Standardized Testing

[Arkady]

Your efforts to diminish the homogeneity vs. heterogeneity factor when comparing the Finnish education system with our American one by parsing nuance and minutiae, falls on my deaf ears.

As far as I'm concerned, anyone who proposes to contrast our system with their's, has no choice but to factor in this contrast. On the other hand, I do know that there are "for profit" Scandinavian education "companies" plying theirs wares where American charter school frameworks would allow and promise sufficient profit. I know a little about it because one of my sisters is the President of the NYC branch of one of these concerns.

So...if you're on retainer for one of these outfits, it makes sense that you would attempt to dismiss this contrast in "geneity". Those of us who aren't thus invested, don't have that luxury.

I have no personal stake in the issue at all (other than a general stake in encouraging the improvement in our national educational system). If you go back to the top, you'll see that I've pointed out that there are very different models that have shown great success (such as a number of Asian systems, which also score very high, and yet differ from the Finnish system greatly in terms of reliance on standardized tests). I just believe in bench-marking against peers to emulate what seems to be working, whenever that's practical. If the differences between the US and Finland are such that replicating their success by emulating their methods is impractical, I'm all for moving on to other successful systems from which to learn, instead. But before moving on, I'd like to have a better idea of what, exactly, makes the Finnish success impossible to replicate here. If it's homogeneity, I want a better understanding of what kind of homogeneity we're talking about and how, exactly, that would prevent the Finnish system from serving as a useful model. Is that really so much to ask?

 

[Arkady]

The last standardized test I took, was the LSAT and before that, the SAT. Those were a loonng time ago. I would be interested in knowing how those tests compare with the standardized tests being given to kids today, and to which teachers are alleged to be "teaching to".

Those tests went at least as much to one's ability to think, as they did to what someone knew. Tests focusing merely on the number of factoids jammed into a kid's head, don't make sense to me. But...if a teacher "teaches to" a test that measures a student's cognition, critical thinking skills, and ability to solve generic problems....I'm fine with that.

And, I think it should be possible to design a race-neutral test that measures these factors.

I used to teach for the Princeton Review -- prepping kids for the Verbal SAT. The problem with the SAT, at the time (and, I assume, still today) was that the very structure of the test let a person game the test. Just as an example, the reading comprehension piece tends to have a politically-correct bias, which lets a savvy test-taker eliminate certain answers even if he didn't actually understand the piece (e.g., if one of the multiple choice answers seems to imply something negative about a minority group, it can be eliminated immediately). Before we started teaching for them, they had us take the test blind, using their methods -- we only got to see the answers, not the questions, and yet by applying their methods, we could achieve fairly decent scores.

I'm not saying the SAT is particularly bad. I'm just saying that it can be gamed by someone with the resources and motivation to be trained in using the test-maker's thinking against them. I think that's an argument for improving the tests, rather than discarding them, but it's definitely something to keep in mind.

As for testing the number of facts someone knows, I'd be OK with that, if the sample size were large enough to weed out the randomness of it, so that you got a decent feel for someone's overall education level. Someone who had done a whole lot of reading across a broad range of topics, for example, will tend to be good at Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy, simply due to frequent exposure to lots of facts, some of which will inevitably stick. Someone who instead spent that time watching a lot of Reality TV, etc., will probably not do well on such fact-based tests.

 

[Renee]

You can find a lot of people who don't know something that should be so obvious ...and it is to us. But there aRe many things that we don't know, that others may be surprised that we don't know. We act as though people not being uninformed of the obvious is somehow new..and didn't happen in the good old days. It did!

 

[CatsEye]

Homogeneous in what sense? I often hear that said, but Finland is a country with two official languages, based on having two distinct large ethnic groups (Finnish and Swedish), along with an official regional language (for the Sami people of the North). They're also religiously diverse, with a very significant minority of non-believers. And they're politically diverse, with ten parties in parliament, and much greater ideological diversity between major politicians on the left and right than you find in the US. I suppose they're much less economically diverse than the US, given the smaller gap between rich and poor and the low poverty rate. That would suggest that perhaps a greater focus on economic equity in the US could have us competing better with the likes of Finland, academically.

Ethnic make up of Finland: Finn 93%, Swede 6%, Sami 0.11%, Roma 0.12%, Tatar 0.02%
Religion: Evangelical Lutheran 89%, Russian Orthodox 1%, none 9%, other 1%
Language: Finnish is the first language spoken by 93% of the country's 5 million inhabitants.

Again, comparing all the U.S against Finland is dumb. Comparing white U.S , or individual states, against all Finland is much fairer, although not perfect.

One more point, 10% of white children live in poverty in the U.S, compared to 4% in Finland.

Why is our media so in love with the Finnish educational system?

 

[Arkady]

Ethnic make up of Finland: Finn 93%, Swede 6%, Sami 0.11%, Roma 0.12%, Tatar 0.02%
Religion: Evangelical Lutheran 89%, Russian Orthodox 1%, none 9%, other 1%
Language: Finnish is the first language spoken by 93% of the country's 5 million inhabitants.

Again, comparing all the U.S against Finland is dumb. Comparing white U.S , or individual states, against all Finland is much fairer, although not perfect.

One more point, 10% of white children live in poverty in the U.S, compared to 4% in Finland.

