When Finnish Teachers Work in America's Public Schools | Hacker News Reader

When Finnish Teachers Work in America's Public Schools

theatlantic.com

104 pointsaarohmankad53 comments

adjusts his seat in his armchair Yes, my uninformed opinion, but reading the article, I think the quote from Marc Tucker towards the end is right:

>And the countries that give [teachers] more autonomy successfully are countries that have made an enormous investment in changing the pool from which they are selecting their teachers, then they make a much bigger investment than we do in the education of their future teachers, then they make a much bigger investment in the support of those teachers once they become teachers.

Teachers in these institutions are given a level of respect we offer scientists, lawyers, other professionals, so of course they are trusted to be given autonomy. Imagine the same level of scrutiny given to such professionals, if say we mandate every minute in a doctor's meeting from a city authority, would they stand for it? When we talk about education, people often highlight the fact we spend a lot of money per student compared to other countries. This fact fits in with this hypothesis.

Once an institution gains that respect, the rest can follow. No, it may not be causal (teachers being respected leads to higher pay, better quality teachers, etc) but they are certainly correlated.

This is very true. The limit of learning in a classroom is the ability of the teacher. The limit of learning in a school is the leadership of the principal. Caliber and esteem of teachers is the one commonality across all high performing systems.

Programs like Teach For America help, but they are tiny compared to the overall size of teachers, and many leave frustrated after a few years.

This situation isn't that different from developing software. If you have great programmers, you can cut them loose with less supervision. If you toss a lot of untrained mediocre bodies at problems, you need to invest a lot more in micromanagement to make sure nothing goes wrong.

Pretty Much Exactly That.

Of course, you might want to go further, and ask why this hasn't happened. Why wouldn't some state or locality in the US demand that its teacher-training candidates have a BS in, say, nursing (for primary schoolteachers) or engineering (for highschool math and science) plus an appropriate score on an IQ test like the wonderlic (serving as a sanity check on the required credentials)? They would need these before being hired, even if they had a degree in education.

Then, those teachers could demand higher autonomy (and better wages), and school boards would be inclined to go along. Why aren't parents and the school boards they elect willing or able to do this?

One issue is of course that schools of education in the US are not getting the top cohort of high school graduating classes, and they work with what they get. The young woman (and it is almost all young women) gets a degree, a certificate, and gets to be in charge of your kids for six hours a day, even though when she was in your English class in HS she would copy her answers off of the test of your permanently-stoned buddies.

Who wouldn't want watch her like a hawk?

Next...the union. Some teachers can't teach, but they can for damn sure vote, and pay their union dues to the NEA. The NEA isn't actually opposed to education, but anything that diminishes the political clout of its lobby (no matter how justifiable to parents, students, or even its individual members) will be opposed w/ much firmness.

Finally, there are...legal obstacles. Less said about them, the better...but they do exist.

I'll have inject a remark viz one of your hyopotheses. IQ tests are absolute bollocks - especially if gauging potential ability to teach.

Citations, of course.

Or are you simply of the Nicholas Garaufis school of thought; namely, if the test isn't perfect, it can't possibly be used as a hiring tool? After seeing what Judge G did to the FDNY training program, I'd have half a mind to buy extra smoke alarms and fire extinguishers if I lived in the city...

Like a lot of people, I know some persons who would probably be excluded by the general approache I described upthread, and who ended up going into teaching and being really, really good at their specialty. That's why there should always be a way to make exceptions. That doesn't invalidate the principle that "book smart" isn't a bad criteria for new teachers, and that some tests can give a rough idea of how likely someone is to be so.

Cliched but true:

Tough cases make bad law. The plural of anecdote isn't data.

Report for testing citizen, a career will then be blindly assigned to you based on these results.

I never thought Futurama could be used as a source on HN, but here we are!

How does an IQ test evaluate whether a person will work hard, follow best practices, connect with their students, etc?

"Grit" by Angela Duckworth contains excellent examples of the unfair outcomes false negatives cause. She's also published research dealing with this topic:

http://www.pnas.org/content/108/19/7716.abstract

People can get bad scores just because they are really nervous, etc. Now you have a score, that does not display your innate abilities at all, but, it blocks you from several activities you might excel and enjoy.

