Country School Leads National Cohort of Educators to Finland to Study PISA Success

The cohort will be the first of its kind to meet with designers of the PISA test, officials of Finland’s Ministry of Education and university professors who are training the next generation of Finnish teachers.

More than 510,000 students in 65 economies took part in PISA 2012 representing approximately 28 million 15-year-olds around the world. Finland consistently performs in the top 10 of all countries in the world. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) which administers the survey reports that the gap between the strongest students and the weakest students is the smallest in the world in Finland.

 

“In an increasingly international and competitive educational landscape, it would be short-sighted not to examine international best practices,” says New Canaan Country School Assistant Head of School Day Rosenberg, who organized the cohort. “Finland is the exemplar. It makes sense to go directly to the source and ask questions about what is working and why, and to see what it looks like in practice.”

 

While Connecticut consistently performs well as far as states go, it still lags behind Finland.

 

“Some might dismiss the results from a tiny country in the Arctic circle, but it is important to note that its neighbor Norway, which has many demographic similarities to Finland, uses an American-style educational platform, and like America, Norway’s PISA results are buried in mediocrity,” says Rosenberg.

 

The Finnish educational philosophy has many similarities to independent school philosophy, Rosenberg notes. “In researching the Finnish system, it is clear they honor teachers, they honor life-long education and professional development, and they honor a whole child approach, not unlike Country School’s philosophy.”

 

The delegation includes the following New Canaan Country School teachers: preschool teacher Jeannie Bean, Upper School teacher David Kucher, Lower School teacher Abigail Newport, Science department chair Caryn Purcell, along with Rosenberg.

 

Upon their return, the teachers will be challenged to develop ways to integrate what they learned in order to promote student achievement and improve teacher performance. They will also develop ways to continue their exchange with other members of the group from across the country.

 

“Independent schools have the flexibility to be nimble and respond to innovation,” says Rosenberg. “We will be able to apply what we learn from this experience and perhaps look at what we already do well in a broader context.”