Quantity Over Quality — Yes, it Applies to Schools Too!

In my home city of Santa Ana, CA, the population demographics are mostly similar — there is no crazy socioeconomic disparity and at least 90% of the population is Hispanic (Vera). However, there is an alarming gap in the academic performance amongst the high schools. The academic performance gap in this one city alone is pretty wide, so to take into account the gap between students around the world would seem almost unimaginable. But unlike Santa Ana, the demographics worldwide are far from being uniform. By conducting further research, I’ve found that immigration and rigorous school systems are two major forces that influence a student’s performance. Immigration is a challenge for most students because of the natural setbacks that occur during the adaptation process and a lack of a rigorous school curriculum could undermine the achievements students are capable of. Despite these obstacles to an equal performance level, there is hope in closing the academic gap.

As we advance further in technology and society, it seems as though more people are starting to realize the advantages of getting an education. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that all countries are on board with making an investment towards their youths’ learning. In countries where education is not prioritized, we see a thread of adverse events. For example, the lack of education has resulted in the lack of specialized or high paying jobs. The lack of high paying jobs has created a large wealth gap in which people live in a world of ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’ The lack of specialized jobs has then resulted in labor intensive jobs. These labor intensive jobs tend to be strenuous on the human body, however, the lack of specialized jobs also includes a lack of medical professionals. The cycle goes on and on. Seeing how the absence of educational opportunities creates a domino effect of undesirable situations, it’s important to look into what are the forces that affect a student’s scholastic performance? How much control do students have over these forces?

Immigration is one of those forces that are out of a student’s control. They may be forced to move to seek asylum, escape from poverty, or provide a better and safer educational opportunity for their children. For example, many immigrants from Southern California originate from Mexico some of their reasons for moving revolve around giving their children a better life an educational opportunity. Although it may seem great that Mexico invests $3,300 per student, that money is not evenly distributed, much less even makes it to the student (Investopedia). In places where the drug cartels are active and corruption runs deep amongst the school’s administration, universities are no longer safe for students. Due to activity from active cartels, students must walk with caution every single day or else face sexual harassment, robbery, or even death (Lopez). Since corrupt principals and administrators run the schools, many of the funds supplied by the government and from the student’s tuition have been diverted from investing into the student’s education to making the leaders richer (Lopez). This has led to poor infrastructure, lack of technology, and even a shortage of toilet paper and running water for the students who live on the university campus (Lopez). It is clear to see why any parent would be in search of a safer and richer learning opportunity for their child, however their issues do not stop once they’ve moved to a different country.

Apart from dealing with the despair from being uprooted from their home, they must now face the challenges of adapting to an entirely new way of living. This includes adapting to a school system in which you may or may not even be fluent in the language they are trying to teach you in. Immigrant students have largely struggled to keep up natural born citizens in terms of their academic performance. This is clearly evident by studying school performance in Santa Ana. A common way to check which schools have a larger immigrant population is by checking how many of its students are still “English Learners.” English Learners are students whose first language is not English, and are still not fluent in this language. A student who is an English Learner is a good indicator of whether that student or their parents were immigrants to this country. They are first tested in kindergarten and can stop testing once they pass. The percentage of students is supposed to dwindle down by the time they reach high school, but this might not always be the case depending on how fast they can learn and how many new immigrants enter the high schools. By looking at the statistics from the database, EdData, the schools that usually perform lower have a student body in which English Learners take up about 30% of the population. In contrast, the English Learners in schools that typically perform higher have a population as low as 8.4%. Santa Ana’s population demographics are almost uniform (Vera). That being said, when all things were equal amongst the high schools, such as curriculum, funding, socioeconomic status, etc., it came down to the population of immigrant students to differentiate which schools performed better.

