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What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen - National - The Atlantic

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success



Everyone agrees the United States needs to improve its education system dramatically, but how? One of the hottest trends in education reform lately is looking at the stunning success of the West's reigning education superpower, Finland. Trouble is, when it comes to the lessons that Finnish schools have to offer, most of the discussion seems to be missing the point.
A really good article. On the surface, though, we go for the same things with our public schools:

Since the 1980s, the main driver of Finnish education policy has been the idea that every child should have exactly the same opportunity to learn, regardless of family background, income, or geographic location.Some of the difference is undoubtedly cultural. Cultures are difficult but certainly not impossible to change. Another difference may not be so easy to overcome. Finland is a small, sparsely populated country. Helsinki only has about one million people. The Finnish model should work in the Midwest, Alaska, and our smaller states. It would be interesting to see a state adopt such a system to show it can be done. Of course, we'd have to pry control out of Washington micromanagers' clawing grip first.

I'd be surprised if our more congested cities would be able to adopt the system, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't at least be tried.

The article doesn't address the typical parental involvement in Finnish families. I wonder if it's even necessary in their education system. It's absolutely critical in ours.

Accountable;1380643 wrote: What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success - Anu Partanen - National - The Atlantic

What Americans Keep Ignoring About Finland's School Success



A really good article. On the surface, though, we go for the same things with our public schools:

Some of the difference is undoubtedly cultural. Cultures are difficult but certainly not impossible to change. Another difference may not be so easy to overcome. Finland is a small, sparsely populated country. Helsinki only has about one million people. The Finnish model should work in the Midwest, Alaska, and our smaller states. It would be interesting to see a state adopt such a system to show it can be done. Of course, we'd have to pry control out of Washington micromanagers' clawing grip first.

I'd be surprised if our more congested cities would be able to adopt the system, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't at least be tried.

The article doesn't address the typical parental involvement in Finnish families. I wonder if it's even necessary in their education system. It's absolutely critical in ours.Some, if not most, local schools need financial assistance from other parts of the world. Regardless of any legislation schools are quite simply a means for parents to drop their kids off at these social gatherings so that they can go to work and that the kids can increase their experience in dealing with the peculiar.

The most important aspect of schools are to ensure a level of equilibrium which further increases their affinity for compassion, empathy, and ultimately their competence in actively being involved in societies obligation to assist those that slip through the cracks



The real failure is our overly expensive universities...

THE PARENT INVOLVEMENT LITERATURE



There are literally hundreds of books, journal articles, and stand-alone reports on the subject of parents' involvement in their children's education. These writings include research reports, expert opinions, theory papers, program descriptions, and guidelines for setting up programs. A great many of these reports are informative and useful, and, because parent involvement has become a "hot topic" in the past few years, there is considerable current information.

The present report synthesizes information from fortyone documents on different aspects of parent involvement. Because several of these are review/summaries of still other documents, many additional writings are represented.

Documents were selected to reflect research on the effects of parent involvement on student achievement and other student outcomes. Twenty-five of the supporting documents are research studies, eight are reviews, and eight are program descriptions and research-based guidelines for setting up programs. All age/grade levels are represented in the research, as are specific student populations, such as the disadvantaged, special education, and limited English proficient students.

The kinds of parent involvement investigated include telephone and written home-school communications, attending school functions, parents serving as classroom volunteers, parent-teacher conferences, homework assistance/tutoring, home educational enrichment, and parent involvement in decision making and other aspects of school governance. The researchers focused on a variety of student outcome areas, including general achievement; achievement in reading, math, or other specific curricular areas; IQ scores; and an array of attitudinal and behavioral outcomes.



EFFECTS OF PARENT INVOLVEMENT

ON STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT



The research overwhelmingly demonstrates that parent involvement in children's learning is positively related to achievement. Further, the research shows that the more intensively parents are involved in their children's learning, the more beneficial are the achievement effects. This holds true for all types of parent involvement in children's learning and for all types and ages of students.

Looking more closely at the research, there are strong indications that the most effective forms of parent involvement are those which engage parents in working directly with their children on learning activities in the home. Programs which involve parents in reading with their children, supporting their work on homework assignments, or tutoring them using materials and instructions provided by teachers, show particularly impressive results.

Along similar lines, researchers have found that the more active forms of parent involvement produce greater achievement benefits than the more passive ones. That is, if parents receive phone calls, read and sign written communications from the school, and perhaps attend and listen during parent teacher conferences, greater achievement benefits accrue than would be the case with no parent involvement at all. However, considerably greater achievement benefits are noted when parent involvement is active--when parents work with their children at home, certainly, but also when they attend and actively support school activities and when they help out in classrooms or on field trips, and so on.

The research also shows that the earlier in a child's educational process parent involvement begins, the more powerful the effects will be. Educators frequently point out the critical role of the home and family environment in determining children's school success, and it appears that the earlier this influence is "harnessed," the greater the likelihood of higher student achievement. Early childhood education programs with strong parent involvement components have amply demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach.

