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Past Educational Opportunity Reports
What Norway (not Finland) tells us about schools
- 12-13-2010
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Guest blog by Thomas Hatch/Washington Post
People often try to use findings from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development’s PISA international assessments of educational performance to tout particular policies or practices in which “high performing” countries seem to be engaged. Rather than a list of “do now’s” for policymakers, however, I believe that the latest PISA findings, like other forms of international comparison, provide an opportunity to reflect on the values and assumptions that underlie our educational system. It wasn’t until I lived in Norway (with my wife and daughters in kindergarten, fourth grade and sixth grade) that I took explicit notice of the fact that Norway, with many commonalities with Finland – consistently one of the highest performers on PISA – actually scores about as poorly as the United States How could this be? When my fourth grader, who didn’t start school until 9 a.m.,got home shortly after 1:30 p.m. (when school got out), I began to see some possible issues... In fact, over the course of that year, I noted many aspects of the Norwegian educational system that might explain those low test scores: (more…)
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