Better Teachers, Common Curriculum Are Hallmarks of Finnish Schools

Special education teacher Niina Halonen-Malliarakis helps student Aleksandr Mitrukov, a 14-year-old from Russia, review for a math test at Vesala Comprehensive School in Eastern Helsinki. Vesala serves a large population of low-income and immigrant students.

—Erin Richards/The Journal Sentinel/MCT

By Erin Richards, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (MCT)

Helsinki, Finland

English class is about to start, and Taneli Nordberg introduces the day's guests: a row of fresh-faced university students sitting in the back of the classroom. They're training to be teachers at the University of Helsinki.

Nordberg, 31, wants the eighth-graders to become teachers for a moment.

"I want you to tell the teacher trainees something you would like them to do when teaching and something you want them to avoid doing," he explains. "In English, please."

The students tumble up to the chalkboards and start writing. Some of the advice is predictable—"not too much homework"—but much of it is insightful.

The exercise, though short and light, is something of a microcosm of the Finnish educational approach—engagement and collaboration between teacher and student, a comfortable atmosphere, and the expectation of quality in how students express themselves.

Over the past decade, students in Finland have soared on international measures of achievement. They've continued to post some of the best scores in the developed world in reading, math and science, according to a respected international exam. The country has one of the narrowest gaps in achievement between its highest and lowest-performing schools, and on average spends less per pupil than the United States.

The country's education system has come to be regarded as one of the highest-performing in the world, and a growing number of foreigners are trying to figure out if and how they can emulate it.

Though its students always had good literacy skills, Finland used to be mediocre on other international measures, which prompted it to undertake a series of education reforms in the 1970s and 1980s. Those efforts reshaped teacher training by raising the bar to become an educator, and standardized the curriculum from elementary through middle school.

"We looked at what qualities we thought our kids needed to have to compete in the international world market, and then we made the changes to get that," said Olli Määttä, principal of the upper secondary school at the Normal Lyceum of Helsinki. Lyceum means high school in English, though the building serves grades seven through 12.

"We developed a system in what some call the fourth way, or the Finnish way," Määttä added.

Wisconsin is finding its own way through major reforms. It's trying to reshape teaching and learning by developing new teacher evaluation systems, a new school accountability system, more useful professional development and better outcomes for kids, all with fewer dollars than in previous years.

Wisconsin's government and demographics differ from Finland in some important respects, but there are still lessons to be learned from the steps this northern European nation has taken to better serve all students and educators, including:

• Improving teacher recruitment and training at colleges of education.

• Offering a high-quality curriculum with pathways to high-quality vocational training at younger grades.

• Emphasizing play and the arts in education.

In the current political environment, it's easy to fixate on the most tenuous aspects of Wisconsin's educational landscape: reduced budgets, teachers who feel like they're under attack, layoffs, larger class sizes, recall efforts.

But outside Wisconsin, there's growing evidence that American education as a whole has stagnated. Recent studies have shown the educational attainment of U.S. students has remained about the same while other countries' students have improved.

Several recent studies have sought to slice international achievement data in new ways. Adjusting for the differences in state, national and international tests, one report shows 56% of Finland's students perform at or above a level considered to be proficient in math, compared with 36% of the students in Wisconsin and 32% of U.S. students on average.

Finland has attracted attention largely because of its students' results on a respected exam known as the Programme for International Student Assessment. Also known as PISA, the test is given to a representative sample of 15-year-olds in participating developed countries every three years. In 2009, Finland's students scored third in reading, sixth in math and second in science out of 65 countries that participated in the exam.

American students scored 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math.

But looking at the Finnish system comes with caveats—some characteristics of the country head in the opposite direction from the way things are moving in American education.

For example, Finnish education and government leaders downplay standardized testing. They place more value on developing creativity and independent thought, and don't believe in judging schools by test scores. The country's internal testing of students is so light that the PISA scores came as a surprise for most; many teachers say they knew their students were doing well, just not that well.

Finland has a relatively homogenous population; the country is predominantly white and Lutheran. The U.S. has a diverse population of people from different cultures, with different values and priorities, especially when it comes to education.

Strong believers in equality, the Finns have long supported a system where wealth is distributed more evenly, making it nearly impossible to live in abject poverty. The income ladder ranges …

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