Perspectives on High-Performing Education Systems: What Lessons for the United States?

• In Event: Educational Policy Innovations: Leveling Up and Sustaining Educational Achievement

Abstract

Purpose
This paper intends to explicate the fundamental lessons to be learned by the U.S. from four high performing education systems, specifically China (Hong Kong), Finland, Korea and Singapore. It is argued that these lessons have universal application and sit at the heart of meaningful education reform and excellent learning. The paper concludes with the lessons that the U.S. might need to unlearn- as well as relearn- in order to benefit from the example of high-performing countries.

Perspectives
Openness on the part of the U.S. to learning from international peers has been fueled by America’s lackluster performance on international assessments, and a decline from first to fourteenth in terms of college graduation rates (Duncan, October, 22, 2012). However, it is critical to take note of the contextual realities in the U.S. and draw insights that are powerful enough to transcend the practicalities, realities and limitations of implementation, culture, human capital, resource distribution, and local norms to support intellectual trade across countries.

Method and data
This is a descriptive and analytical case study of the lessons that the U.S. can learn from high-performing education systems. Data comes from multiple sources including policy documents, scholarly articles, government reports, research reports, book chapters, program handbooks, and web-based data. Data also includes observations conducted in school settings, and interviews with school professionals.

Conclusions
The paper has five major conclusions:
1) The system must be able to attract, retain and sustain teacher quality.
2) It is critical to place teachers as professionals at the centre of educational reform, improvement and accountability.
3) The nation must ensure a basic level of care for all learners. The lesson is simple yet profound – when children’s basic needs are overlooked, learning suffers.
4) America would have to, on the one hand, unlearn the strategies advocated by the Global Education Reform Movement or GERM, which emphasizes competition, standardization, prescribed curriculum and test-based accountability (Sahlberg, 2011), and on the other hand, relearn practices that emphasize teachers as professionals and decision-makers, to recognize that all learners are diverse but capable of success, that accountability is a professional responsibility, and reform is a process that is done with, not on, teachers and schools.
5) Placing values and fundamental beliefs about caring for children at the centre of education and educational improvement is an important takeaway for the US.

Significance
In America, there is deep concern that the country is falling behind its international peers, and that substantial reforms in education and in teaching are extremely needed to fix this crisis. This paper focuses on the big ideas or basic, fundamental lessons that we all need to heed if we intend to attain world class teaching profession and education system to which every country aspires, but few have yet to fully realise. It should also be noted that the contextual factors surrounding the US education system are complex and this should be taken into consideration when trying to apply lessons learnt from other systems back home.

Author

• A. Lin Goodwin, Teachers College, Columbia University