This occurrence is not unique to the students in Santa Ana, it applies to the world. For instance, the United States invests $12,500 per student while China only invests $3,345 (Statistica). Yet, their academic performances are not what you’d expect. In what is known as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), 15 year olds from 79 countries are tested on math, reading, and writing and then ranked against other nations. Although the US spends significantly more on a student, they had an average ranking of 25, whereas China scored 1st in every single category (Anderson and Shendruk). The reasons for those rankings may be because the US has a significantly higher immigrant population at 12.9%, compared to China who has an immigrant population of less than 0.1% (Pison). As a matter of fact, Asian countries tend to have better test scores and stricter immigration laws than places such as Europe or the US where their immigration laws are much more lenient (Bui and Dickerson). It is the unique circumstance that immigrant students are put under that can make them underperform in comparison to their peers.

A student immigrant’s struggles give them a natural disadvantage over their classmates. First, they must tackle the language barrier. It is completely expected for these students to receive lower scores when they first move, especially because they have trouble understanding what the teacher is lecturing on and reading what the test questions are asking. Immigrants, especially those that are undocumented, may not have the qualifications to attain a high paying job. Because of this, immigrant parents are sometimes forced to work long hours and stay away from home. In fact, immigrant Hispanic parents, specifically fathers, are found to be less present in their child’s life than compared to US born Hispanic fathers and white fathers (Guendeleman et al). This forces students to take on more responsibilities at home, such as babysitting, cleaning, cooking, etc, which hinders them from giving more attention to their school related work. These students also have to go through a period of cultural adaptation. An interview with Samuel Cervantes gives us better insight on what it’s like to transition into living in an entirely different culture. He states, “When my family entered the United States, we became a new family. Our language was no longer the majority. Our culture was no longer the status quo. Our identity was no longer solely Mexican. I consider myself Mexican-American; the hyphenated part, now there’s the complexity.” So, while the students may be navigating through their academic careers, they may also be having to find their way through an entirely new form of living.

With some changes, it is definitely possible for the academic performance gap across the world to slowly begin to narrow. However, how duly is it for one to impose these changes on other countries? For example, several countries including the US and those in Europe are constantly confronted with policies regarding immigration. In this case specifically, government leaders would need to decide how much extra attention they would want to direct towards immigrant students, especially those that have crossed illegally and are still undocumented. However, by taking Finland’s example of a great educational system, we can help immigrant students in their achievements while avoiding the messy debate on immigration policies.

Finland has implemented a very successful education system into its country. Ranking 10th out of 79 countries has certainly caught some attention, especially when one half of its elementary students were immigrants (Hancock). One of the most vital parts about the Finnish education system is their teachers. In order to be handed over the reigns of a classroom these teachers must complete a 5 year Master’s program (Colagrossi). It may seem very rigorous but it definitely comes with its perks. By this I mean that they have almost complete and utter control of the classroom. They get to decide the curriculum they will teach and how they will grade their students (Colagrossi). They also stay with the same set of students for up to 6 years (Colagrossi). This is so that the teacher can build an authentic and intimate relationship with each person in the classroom. They become more like a mentor than a teacher. Finland’s Ministry of education would greatly prefer the quality that their teacher’s provide over the quantity of hours in school that other countries emphasize.

This is the kind of schooling that would benefit all students and would provide the extra support for those students who are immigrants. The quality of the teacher is indisputably important, but to give her the reins over the curriculum is an especially special touch. If they are the ones determining the curriculum, they can adjust it to fit the needs of their students, even their immigrant students. It is also beneficial for these students to stay with their teachers for such a long period of time. Six years would be sufficient time for the teacher to get to know their student, understand the type of background they are coming from, and become empathic to their needs. When students continuously hop from one teacher to another, the next teacher may not know where their student is in their learning and will not be as able to fulfill their emotional and academic support.