Why is our media so in love with the Finnish educational system?

Our media likes the Finnish system because it is outperforming ours by a big margin. The conservatives dislike the comparison because the Finns didn't acheive their success through any of the corporation-favoring, union-busting "reforms" pushed by conservative educational "reformers." If Finns had acheieved similar results by privatizing their school system, busting teachers' unions, and returning to a faith-based, tradition-heavy curriculum, there wouldn't be any conservatives arguing that such a comparison is dumb.

 

[CatsEye]

Our media likes the Finnish system because it is outperforming ours by a big margin. The conservatives dislike the comparison because the Finns didn't acheive their success through any of the corporation-favoring, union-busting "reforms" pushed by conservative educational "reformers." If Finns had acheieved similar results by privatizing their school system, busting teachers' unions, and returning to a faith-based, tradition-heavy curriculum, there wouldn't be any conservatives arguing that such a comparison is dumb.

By outperforming you mean the U.S as a whole? Again, the worlds dumbest comparison. I don't understand why you complain about comparing white US or individual states to Finland, but are ok with comparing all U.S to Finland. Finland is basically a big white suburb (yes I'm exaggerating a bit).

Here are some recent international test scores. Again, why praise Finland and bash US schools systems?

Finland and the U.S., the TIMSS and the PIRLS
Grade 4 reading, PIRLS 2011:
United States, white students 575
Finland 568
United States, all students 556

Grade 4 math, TIMSS 2011:
United States, white students 559
Finland 545
United States, all students 541

Grade 8 math, TIMSS 2011:
United States, white students 530
Finland 514
United States, all students 509

2011 TIMSS, Grade 8 math, all students:
Massachusetts 561
Minnesota 545
North Carolina 537
Indiana 522
Colorado 518
Connecticut 518
Finland 514
Florida 513
United States 509
California 493
Alabama 466

So how does Massachusetts beat Finland even though it's ethnically more diverse?

 

[Arkady]

By outperforming you mean the U.S as a whole? Again, the worlds dumbest comparison. I don't understand why you complain about comparing white US or individual states to Finland, but are ok with comparing all U.S to Finland. Finland is basically a big white suburb (yes I'm exaggerating a bit).

Here are some recent international test scores. Again, why praise Finland and bash US schools systems?

Finland and the U.S., the TIMSS and the PIRLS
Grade 4 reading, PIRLS 2011:
United States, white students 575
Finland 568
United States, all students 556

Grade 4 math, TIMSS 2011:
United States, white students 559
Finland 545
United States, all students 541

Grade 8 math, TIMSS 2011:
United States, white students 530
Finland 514
United States, all students 509

2011 TIMSS, Grade 8 math, all students:
Massachusetts 561
Minnesota 545
North Carolina 537
Indiana 522
Colorado 518
Connecticut 518
Finland 514
Florida 513
United States 509
California 493
Alabama 466

So how does Massachusetts beat Finland even though it's ethnically more diverse?

I don't understand the point of these numbers. You're comparing a subset of Americans against the entirety of Finns. How is that meaningful? Given that whites are disproportionately the monied class in America, and disproportionately live in the wealthy neighborhoods with good schools, of course measuring that relative elite to the entirety of Finland would make Finland look worse. But, in the same sense, if we picked a Finnish sample disproportionately selected from rich people and good schools, they'd compare even more favorably. The point, however, is when you compare the entirety of both societies, both the elite and the neglected underclass, Finland comes out looking much better. If your point is that Finland does better because they don't neglect their underclass as badly as the US does, I guess that's an interesting theory, and would be consistent with the existence of much more robust social spending in Finland.

As for the relatively good performance of Massachusetts, I'm all for figuring out what it does well that places like Alabama do poorly. It's not just education, either. Liberal New England leads he nation in most social and economic indicators, while the conservative regions like the Bible Belt tend to pull our numbers into the sewer. We should try to guide more of the country in the direction of the successful liberal examples, whether they're places like Massachusetts or places like Scandinavia.

 

[CatsEye]

I showed you how homogeneous Finland is. Showed the poverty rate of white children is higher in the U.S than in Finland (at least that's what I found in a quick google search).

Looking at all of the U.S we have a poverty rate of 22% for children (Finland 3-6%). Our majority race consists of 72% white (93% Finns). We are a very diverse country. I have no idea why you think looking at the entirety of the U.S and Finland is some how more meaningful.

And in the case of Massachusetts, it's comparing a population of 6.6 million vs 5.4 million for Finland, poverty rate of ~11% for Mass. and ~6% Finland, and 84% are white in Mass. vs 93% are Finns for Finland. Seems Mass. is more diverse that Finland as a whole.

I agree with you that we should look at all places that perform well, and that definitely includes Finland. But what annoys me is the perpetual doom and gloom our scripted media presents to the public regarding education in the U.S. NAEP scores have risen significantly for blacks, hispanics, and whites since the 70's. Overall scores have risen only modestly because of the drop in ratio between whites and non-whites. [Apparently our greedy teachers with their evil unions are doing some good.] Seems our media is allergic to presenting such good news.

BTW, if I had a choice of copying something from Finland it would be their health care system . 2011 per person cost: $8508 (U.S) vs $3374 (Finland).