What Can We Learn From Finland?
Dear Deborah,
I recently returned from a trip to Europe. In Berlin, I spoke at an international education research conference. Researchers from Europe, Asia, and Latin America were very alarmed by the current "reform" movement in the United States, fearful that the same trends—the same overemphasis of standardized testing, the same push for privatization and markets, and the same pressure to lower standards for entry into teaching—might come to their own countries.
The highlight of my trip was visiting schools in Finland. Of course, Finland is much in the news these days because of its success on the PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) examinations. For the past decade, 15-year-old Finnish students have consistently been at or near the top of all the nations tested in