Imagine! Imagine an equitable national public school system, one that; dedicates itself to the care, development and future of children; requires only one test of its students at age 16 — yet its students are among the top performers in the world, scoring among the highest in science, math and reading.
Also requires that teachers graduate in the top 10 percent of their university class, are paid well, have fewer class hours than American teachers, and have smaller classes to teach. International education expert Dr. Pasi Sahlberg, author of “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn From Educational Change in Finland,” stated that in Finland “It’s more difficult getting into teacher education than law or medicine.”
Has 96 percent of public school teachers unionized.
Sahlberg noted that Finland’s experience shows it is possible to achieve excellence by focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on equity: “The problem facing education in America isn’t the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.”