To limit the amount of unnecessary school hours students are forced to cooperate with, Finland is cautious of how much learning time there is for students. A Finnish student will commence their academic career no earlier than the age of 7 (Hancock). They want to ensure that kids have had enough time to just be kids before they begin a life at work. On their first day of school and every school day after that, they must ensure that they are at school no later than 9 am, yes, 9 am (Hancock)! The Finnish have been up to date on recent studies and those studies suggest that starting school any earlier would be detrimental to the student’s well being. Throughout the school day, students would be given 15–10 minutes of break between each of their 3–4 classes and one additional hour to eat their lunch (Colagrossi). Finally, at 2:45 these students would be released from school to complete their homework. . . or not (Colagrossi). According to the OECD, Finnish students typically only have 30 minutes of schoolwork to complete at home, which is just about the least that any student gets around the world. When students reach the age of 16 they can choose to drop out or finish the remainder of the high school career. At this point in their life, they are given several choices without any pressure to take one over the other, well besides familial pressure anyway. Those choices include heading straight for the working world, to attend “upper secondary school,” which is 3 years in a classroom to prepare for college, or to enroll in a vocational school (Colagrossi). However, before choosing any of these three options, it is evident that students received much care.

The school hours would be perfect to fulfill the needs of any immigrant student. By starting school later and leaving school earlier, students are able to be at home when they are needed. Earlier we talked about how the students must pick up extra responsibilities around their home because their parents are mostly absent. Since they are learning all that they need to at school, fulfilling these responsibilities would not get in their way of learning. To add on, since the Finnish have very minimal homework, this eliminates the advantage that other students may have of having their parents helping them on their homework. This would greatly even out the playing field between native born students and those that are just moving in.
The care that Finnish students receive was not by accident, it was by design. Finland’s Ministry of Education wanted to ensure that the school system was cooperative, not competitive. In fact, Finland has no standardized tests, no statistics for best teachers, and no records for best schools (Colagrossi). They wanted to ensure that their students were doing more learning than competing. They focused on a holistic education system instead of a competitive one and it worked!

This is the type of learning environment that should be more widely adopted. Less pressure should be placed on the students, and more care should be taken into consideration. If countries were to adopt a school system such as this one, all their students would greatly benefit, including those that are immigrants.

Works Cited:
Bui, Quoctrung, and Caitlin Dickerson. “What Can the U.S. Learn From How Other Countries Handle Immigration?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Feb. 2018, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/16/upshot/comparing-immigration-policies-across-countries.html.
Colagrossi, Mike. “10 Reasons Why Finland’s Education System Is the Best in the World.” World Economic Forum, 10 Sept. 2018, www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/09/10-reasons-why-finlands-education-system-is-the-best-in-the-world.
Guendelman, S., Nussbaum, J., Soliday, A., & Lahiff, M. (2018). Hispanic immigrant father involvement with young children in the united states: A comparison with US-born hispanic and white non-hispanic fathers. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 22(8), 1118–1126. doi:http://dx.doi.org.libproxy1.usc.edu/10.1007/s10995-018-2496-z
Hancock, LynNell. “Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Sept. 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/.
Investopedia. “What Country Spends the Most on Education?” Investopedia, Investopedia, 28 Aug. 2020, www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/020915/what-country-spends-most-education.asp.
López, Saraí. “Universities in Mexico Are Failing to Keep Their Students Safe — Assembly: Malala Fund.” Assembly, Assembly, 5 June 2019, assembly.malala.org/stories/safety-mexican-universities.
Pison, Gilles. “Which Countries Have the Most Immigrants?” World Economic Forum, 13 Mar. 2019, www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/which-countries-have-the-most-immigrants-51048ff1f9/.
“Profile of the Foreign Born Population in Santa, Ana California.” Vera, Vera Institute of Injustice, www.vera.org/downloads/publications/profile-foreign-born-population-santa-ana.pdf.
“Segerstrom High School Summary.” EdData, EdData, www.ed-data.org/school/Orange/Santa-Ana-Unified/Segerstrom-High.
Shendruk, Amanda, and Jenny Anderson. “The Best Students in the World, Charted.” Quartz, Quartz, 3 Dec. 2019, qz.com/1759506/pisa-2018-results-the-best-and-worst-students-in-the-world/.
Textor, C. “China: Public Education Spending per Student by Education Level 2019.” Statista, 21 Aug. 2020, www.statista.com/statistics/1098687/china-public-education-spending-per-student-by-level-of-education/.