What about orientation and training for parents who wish to become more involved in their children's learning? Those research studies which have compared parent involvement programs that include orientation/training components with those that do not indicate that providing orientation and training enhances the effectiveness of parent involvement. Research in this area indicates that parents generally want and need direction to participate with maximum effectiveness. Orientation/training takes many forms, from providing written directions with a send-home instructional packet; to providing "make-and-take" workshops where parents construct, see demonstrations of, and practice using instructional games; to programs in which parents receive extensive training and ongoing supervision by school personnel.

A word of caution about training activities for parents: While research indicates that orientation/training activities are beneficial, those researchers who have looked at the extent of training have found that a little is better than a lot. That is, programs with extensive parent training components do not produce higher student achievement than those with only basic training, and they sometimes experience considerable attrition--presumably because their time and effort requirements overtax the willingness of parents to stay involved.

Researchers have also found that the schools with the most successful parent involvement programs are those which offer a variety of ways parents can participate. Recognizing that parents differ greatly in their willingness, ability, and available time for involvement in school activities, these schools provide a continuum of options for parent participation.

The url at the end of the doc is not a direct link so here it is in google search... [DOC]

Parent Involvement in Education

Here's Ms. Annie Han on a very obvious truth

A number of cross-cultural studies have documented the apparent higher achievement in mathematics of Asian students as compared with students from other countries. By now, it is no secret that Asian students perform at a higher level in mathematics than do students in the United States, as indicated in such international comparisons as the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The mathematics performance of students in the United States seems to be in decline, and mathematics education in the United States appears to be facing a crisis.

[...]

I was surprised to see in one Beijing elementary school that teachers whose specialty was mathematics taught mathematics to first-grade classes. I visited a second-grade teachers' office where eight desks were arranged into two sets. One set was for four second-grade mathematics teachers, whereas the other set was for four second-grade Chinese language-arts teachers. This office arrangement physically provided opportunities for teachers to learn from each other, to share useful teaching techniques, to design effective lessons, and to discuss students' problems. These eight teachers each taught only two second-grade classes per day, with fifty students in each class.

[...]

All four second-grade mathematics teachers, who teach the same lesson at about the same time, share helpful tips and teaching techniques among themselves. Parents can visit their child's teacher at any time when the teacher is not teaching. The Chinese schools that I visited did not have school psychologists or guidance counselors; the homeroom teacher, alone, was responsible for students' achievement and mental development.

[...]

Profound differences exist in teacher preparation, professional training, and collaborative practices between the United States and China, as well as in the use or existence of a standardized curriculum and in teachers' and administrators' educational backgrounds. If a relationship exists between these differences and students' achievement in mathematics, then an investigation of the cross-cultural dissimilarities may shed light on why these variances exist in students' comparative achievement. Chinese Mathematics Pedagogy and Practices: What Can We Learn?

I would go a bit further and suggest that if any parent wishes to send their child to a vocational school please reconsider. These schools are obviously designed for kids that are too behind in their understanding of any standard curriculum, either seen as a behavioral problem whose local teachers have given up on, or , in the same token, kids who've rarely attended their local high schools and are shoved into them. Quite simply VOCATIONAL SCHOOLS ARE COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT!!!!!!Please do your child a favor and work with them and keep them in the best schools as you can!

Matching Teaching Style to Learning Style May Not Help Students

By David Glenn

If you've ever sat through a teaching seminar, you've probably heard a lecture about "learning styles." Perhaps you were told that some students are visual learners, some are auditory learners, and others are kinesthetic learners. Or maybe you were given one of the dozens of other learning-style taxonomies that scholars and consultants have developed.

Almost certainly, you were told that your instruction should match your students' styles. For example, kinesthetic learners—students who learn best through hands-on activities—are said to do better in classes that feature plenty of experiments, while verbal learners are said to do worse.

Now four psychologists argue that you were told wrong. There is no strong scientific evidence to support the "matching" idea, they contend in a paper published this week in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. And there is absolutely no reason for professors to adopt it in the classroom.


We could learn alot from other countries and teaching but I think this country is too damn prejudice and stubborn to attempt it.

What's truly sad is that it's at the expense of children with so much promise

I've always held that any child can be an incredibly smart person, it's all up to how we instruct and influence them. The answer is to work at the strengths of every individual but alas everyone will scream socialism and run crying to the shelters. Sad, really sad

I'm studying a mathematics textbook for calculus and within the first 60 pages have already come across material that is unnecessary and just a few notes on the internet have explained not only how to solve the equation but how to conceptualize what the idea is behind what's necessary for all linear equations.

Who permits these books and are they even looked at? Do they honestly feel a few hiccups are not worth editing them? Is it low budget? I can't see how it would be low budget but perhaps someone knows more about it than I do