Two legislators from different parties and different perspectives come to similar conclusions about how other countries outperform the U.S.
High-performing nations set themselves on a course of steady, long-term improvement, which includes consistent practices for recruiting, preparing, and supporting teachers. That is among the big takeaways from state legislators who participated in a yearlong study of education outside the United States.
The study was convened by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to explore how education functions in countries that are high performers on the PISA assessment. The 22 legislators all serve on their states’ legislative education committees.
What they’ve learned so far has surprised them.
Indiana State Rep. Bob Behning, a Republican from Indianapolis, and Arkansas State Sen. Joyce Elliott, a Democrat from Little Rock, came to the exploration with different experiences and political ideas, but they sound a lot alike when they describe what they learned from studying Shanghai, Finland, Singapore, Ontario, and more.
“They set themselves on a course to create the system they want, and they do not veer from it over 25 or 30 years. It’s not interrupted by the next election. They look at education as a system for continuous improvement, not a system where you keep experimenting with ideas,” Elliott said.
Elliott sees the wisdom of steering a consistent course but, ever the practical politician, she also knows the reality of working in the system we have. “Every time we have an election, especially a governor’s election, the new person wants to put his imprimatur on education. Every time we hear about some newfangled thing, we want to try it,” she said.
Behning, too, saw the value of a uniform plan for education. “They definitely have much more consistent control all the way down the line with standards driving the curriculum and the syllabi. There’s much more consistency. That’s something we should be learning from,” Behning said.
But, like Elliott, Behning acknowledges the complexity of the issue in the United States. “We have to be very creative about how we embed greater consistency without jeopardizing local control. We just have to be more thoughtful about how we do this. We can’t dictate the way this is going to be the way they can in other countries,” he said.
A more rigorous process
Behning and Elliott also see a lot to be learned from how high-performing countries recruit, train, and support teachers.
Behning pointed to the consistency that most of these nations achieve because they concentrate teacher preparation in fewer colleges. Ontario, for example, has a population of 13.6 million people and 16 teacher preparation programs; Indiana has less than half the population (6.5 million) and 43 teacher preparation programs. Singapore, with 5.5 million people, has just one teacher preparation program, which trains every teacher in that city-state. (Learn more about Singapore’s teacher preparation on p. 8 of this issue.)
None of the high-performing countries they studied offers anything like alternative certification or programs like Teach for America, Elliott said. “How teachers are trained and the perception of teachers is so different. They are not trying to find alternative ways to get people into teaching. Teaching is just too important for that,” she said.
“It’s a much more rigorous process, but they also get into more intangible qualifications for being a teacher, such as whether candidates like kids and have the personality to become a teacher. They want to know how committed they are to the future of their country and what attributes it takes to be somebody who’s shaping the future of their country,” Elliott said.
The United States does a lot that’s right when it comes to education, but the DNA of this country has always included the desire to do even more even better. NCSL’s work to better prepare a crucial group of policy makers for this task is laudatory. I’m eager to see how the take-aways from this experience translate into new practices here at home.
Citation: Richardson, J. (2015). The editor’s note: Importing ideas for education. Phi Delta Kappan, 97 (3), 4.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan Richardson
Joan Richardson is the former director of the PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools and the former editor-in-chief of Phi Delta Kappan magazine.