To inject some qualitative opinions of my own, totally lacking of any refrences:

IQ tests can be used to sieve through populations - with false negatives. Their only utility in career context is as an arbitrary tool to reduce candidate population. The only sane motivation for their use would be a political or economic pressure to restrict number of candidates to make their evaluation and processing cheaper downstream. The downsides are: arbitrary unfair blocking of individual careers, potentially removing candidates that would excel. If the point is to reduce the population, then generally, if the cost function of candidate quality cannot be evaluated precisely, a completely random process would likely lead to a better outcome than some arbitrary numeric metric. (I'll need to dig through my algorithm resources to formulate a precise reference if someone wants for this last statement).

The young woman (and it is almost all young women) gets a degree, a certificate, and gets to be in charge of your kids for six hours a day, even though when she was in your English class in HS she would copy her answers off of the test of your permanently-stoned buddies.

Can you cut it out with the misogyny here? Teachers deserve more respect than this.

I can respect them for their ability to control a classroom, to empathize with, and to motivate young children.

I cannot in any meaningful way respect, the breadth, rigor or quality of undergraduate ed-major programs in the US. Graduates of these programs may have respectable knowledge and skills-but that is an exception unique to the individual.

Apparently, the facts are misogynous. Damn, damn facts.

I guess your point would have been made without mentioning the gender of the average teacher. Can come across like two points at once when phrased like that

If you're talking about facts, give us a source?

The gender balances of teachers vary wildly by level [1], and is over 40% male in high school.

I got a math undergrad at a good school. Once you got past calc/linear algebra/maybe diffeq 1 into classes that were mostly math/physics/eng students, future teachers were almost entirely in the bottom quartile of the classes. But maybe that's not so bad -- do you really need to understand real analysis to teach anything before calculus? Of course not. And to teach calc 1 or 2? Probably not.

My hypothesis is that's almost entirely because the career doesn't pay well. Consider working as a teacher on the peninsula in sfbay. It's basically a cute hobby that will have to be supported by a spouse if you'd ever like to own a house. You can see some of the numbers here [2], and they're horrible. Average salaries below, 2012 data, from [2]

   Belmont-Redwood Shores Elementary SD  $71,502
   Burlingame School District            $65,336
   Hillsbourgh City School District      $86,994
   Las Lomitas Elementary SD             $92,494
   Menlo Park City SD                    $90,271
   Millbrae Elementary School District   $64,168
   Redwood City Elementary SD            $70,965
   San Bruno Park Elementary SD          $65,713
   San Carlos Elementary SD              $68,379
   San Mateo-Foster City Elementary SD   $65,720
   San Mateo Union High School District  $83,384
   Sequoia Union High School District    $81,674
   South San Francisco Unified District  $61,639
   Woodside Elementary SD                $88,406

Those are hobby wages, not live an adult life in the city you work in wages. And there's something sick about cities once teachers can no longer afford to live, purchase homes, and raise families in the cities in which they work. And much of the problem is due to the wildly out of control housing costs.

Anecdotally, a teacher 10 years in at a local school on the peninsula works another 20 hours/week at my gym to be able to afford a one bedroom apartment by himself and to have at least some spending money. When he gets to school at 7, leaves at 4, then works another 4-5 hours at a gym, how is he supposed to get up and be rested and ready to teach the next day?

[1] https://www.aaeteachers.org/index.php/blog/757-the-teacher-g...

[2] http://patch.com/california/redwoodcity-woodside/comparing-t...

The established home owners have placed a thicket of restrictions on building houses and apartments and condos that maintains prices at a very high level. There is a land shortage, but densification is battled = only those that have houses can afford them at the proper cost ratio. New buy couples have to pool income and pay 60% or more of their income to get into a place. Even rents = huge. There are many houses run as tekki bunkhouses with 2 people per room in a 6 room house and the city wants them all out.

>teachers being respected leads to higher pay

Note that teachers are not paid well in Finland. The average wage for a classroom teacher is $43k per year, which is slightly less than the average wage of all workers.

Please take into account that the Finnish health care and getting kids to school etc is free compared to the US system, so 40-50k wage in Finland is fine. Not sure how much more those add, but would guess something like 20k.

Which is why I added the comparison to average wage.

>Teachers in these institutions are given a level of respect we offer scientists, lawyers, other professionals,

those countries have lesser skewed Pareto, in particular becoming doctor/lawyer/civil engineer/etc. there doesn't result in such high earnings vs. other options, and that makes the other options feasible for capable people.

And while it may look like a zero sum game of redistribution of the capable people it is really not - having wide choice of semi-equal career options people will study&work in their respective career of choice equally hard vs. just slacking in the "looser" choices, especially the unionized ones.

I've also heard from a number of sources, including Finnish acquaintances, that there's more consensus in Finnish society about what kids should be doing in school.

