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Finnish schools eschewed nationwide tests to evaluate teachers, students or schools, instead relying on sample-based testing and school principals to identify potential problems.
Many might not know this, but Finland built this excellent, high-performing, equitable system that everyone is praising today, based on American innovations.
I've studied in Germany and Japan, my brother finished his education in England. In my most humble opinion, American educational model is good for Americans. Not saying there is no room for improvement, but radical change is not really necessary.
On the whole, I agree with the above.
I have read quite a few histories of the Finnish reforms and also remember them being built on American models.
I personally don't think it is a horrible thing that America is average on PISA or other international testing measures.
We pretty much have always been average on international, however, we are still a place where people from other countries (increasingly Asian speaking of China) are sending their young people to be educated. IMO this is because contrary to what people want to admit, our educational system has an historical precedence of producing excellence in regards to business and innovation and arts and culture and many other measures.
But if reforms do need to be taken, I would prefer it to be making teaching a much more esteemed profession. Other posters have mentioned teacher unions and I do think in a way they protect teachers who may not be best suited for the profession. I do think though that teachers should have unions.
I like the concept of "less is more" in the Finland system. In America they overload the kids with too much and at the end the average student fails to grasp basic concepts.
BTW, I have read that the Japanese use a math curriculum that is smaller and simpler than the one in the US. They teach less math in the early grades, but they teach it well.
Homework after spending ALL day in school is an atrocity and not needed. But, American parents think that a lot of homework must be the sign of a good school.
Actually, American parents want LESS homework. The problem in American schools is that behavior problems and other distractions take up too much of teachers' time, so in-class instruction is severely limited. Parents end up having to teach their kids at home while helping with homework. Clearly, that doesn't work well for anyone, but learning disabled and/or behavior disorder kids have legal rights in our schools. Regular kids do not. Think about that... regular kids have NO legal rights in our schools.
Actually, American parents want LESS homework. The problem in American schools is that behavior problems and other distractions take up too much of teachers' time, so in-class instruction is severely limited. Parents end up having to teach their kids at home while helping with homework. Clearly, that doesn't work well for anyone, but learning disabled and/or behavior disorder kids have legal rights in our schools. Regular kids do not. Think about that... regular kids have NO legal rights in our schools.
I agree with the red in regards to homework. I have 2 kids and I hate homework. I think it is stupid to have kids do so much of it (especially little kids K-2). I never did homework everyday as a student and as mentioned I was a TAG kid. We did quarterly "projects" and we did do math practice everyday via specific worksheets but if we finished them at school we didn't have to take them home (I can't remember ever taking home math review from K-6 elementary at all).
However, I don't think my kid's teachers don't teach subject matter at school. Both my kids know how to do the work they bring home. It is basically "busy work." And FWIW just as many parents WANT their kid to have a bunch of homework. They think it means the school is "challenging."
My daughter is a 1st grader this year and I love her teacher because he does not send home daily homework worksheets (her kindergarten teacher did ). Some of the parents were "concerned" about a lack of homework for first graders even though the teacher stated at the beginning of the year that he would not be giving out a bunch of homework and that the kids just needed to do some reading everyday. He loves his class and he said they "do a lot of work in class" and that parents shouldn't be concerned about a lack of homework/worksheets. Even after that parent meeting, many of the parents complained about not having worksheets.
Film brought to you by one of the biggest liar propagandists in modern history. This does make it awfully hard to take seriously. Yes Finland is number 1. If we want to do better, we need to:
Abolish the Department of Education.
Stop doing what doesn't work.
Do what works like magnet and charter schools.
American schools need vastly less bureaucracy.
Schools need more incentive to just succeed by any means necessary.
We should reward teachers based on merit and not tenure.
Schools and colleges should be judged based on how well we're preparing kids for real life as an adult.
Stop dumbing everything down to the level of the dumbest kid in the class.
I bolded the main point that I think needs proper elaboration.
What do we mean by 'life as an adult?'
I ask because this goes back to my original point about Americans working ****ty jobs they don't care about, not getting paid enough, and spending far more time on them than is reasonable. Thinking back to how school is structured, you're there for 8 hours a day, sitting still, and doing what you're told. I can't think of a better way to prepare people the life we as Americans are living.
This comes down to the role of schools. They aren't teaching people how to think. We're taught to memorize things and do what we've been told to do, and living in a society that loves to talk about freedom, there is something almost comedic about that. Even now, as I go through college, most of my tests are done via a scanner, filling in bubbles. This does not mean I know the material. It means when I see the right answer, I recognize it, but there is no guarantee that I could come up with it without seeing it before me. There seems to be an intentional dumbing down of our schools. And I'm sure this was done with good intention; to help those who don't learn well in our single style of teaching. But rather than developing a better style, or being versatile enough to have more than one option, we've simply lowered the bar, which is a disservice to everyone. And while someone who's suffered through the American school system may be capable of sitting in an office for 8 hours and doing whatever their boss asks them, they aren't living.
And we should have a problem with this. Most of us work well more than the usual 40 hour work week, and this doesn't include work from home (which is unpaid). We're losing sleep and overly stressed, two of the biggest factors that cause health problems for us as we age. We're also, on average, relatively unhappy when compared to other European country's, who don't convince their citizens that they're life's value is depending on how much they work. The system is screwed up. But it is profitable.
Most people dismiss this as just 'being the way it is.' Any intelligent person can understand why that's stupid to say. That's only the way it is becasue we say it's the way it is. It's circular logic, which isn't even true logic. It's using itself to justify itself. Schooling is where we can start to break this cycle and create a society that is still productive, but also healthy and happy.
