There is a very interesting article about Finland's Education system compared to ours by Diane Ravich in the recent Education Weekly magazine. It is also very interesting to read the comments about the blog post.
I think that the most important things that it brings up are the differences in our goal in education, raising test scores and these stated goals in Finland:
"Finland has this singular goal: to develop the humanity of each child. Isn't that a shocking goal? Their guiding principles: equity, creativity, and prosperity."
It is hard to compare such a small country with our own, but when you think about what is important to a nation you can at least see huge differences which might make a big difference in outcomes. We have a 22% child poverty rate compared to their 4% rate. I think that the effects of that are MUCH larger than the effects of teacher quality. The way we are trying to deal with this is to create more accountability with test scores and measuring teachers based on test scores. This is demoralizing and crazy.
Take a look at the article and let me know what you think.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2011/10/what_can_we_learn_from_finland.html
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