On November 29th I joined a webinar hosted by McKinsey & Company “How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better.” I was so taken by the information relayed that I immediately sought out a copy of the report and have, since then, carved out some time to read through it with pen and highlighter in hand. For me, the report was enlightening and reinforced much of what I have come to appreciate about the complexity of education reform.
The publication of the PISA rankings soon after had educators and reformers shouting choruses of “Finland!” and “Shanghai!” – as if the answers to the problems in education we are seeking could be found in a “simply this” solution. There is nothing simple about education reform and the findings from the McKinsey report explores the complexity of comparing successful education reform strategies across multiple systems.
“What our analysis reveals is that despite their different contexts, all improving school systems appear to adopt a similar set of interventions, one that is appropriate to their stage of the journey [my emphasis added].” McKinsey & Company Education: How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better”
It’s the stage of the journey that matters the most. In this report school systems are ranked into a particular performance stage: poor to fair; fair to good; good to great; great to excellent. Interventions that work well in the poor to fair stage will fail miserably in the good to great stage. The bottom line?
“Educators in a moderately performing system would be better off in seeking inspiration from similar systems that are managing to improve, rather than from those that are configured and positioned very differently, even if they are the world’s best-performing ones.” McKinsey & Company Education: How the world’s most improved school systems keep getting better”
So what works in Finland (Finland and Shanghai were not part of the McKinsey study) is not going to have the same impact on a system at a different performance stage. And what worked in Shanghai might have popped them onto the leaderboard of high achievers but it is no guarantee that they will demonstrate a continuum of improvement. Giving teachers more autonomy in the classroom, for example, makes sense only if they are grounded in the system pedagogy to begin with and are on the journey from great to excellent. School systems that are at the lower end of the performance stage require tighter controls over teaching and learning processes.
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Wow, this is so important. We could add obvious, but for some reason, it never is. Month after month, great teachers take to web and print espousing for every last educator the freedoms they want in their classroom. Never mind the 9th graders in New Orleans and DC reading at a 4th grade level, having lost all respect for adult authority.
As to Finland/Shanghai, frankly ’tis shocking the good names we’ve seen echoing the call to be more like them. I take this on, a bit tongue in cheek, with Finnish Schools are Compete Failures. (Education Next should have me pen a feature on this).
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We might also add to your observation: what works for a small Scandinavian nation may not be appropriate to a Superpower with a recent ethnic repression problem. Finland couldn’t defend it’s own capital, let alone project peace and logistics (and new toys/business models) to the far corners of the globe.
Does PISA really measure what it purports? We know we have great high end students. Does PISA challenge them in matters of substance?
Look at this example question: Question 1: Biodiversity. It asks students to figure out which of 14 pictures has three arrows pointing at it.
Really? Can’t a 5th grader figure that out? Yes, it tests reading and abstract reasoning, and not a few of our students would have real problems with that. Which is why such tests have a place in comparing students of Washington HS in Compton, CA with Central HS in Pittsburgh.
But using this over-simple test to gauge our future technological competitiveness? How many American 9th graders would find this just ‘lame’? How many would find it a political statement? Perhaps enough to drop the average score substantially?
By comparison, here’s a list of one school’s 9th grade science fair projects.