Better countries, better schools

Over at PPS Equity, Peter Campbell's post on pathologizing children has garnered a record --to date-- 84 comments, some of which deal with the limited recess time available for primary students at many of Portland's low income schools.

The villain in the story is No Child Left Behind and its demand for ever higher reading and math test scores.  In Portland Public Schools, even kindergartners are subject to literacy testing.  And why not?  We have an achievement gap to close.

One country that apparently leaves no child behind without No Child Left Behind is Finland.  Consequently, it provides its schoolchildren with lots of vigorous recess time:

"After each 45-minute class, students at the Vaajakumpu Primary School in Finland suit up in their snow gear, and for 15 minutes, they frolic on ice skates, sleds, and skis."

Compare that to, say, Portland's Rosa Parks Elementary.  According to Campbell, kindergarten students there have, on a typical day, only "...25 minutes to be goofy and run around and be little kids in a span of 6 hours.  The rest is all business."

The sad thing is that all children are kinesthetic learners.  They learn best when moving.  In fact, that's probably true of any student regardless of age.  History's most famous teacher knew that.  Socrates taught his students while walking. 

But there's more to the Finland story.  Schools there are not tasked with solving the problem of poverty:

"Finns also enjoy strong governmental supports for parental leave, day care, and healthcare (in exchange for high taxes), which means that problems associated with poverty don't show up at the schoolhouse door nearly as often as in the US."

In the U.S., instead of confronting poverty directly, we adopt a "no excuses" policy for our schools.  High expectations and good teaching are the tools we use to deal with poor (and underachieving) students, even though we're fully aware of the strong correlation between the income gap and the achievement gap.

Keith Baker, a frequent contributor to the EDDRA* e-mail listserv, is convinced that the "socialist" Scandinavian countries are the most enlightened in the world when it comes to education.  He also sent along a list of the world's "best" countries based on a variety of factors like literacy, quality of life, the environment, etc. 

Here's the list.  Note that all the Scandinavian countries are in the top ten:

#1 Sweden	1683 points
#2 Denmark	1598 points
#3 Netherlands	1572 points
#4 Finland	1514 points
#5 Germany	1422 points
#6 UK	1407 points
#7 Canada	1373 points
#8 Switzerland	1326 points
#9 Norway	1320 points
#10 Belgium	1208 points

*(Education Disinformation Detection and Reporting Agency)

Comments

[Steve R.]

I think you're right that it's a record for PPS Equity so far, but at least a couple school posts on More Hockey Less War had more comments. Open Letter to School Board re. Charter Schools got 96 comments before I closed it down, and PPS School Board Dances Around Transfer Issue had 86 comments.

As then, the charter issue still brings up a lot of personal passion (and defensiveness). And I still maintain that this is not about personal choices, but about public investment policy.

[Dissertation]

Schools are really good at the Portland which is a city located in the Northwestern United States, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the state of Oregon,i am agree with you on the facts of low income schools,this is good for the low category people and students.

[send gifts to Pakistan]

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