No fight to the Finnish

By Larry Sand June 25, 2019

Finnish schools are unionized. American schools are unionized. The similarities end there.

Randi Weingarten, Lily Eskelsen García and other teacher union leaders have on many occasions extolled the virtues of Finland’s education system, and, at every turn, they remind us that their teachers are unionized.

They are right. Finland does have a highly regarded education system and the teachers are indeed unionized, but then there are the details. 

In Finland, teachers are revered, and enjoy the same professional status as doctors and lawyers, though they are not paid as well. (In fact, they don’t earn as much as their American counterparts.) Finnish teachers are recruited from the top 10 percent of their college grads, whereas in the U.S., only 23 percent of new teachers come from the top third. This is one of the reasons that on international comparisons, Finland’s students beat ours regularly, and do so with less funding. 

Unlike U.S. teachers, Finns do not have iron-clad job protections. As explained by economist Barbara Bruns, they are hired by individual schools – not school districts. “If a school director asks a teacher to leave – and it does happen – the teacher alone is responsible for finding a new position. Just reflect on the incentives for performance that this creates.” Finland doesn’t have ongoing school choice battles either. As Bruns notes, Finland runs a national school choice system in which parents can choose freely between the 2,600 municipal and 80 privately-managed schools, with funding following the student..........To Read More....