In the U.S., there's a decades-long consensus that schools should be better, along with heated, unresolved debates about all the details: discipline (including physical discipline), religious instruction and history, evolution, violence and bullying, homework, sex ed, sports, civil rights history, vocational training, school district borders and school assignment, arts and music, financial literacy, dress codes, cafeteria menus, disabilities and mental health issues, handwriting, testing, student transportation, animal dissection... The list goes on and on, and the battle lines are more complex than red versus blue.

Since there's no agreement, but everyone thinks they know part of the solution, politicians (and voters) at every level of government attempt to impose their will on the schools, meaning more and more regulations for educators and students.

Why not allow (mostly) autonomy to the schools in this kind of question so that there is a school for every taste (as long as their are enough parents with children to fill the classrooms of such a school)? Parents should (mostly) not care to what school children of other parents go as long there is a school that satisfies their desires for their children.

Are you aware of the US' population density?

I grew up in a town where the entire population, at the last census, was a bit over 11,000 people. It would've taken probably two hours or more each way to provide bus service to the local "big city" (a whopping 50,000 people!).

How would you support multiple schools offering real choice in approach in a community that size and that spread out? And then how would you scale it to work in all the other places in the US which are like this?

It isn't easily solvable for young students, but for high school age kids it is. You can increase course offerings through some sort of in-school distance learning. The last 2 years, when kids are generally 16-18 could sometimes go away to school.

Of course, all of this requires some investment and planning. The political fix would be to buss the students to far-flung schools.

I come from a town in England with 15,000 residents. It has 3 secondary schools (sort of like high schools) and 2-3 primary schools.

Just... Build schools.

We need to protect children from the desires of their badly-educated parents.

Large populations of people believe all kinds of crazy stuff that most of us prefer not to help propagate with our tax dollars.

And those people would rather to pay taxes to have their children taught to disdain and look down on them.

The same way we feel about segregationist grandparents. Yes.

...there's more consensus in Finnish society about what kids should be doing in school.

Discord in the USA's schools is caused by warring factions of profiteers whose sole innovation is ever more clever means of fleecing tax payers. The dashed hopes, dreams, and prospects of students, parents, teachers are just collateral damage in the pursuit of more pork.

Whenever someone gins up a controversy, or pimps yet another new education meme, first ask who is getting paid, second how much.

Evidence please? Particularly given that these issues happen to pretty much fall along the major cultural and political divide in the US.

I suspect that the same root causes of our political discord, are also the root causes of our lack of educational consensus.

What measure of evidence do you require?

Start anywhere. For example, I know of sources detailing masses of money lost on educational innovations using private money, without result, but I don't think that helps your case.

For example, on the other side, if one wanted to show evidence that schooling effects are just signalling anyway, one might start here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/10/04/links-1016-new-urleans/

Your turn.

What portions of that link are relevant? All I see is a link dump. "Signaling"? As in virtue signaling?

Is that your site? I approve of lesswrong, Brookings Institute, the Atlantic... And reviewing your comment history, I'm going to gamble on the hope that you're persuadable. You kinda "sound" like a libertarian, so you might enjoy this publication from criticalthinking.org:

http://atom.curtin.edu.au/SAM_Ed%20Fadsopt.pdf

First hit when I google "fads in education". Result! The intro is better than I could have said it:

"The history of education is also the history of educational panaceas, the comings and goings of quick fixes for deep-seated educational problems. This old problem is dramatically on the increase. The result is intensifying fragmentation of energy and effort in the schools, together with a significant waste of time and money. Many teachers become increasingly cynical and jaded.

It is time to recognize that education will never be improved by educational fads, and that the manner in which educational trends are marketed guarantees that they will be transformed into fads. Fads by their nature are fated to self-destruction. Parents, educators, and citizen activists need to understand the problem of educational fads so that they can effectively distinguish substantive efforts at educational reform from superficial ones. Hence the motivation for this guide."

It includes many fads I hadn't heard of. Its also about 10 years old, and it focuses on the classroom, so it doesn't include more recent nonsense like Common Core, Race to the Top, charter schools, most recent attempts of educational software, computers in the classroom, standardized testing, ranking teachers... Need I go on?

---

What this paper, and many others, leave out is the role of procurement as the engine behind the fads. A lot of money is in play. The best public example I can think of is Dr Richard Feymann's anecdote about buying school books. I'm sure there's similar accounts for every failed fad, if I bothered to look. Especially all this standardized testing, which is the most efficient money extraction scheme cooked up to date.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-the-...

