Dear Rep. Havard: Finland Has National Standards
They’re not afraid of national education standards in Lapland, so why should we be in Louisiana?
On Wednesday, The Advocate published a letter from State Representative Kenneth Havard (R — Jackson) that brought to mind a memorable line from George Bernard Shaw’s play, Major Barbara: “He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” For if his letter to the paper is any indication, it appears Havard has most definitely found his calling.
In his missive, Havard attacks Louisiana’s embrace of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and, in the process, unintentionally reveals how little he knows about Common Core and education policy in general. For example, in his letter Havard points to the well-worn case of Finland to bolster his argument against CCSS:
Finland is consistently ranked as one of the countries that lead the world in educational outcomes. It should be no surprise that Finland has taken the exact opposite approach by promoting individualism instead of the assembly line approach.
The problem, of course, is that — apparently unbeknownst to Havard — Finland not only has national standards, but a national curriculum (cue villain music). Moreover, researchers from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) specifically cite Finland’s national curriculum as one of the main factors behind that country’s sustained gains in student performance over the past thirty years.
While it’s true that today Finland’s teachers have significant autonomy over curriculum and instruction decisions, that hasn’t always been the case. As the Fordham Institute’s Kathleen Porter-Magee noted:
In fact, the autonomy and decentralization we see in Finland today came after more than two decades of tightly controlled, centrally driven education reform that systematically adjusted curriculum, pedagogy, teacher preparation, and accountability. It was only after this top-down systemic reform moved Finland from poor to good that they shifted to a more flexible approach aimed at turning the system from a good one to a great one.
If anything, Louisiana’s embarrassing performance on the recently released National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that our education system hasn’t yet made the jump from even “poor to good” and only further underlines the need for CCSS.
To be fair, Havard isn’t alone in his failure to grasp the issues around Common Core; it’s a trait that he shares with his colleagues in the legislature who have recently come of out of the woodwork to jump on the anti-CCSS bandwagon. It manifests itself most clearly in their rhetoric about the evils of CCSS, with its reliance on hackneyed catchphrases (“Who wants to be common?”) and dire warnings about that most frightening of boogeymen, the federal government — both of which make an appearance in Havard’s letter.
But underneath the clever puns and hyperbolic appeals to states’ rights, the arguments against CCSS made by politicians like Havard lack any real substance, primarily because their sudden opposition to Common Core is more about political expedience than common sense. Sadly, we have lawmakers in Baton Rouge who are willing to endanger Louisiana’s progress in education by exploiting anxiety about Common Core for their own political gain.
As Rep. Havard stated in The Advocate, “I campaigned on the very principle that government is the problem, not the solution.” In the sense that Havard and other anti-CCSS politicians are part of government in this state, I’m inclined to agree with him.
