In most areas of the Scandinavian countries, children go to a preschool starting at age 3 or 4. They don’t start paper and pencil academic work until age 7. Students gain social skills, resource skills and confidence as they expand their “right brain” thinking long before the left side is engaged. They have a positive feeling about education and are ready to start school.

In many of the countries, special ed students are shuffled off into “special schools,” where achievement scores are quite low on that nation’s standardized assessments. In some cases, those schools are completely left out of international assessments, (e.g., the PISA). On the other hand, gifted students, in Finland for example, are held to their class. We’re not the only ones teaching to the middle.

Formal career tracking is done at, as a minimum, age 15, where students are tested again and then sent off to various schools, depending on their skills. They may go to a college prep school, an upper-end school with an IB (International Baccalaureate) program, or a vocational school. Some countries set kids off to the vocational track at the end of 6th grade, and in some cases, at the end of 3rd grade. Unfortunately, in some countries where immigration and poverty are more present, these students end up in the vocational track, not having the resources to participate in extra study sessions that would get them into the college prep schools.

Another difference in European education is the foreign language requirement. Even students going into the vocational track are expected to learn a second language—primarily English. Students in the university track are expected to learn two other languages—one of which is usually English. This does not include standard studies in some countries of Latin. Studying all these languages can only benefit the students in the area of vocabulary—a key area assessed in reading.

Last fall, my elder daughter and I traveled to the UK to visit universities and colleges. We met with admissions officers, department heads and went on campus tours. She sat in on a class, too. While she felt fully comfortable with the academic level presented in the one sample class, we found that few American students are accepted as full-time students in their schools. Glasgow University, for example, requires a student from the US, to have SAT scores of 650+ in each subject, or scores of 5 or better on AP exams, or an Associates of Arts degree. University of Strathclyde was a little lower in their expectations (600+ with a minimum total, AP of 4+). Northampton didn’t say their requirements, they just said no. I am concerned about the inflation of grades at our schools. My daughter is an honor roll student, but without the higher SATs, she couldn’t get in—despite an appeal to her mounds of community involvement–she received two scholarships and a leadership award from organizations closer to home. Instead, she was accepted at a university in Colorado, and is deciding whether to transfer to Scotland once she has the equivalent of an AA degree.

All this got me thinking. I teach in a K-12 alternative program and am constantly seeking ways to up the ante: to improve the participation in studies, to increase the rigor, and to provide sufficient challenge for my gifted students.

In two weeks, I will be off to visit schools all over Europe to get a subjective view of what goes on over there. Are they really higher achieving in their schools? Or do they just exclude anyone who won’t make the grade from the assessments? It will be a whirlwind tour: about a dozen countries in four months. Mainly, I would like to find a few methods that *do* work for them and bring them back here to improve the learning in my classroom, and who knows, as I make presentations across the state, maybe I can cause some pedagogical change in other classrooms as well.

edit: It looks like I will have the opportunity to visit a role-playing themed high school in Denmark, thanks to a connection from an ICE parent!

We are an increasingly globally-minded community and need to make sure that our students are competent to participate in the world’s higher education options.

Work Plan
My goal is to spend five months visiting schools in European countries where the PISA ratings are highest, traveling from northern Europe to southern Europe. From October through April, I plan to visit innovative and traditional schools in as many of the following countries as possible: Finland, Ireland, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Estonia, Austria, Czech Republic, and Switzerland. For comparison, I also plan to visit middle and lower scoring schools in France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Israel.

Plan: Evaluate what top-rated European schools are doing by:
• Visiting various schools in European and Mid-East countries to compare educational practices to those of the United States
• Videotaping lessons, taking photographs of classrooms
• Keeping a detailed evaluative list of text books in use in those classrooms
• Interviewing teachers and students as possible
• Determining what the educational priorities are at these schools through “Blink” assessments, interviews with administrators, and school websites
• Interviewing community members and parents to hear their perspectives of schools and their level of support
• Evaluating PISA scores to determine inclusiveness of students tested

Impact of Activities
The purpose of this study is to find practical examples of pedagogical practices in high performing schools and bring those methods and ideas to Washington State. Through sharing these observations with teachers at OSPI (Washington State’s Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction) WALA (Washington Association for Learning Alternatives) conferences, and my local school district, there can be an immediate effect on students through the educational practices transferred to these teachers’ classrooms.