This is surprisingly well sourced:

Standardized Testing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6lyURyVz7k

---

Any way. I'm glad I did this. A trip down memory lane. My boss's boss was Dr John Goodlad. Here's his obit:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/12/...

Dr Goodlad was a great guy, he did great works. Practical, pragmatic, diplomatic, wicked smart, no bullshit. But education reform is like fighting a mob. Everyone's an expert; calm, rational people get shouted down or mowed over.

Oh well. I have many friends who still work in education and reform. The fight goes on.

Nope, not my site, just the fastest example from my previous notes on interesting education articles. Glad to have gotten some citations, I'll give 'em a look. School books, yup, much scamming there.

If only.

There is an interesting dynamic in Finland that arises from the substantial wealth transfers and the small size of our economy.

This creates a situation where the difference in income between a teacher and a lawyer or an MBA is not very big. Teachers in Finland enjoy a very long vacation, also. Basically for top talent the choise is between a very meaningful job, autonomy, ok pay and looooong vacations and working long hours in dronish jobs and not getting paid that much better.

Well here's the interesting thing, teachers in Finland are not making more than teachers in the US, and teachers in the US also get a long vacation. The US also has a similar pupil to teacher ratio as Finland.

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/201...

I believe strongly, that the important wage comparison is not between the Finnish teacher and the US teacher, but between the US teacher and the US MBA, and the Finnish teacher and the Finnish MBA.

In US a teacher makes about a third of what an MBA gets. In Finland the difference is an way smaller when you account for all the wealth transfers.

I found the perspective of the Finnish teachers quite useful and interesting. I've been in electrical engineering for awhile and have been contemplating teaching as a second career, as I know many engineers do. But so used to real autonomy in my day to day or even week to week activities, I can't imagine going from this life to that. Reading about NCLBA and common core and the like never seemed burdensome but perhaps I was wrong. In any event, I don't foresee teaching in my future anymore. Too bad. Perhaps in another country.

Anecdotally, as a second careerist, you'll be permitted more autonomy. Because you can walk at anytime, the admins will have less leverage over you.

This quote

“I feel rushed, nothing gets done properly; there is very little joy, and no time for reflection or creative thinking (in order to create meaningful activities for students).”

seems to me to express both the current trend, and why citizens should care. If highly educated and capable people feel that way, you can expect them to migrate away.

I can tell you right now why they do things this way: it reduces the bargaining power of the teacher to demand a higher salary. If you want to negotiate a salary with someone, the last thing you want is for them to be able to claim to be unique- if their lesson plan is prescribed, the test are prescribed, etc, then all you really need is to hire someone who can follow instructions, and if that person doesn't follow their instructions they can be easily replaced, on the cheap. Turning people into machines is what we Americans do best.

Like everything there is a trade-off with autonomy. On the one hand, not having it is dehumanizing and demotivating causing top performers to work sub-optimally. On the other hand it reduces volatility and variation ensuring the worst performers aren't as bad.

The smaller the organization the easier it is to give autonomy because the natural feedback loop is tighter. In massive organizations (like the education system) there are a lot of cracks to fall through.

Personally I can't work without extreme autonomy - luckily I'm a web engineer where this is basically standard. I'm not sure what the right mix is for all businesses, organizations, cultures, countries, etc.

> Personally I can't work without extreme autonomy - luckily I'm a web engineer where this is basically standard.

Do you work at startups? I moved from being a back-end web engineer towards operations and systems programming to regain my autonomy as at mid sized and larger companies (who pay better than startups) the developers were all micro managed.

Good point, I do only work at startups, that's probably where the autonomy comes from, rather than the web engineering.

Sounds like Chartouni is a great teacher. A lot of the things she is complaining about (like rubrics) weren't put in place for teachers like her. They are there for the 50% of the teachers that are worse than average.

Looking back on my school career, from elementary through high school, the thing I hated most about school was all the fucking assholes I was force to call classmates.

Then, looking back at all the shitty retail jobs I held, the thing I hated most about work was all the fucking asshole customers.

Then, looking back at all the shitty office jobs I held, the thing I hated most were my co-workers, above me, below me, and across from me.

But really, the thing that I've hated all along, is being forced to do anything without first building the understanding behind why bothering at all.

Why am I going to school?

Fuck you, I'm a kid.

Why am I working this shit job?

Fuck you, for robbing me of my youth.

Why do I work at all?

Fuck you, can I have what's left of my life back please?

And then I fucking died.

Ok... so who's writing this?

"If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day... maybe you're the asshole."

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