they are professionals.
Admission to teacher education programs at the end of high school is highly competitive; only one in 10 — or even fewer — qualify for teacher preparation programs. All Finnish teachers spend five years in a rigorous program of study, research, and practice, and all of them finish with a masters’ degree. Teachers are prepared for all eventualities, including students with disabilities, students with language difficulties, and students with other kinds of learning issues.
The schools I visited reminded me of our best private progressive schools. They are rich in the arts, in play, and in activity. I saw beautiful campuses, including some with outstanding architecture, filled with light. I saw small classes; although the official class size for elementary school is 24, I never saw a class with more than 19 children (and that one had two assistant teachers to help children with special needs).
Teachers and principals repeatedly told me that the secret of Finnish success is trust. Parents trust teachers because they are professionals. Teachers trust one another and collaborate to solve mutual problems because they are professionals. Teachers and principals trust one another because all the principals have been teachers and have deep experience. When I asked about teacher attrition, I was told that teachers seldom leave teaching; it’s a great job, and they are highly respected.
And by the way, the Finnish teachers I saw — those heaped with laurels as outstanding professionals — didn’t look or act differently from many, many teachers I have seen in the United States, even in so-called “failing schools.”
Finland has one other significant advantage over the United States. The child-poverty rate in Finland is under 4 percent. Here it is 22 percent and rising. It’s a well-known fact that family income is the most reliable predictor of academic performance. Finland has a strong social welfare system; we don’t. It is not a “Socialist” nation, by the way. It is egalitarian and capitalist.
Finland is on the right track by prioritizing teacher quality and development. You can’t have a school without a teacher. In every country, in every era, the one constant in every classroom is that there is a teacher, and there are students. That policymakers would rather find silver-bullet solutions to our growing education crisis through throwing more money at schools, through giving out free iPads, through scripted programs, through thoughtless implementation of merit-based pay, through smaller class sizes, etc. boggles the mind. Not that these ideas are without value—but without an excellent teacher who, say, knows how to use the free iPads and scripted programs in a smart way, those solutions become an empty waste of money. How many times have I seen piles of forgotten technology and discarded teacher’s guides in a school storage area? And it’s not just well-funded schools with these graveyards of resources—my first school, with its missing ceiling tiles and half-lit hallways, had several distant rooms which looked just like this.
So teacher development is the right path. Vehemently believing this is why I left the classroom to become a teacher coach. (I say “left the classroom,” but in reality, that’s probably not so accurate—I’m still in the physical classroom, but these days I spend less time standing in front of it as I do sitting in the back.) I can tell you that so much goes into being an excellent teacher, and those qualities are not always easy to define or measure. That’s one of the biggest struggles of my job.
But another, bigger struggle of my job is that a lot of times I have to share data with teachers which is not always favorable. And that leads me to a question which often goes unasked whenever I read articles on this newly hot topic of teacher development, which is—are our teachers ready to be held to such high standards? Sometimes I have to tell teachers things like this:
- “Three students were asleep in your class for ten minutes.”
- “At the end of class, I asked five students what you were learning about that day, and three were not able to give me an answer.”
- “You told a student that if you heard talking a second time, he would receive a demerit. He continued talking, and you told him to be quiet and did not give him a demerit.”
- “I looked over your unit plan and 70% of the lessons are driving at lower-order skills. When I looked over your data, nearly all of your students scored proficient or advanced on the most recent test.”
- “Last period you told a student that a cookie wasn’t really a solid, and that’s actually incorrect.”
Lest you think otherwise, I actually don’t relish these moments in my job, because I’ve been there as a teacher and it’s hard to hear these things. I remember being proud of my classroom management skills and my ability to build rapport as key factors in R. never being disruptive in my class the way he was for other teachers, and then sitting in an IEP meeting with his mother and case worker and hearing the psychologist share that he had only participated 65% of the time when she observed him. Just because he behaved the best for me didn’t mean that I was serving him as best I could.
So I know what it’s like to have people reveal to you that you’re not reaching kids as much as you thought. I realize classrooms don’t exist in a vacuum. That kid who was sleeping? When he’s awake, he’s usually incredibly disruptive and he’s on his way to the disciplinary program in a week anyway. That time you forgot to give a consequence? Sometimes it’s really hard to simultaneously keep track of all of those things and teach a lesson to the kids who want to learn. That other time you told a kid something which was incorrect? Well, you’re a human being, you make mistakes, and the fact is your administration asked you to teach a subject in which you’re not that well-versed, and it’s been hard.
These are common teacher pitfalls, ones which result from inadequate teacher training and certification routes and a system which allows people to teach subjects and students which they probably shouldn’t, at least not yet. It’s going to take a lot more than just more technology, or eradicating all standardized tests, or smaller class sizes or higher salaries to save our schools; it’s going to take a massive overhaul of how we train teachers. In the meantime, we can focus our efforts on more clearly defining the skill set of an excellent teacher, and investing in more appropriate, effective professional development to ensure that our teachers hone that skill set.
However, I think it’s going to require our current and aspiring teachers to have even tougher skins than they already have, and it’s going to take our culture to reconsider the condescending, often degrading view we have of teachers. Not just anyone should get to be a teacher. Certainly not everyone who wants to be a doctor gets to be a doctor. Some don’t do well enough on the MCAT. Some don’t get accepted into medical school. Some fail their tests while in medical school. Some don’t pass board exams, or perform well enough when they’re actually on the job. And even with all those hoops, some doctors still end up losing patients, or engaging in malpractice for whatever more or less ill-intentioned reasons. Doctors are compensated comfortably because, as in education, there will always be a demand for healthcare, but it’s also because you can generally trust that if an individual has gotten to the point where they’re giving you a physical, they’ve probably already undergone some arduous training.
Similarly, Finland seems to have the right idea in that their teachers ostensibly get put through some rigorous training as well. But in Finland, as in South Korea (another country with a very successful, albeit entirely different, type of school system), only the very best and brightest get to be teachers. Whether this is because the structure of their training weeds out less desirable candidates, or if the prestige and challenge of the job attracts the highest performers, is unknown to me. I do wonder, though, that if we had a teacher training system similar to Finland’s, how many of our current teaching force would have ever been given their own classroom?
I think of all the teachers who interview for positions at my school, desiring to become better teachers and receive more intense professional development and more meaningful feedback. But it’s a lot of work. I think my school is an amazing place to be an employee, but it is hard work, often the hardest work some of our teachers have ever had to put into their career, and we are very transparent about that from as early on as the initial interview.
Anyway. I’d be interested in knowing more about Finland’s ongoing teacher evaluation process, and what their professional development programming looks like beyond the initial training program. That might be even more valuable than knowing about the latter. Anyone got any links?