No, in schools where the races/ethnicities interact, as specifically stated in the document.
I didn't say Black:
That huge chip on your shoulder is causing you to distort your reality.
I know of which I speak. You post emotional knee-jerk reactions and see what isn't there.
Actually, I have no chip.
I honestly find it pretty hilarious that you, a non-black person who didn't grow up in the "inner-city" would proceed to tell me about something that I and my family experienced in school.
It is always funny to me how non-black people know more than I do about being black lol
You especially are funny because you go out of your way to find "links" to "prove" various things about being black when I'm black and so nothing you show me is "proof" of anything since I have decades of personal experience as a black person in America. I intrinsically know more about it that you so I really don't take much of what you say about black people or any minority seriously.
Anyone can find a link on the internet to prove their own opinion.
From the article (this is my personal view of this subject and the conversation with you):
Quote:
Despite abundant personal anecdotes by African-Americans who say they were good students in school and were accused of acting white, there's no research that explicitly supports a relationship between race, beliefs about "acting white," social stigma, and academic outcomes.
Even those who claim to have found evidence of the theory, Toldson explained, failed to connect the dots between what students deem "white" and the effect of this belief on academic achievement.
"Observing and/or recording African-American students labeling a high-achieving African-American student as acting white does not warrant a characterization of African-American academic underperformance as a response to the fear of acting white," he said.
Ivory Toldson BTW is a leading (black) researcher on the many myths espoused by primarily white academia in "studying" us.
Also from the article (in reference to your Harvard analysis):
Quote:
A prime example of a shaky study on this topic, according to Toldson, was Roland G. Fryer's 2006 research paper "Acting White: The Social Price Paid by the Best and the Brightest Minority Students." Published by Education Next, the Harvard economist purported to affirm Ogbu's findings by using Add Health data to demonstrate that the highest-achieving black students in the schools he studied had few friends. "My analysis confirms that acting white is a vexing reality within a subset of American schools," Fryer wrote.
But the numbers didn't actually add up to support the "acting white" theory, Toldson said. To start, the most popular black students in his study were the ones with 3.5 GPAs, and students with 4.0s had about as many friends as those with 3.0s. The least popular students? Those with less than a 2.5 GPA.
It seemed that the "social price" paid by the lowest-achieving black students was actually far greater than the price in popularity paid by the highest academic achievers.
The red was the theory of the author of the analysis you posted.
And FWIW the number of friends one has or popularity of a kid is a weird thing to study in relation to high achieving students IMO being that most of us are friends with each other pretty exclusively in high school and that in an of itself would limit social relationships. I had a lot of friends in high school, but practically all of them were TAG students. However, due to a peer tutor group, I also knew a lot of athletes/jocks and cheerleader girls and all sorts of different students so I was pretty well known in popularity though I wouldn't say I was "popular" in the traditional sense. Most nerdy kids are similar to each other and they have a decent amount of friends no matter their ethnicity. I had a 4.63 when I graduated high school.
Arguing that Finland has higher rankings than the US makes sense.. although their success can likely be attributed to their society, and not their educational system.
Arguing that China has higher rankings than the US is buying into propaganda that's built upon shoddy analysis.
The only group that's allowed to test this stuff , only tests the wealthy major cities in China. The poorest 98% of the country does not show up in the statistics. If the United States only tested kids growing up in Silicon Valley, we'd look like the smartest in the world, too.
Since I am from China, I can tell you students from Beijing and Shanghai actually do not perform better than those from other competitive provinces. In my university, the "bottom students" are often from Beijing.
But other countries/regions influenced by Chinese culture are also ranked very high: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore...
Therefore there must be something in Chinese culture that leads to high performance in tests, at least.
I agree with the red in regards to homework. I have 2 kids and I hate homework. I think it is stupid to have kids do so much of it (especially little kids K-2). I never did homework everyday as a student and as mentioned I was a TAG kid. We did quarterly "projects" and we did do math practice everyday via specific worksheets but if we finished them at school we didn't have to take them home (I can't remember ever taking home math review from K-6 elementary at all).
If it was that easy for you, you were short-changed on your education.
Quote:
However, I don't think my kid's teachers don't teach subject matter at school. Both my kids know how to do the work they bring home. It is basically "busy work."
Required "busy work" is pointless. And the sad result is that it teaches many kids to hate school.
Quote:
And FWIW just as many parents WANT their kid to have a bunch of homework. They think it means the school is "challenging."
"Challenging" is when their kids actually learn at school. "Busy work" or work that can be completed in a few minutes before the bell rings isn't learning. It's merely performing what one already knows.
I honestly find it pretty hilarious that you, a non-black person who didn't grow up in the "inner-city" would proceed to tell me about something that I and my family experienced in school.
Someday, you'll realize the world isn't all about you.
The Harvard study I posted, stands. "Acting White" by earning good grades costs minorities same-race/ethnicity friends and social status.
But other countries/regions influenced by Chinese culture are also ranked very high: Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore...
Therefore there must be something in Chinese culture that leads to high performance in tests, at least.
What I meant was that it is myth what the poster said about rural pupils in China not doing extremely well. They do and the article says so too. I have read that some of the poorest areas in China do as well as top areas in the UK.
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). Some of the parents were "concerned" about a lack of homework for first graders even though the teacher stated at the beginning of the year that he would not be giving out a bunch of homework and that the kids just needed to do some reading everyday. He loves his class and he said they "do a lot of work in class" and that parents shouldn't be concerned about a lack of homework/worksheets. Even after that parent meeting, many of the parents complained about not having worksheets.
