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Comment by yummyfajitas | Hacker News Reader

The article claims Finland focuses on equality, and that immigration hasn't had much effect on aggregate education outcomes yet.

Immigrants tended to concentrate in certain areas, causing some schools to become much more mixed than others, yet there has not been much change in the remarkable lack of variation between Finnish schools in the PISA surveys across the same period.

This is only because there are still very few immigrants in Finland. In actuality, immigrants to Finland score about 50 points lower on Pisa than Finnish natives (about double the gap in the US).

(For comparison, the gap between Americans of European descent and non-immigrant Finns in Pisa scores is 22 pts, and the gap between European Americans and Greeks (the lowest performing European nation) is 46 pts. )

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...

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Excellent observation. The Pisa study data shows one conclusion about education in America: Different racial groups perform at different levels. We are succeeding with some minority groups and failing with others. Whites in America test higher than Finns in Finland. Where we are failing is in educating our African American kids. The entire article relies on people not reading the data from the Pisa study, and for those who have read the data to ignore what it shows, from some misplaced desire not to seem racist.

Whites in America test higher than Finns in Finland.

No. You should read the blog post I linked to. American whites scores 524 (tied with Belgium for #6-#7 in the white world), Finland is #1 at 546.

Immigrants in both the US and Finland score roughly the same, about 500 pts. Finland has a larger gap, since their non-immigrants score considerably higher.

Make no mistake - the inequality is caused by Finns scoring very high, not by their immigrants scoring very low.

You're right, I interpolated "finns" for "Western Europeans," which is what was said in the first paragraph of the link you chastised me for not reading:

"American students outperform Western Europe by significant margins and tie with Asian students."

The article you linked goes on to clarify: "The mean score of Americans with European ancestry is 524, compared to 506 in Europe, when first and second generation immigrants are excluded." The correct comparison is European ancestry to European ancestry, excluding first and second generation, not "American whites" vs. Finns.

In any case, I've seen this study pop up for a while now, and more recently on facebook a lot of my friends have been linking The Atlantic's piece.

The correct comparison is European ancestry to European ancestry, excluding first and second generation, not "American whites" vs. Finns.

True. But since the number of European immigrants to the US and non-white native Finns is very low, the correct comparison is unlikely to differ significantly from the numbers given. So technically you are right, but I don't think there will be much difference in practice. Do you disagree?

It's also the best comparison currently possible, since I don't know of any data set that provides more granular data than what Sanandaji used. Do you?

A really interesting finding in studies of homeschooled kids is that blacks and whites do pretty much the same, whereas in school blacks do much worse. This is also completely decorrelated from whether the parent teachers have any background in education, how much they spend, or even whether they have college degrees. I see this as evidence that outcomes are not because of intrinsic genetic factors but because of systematic bias within institutional education. Bias is unlikely to be intentional, but it likely does exist and has significant influence on results.

That follows the studies in cited in Freakanomics showing it's the parental involvement which is the real factor. If the parent cares about education the child is much more likely to end up well educated.

ISTR several years ago seeing a study showing that racial differences are practically nonexistent for students at military schools (that is, children of military parents who go to schools on base).

Wonder If this is explained away by huge gap in socioeconomic status of average black home schoolers, compared to the average black public school family; while status differences for white homeschool compared to white public school fama wouldn't be that pronounced.

First, the article seems to contradict your claim of there being very few immigrants in Finland:

According to the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization in Washington, there were 18 states in the U.S. in 2010 with an identical or significantly smaller percentage of foreign-born residents than Finland.

Second, the part you quote talks about variation between schools, and there definitely are Finnish schools with 0% immigrants as well as ones with 30% immigrants. Yet, a "remarkable lack of variation" in test scores.

Yes, the article claims Finland focuses on equality, but it also explains that socio-economic background is a major source of inequality and the Finnish schools have been able to diminish that effect.

According to the article, the percentage of immigrants went from 2.3% to 4.6% between 2000 and 2010. According to Wikipedia, the number is 2.7%.

The fact that the variation between schools is low tells us very little. Supposing Finns score 546, and immigrants score 500, you'd expect the average score of a school with 30% immigrants to be 532. That's not so far off from 546, in spite of the fact that immigrants are scoring 46 pts worse.

Like it or not, the data says there is a huge gap between immigrants and non-immigrants. Maybe the vague wording of a reporter suggests differently, but so what?

Ok, so your primary concern here is that there's a huge gap between immigrants and non-immigrants in Finland? (I thought you wanted to argue like many others before you that the immigrants in the US caused the non-immigrants to perform badly.)

First, I know little about this gap in Finland or what's causing it.

However, I can hypothesise that it has to do with the immigrant children having attended school in Finland for less time. Further, the Finnish school system has been developed for Finnish citizens and is less prepared to attend to the needs of different ethnicities than to different socio-economic backgrounds. For starters, the immigrants need to learn the non-Indo-European language.

The gap you refer to, probably has more to do with Finish immigration policy than the ability of the Finish education system to adapt to the needs of immigrant children.

Both Australia and Canada practise a Skills-based immigration policies. In Australia in paticular, the children of immigrants do better at school than native children. Teriary educated immigrantion applicants are far more likely to be accepted, and seems to have a large effect on PISA scores.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-EMpadQx4hM/TRKZ5kB-49I/AAAAAAAAAY...

"Probably"? Of course it has to do with both, and it's practically impossible to say what it has more to do with objectively.

If the immigrants were exactly like the natives, their school results would be exactly the same as well. Or, if the school was perfectly adapted to the immigrants, they would score the best in the world.

In reality, you can look more into how to keep "undesirable" people out of your country (and deport the disadvantaged people who lower the average scores?), or you can look more into how to develop the school system so that even the disadvantaged people get a good education out of it. Finland chooses the latter, more constructive, more humane, more equal, and as far as we believe the PISA and similar studies, more efficient stance. Ethics aside, you're free to choose otherwise.

Yes, I'm merely pointing out that Finland is not all that equal, and in many ways is less equal than the US. It's just hard to see this effect, due to Finland's homogeneity.

I've never made the claim that immigrants cause non-immigrants to perform badly, nor have I heard anyone else make this claim. What is the proposed mechanism? Bad study habits of non-immigrants rub off on native children or something? (I've heard of some yuppies in NYC trying to do the opposite, and make their kids socialize with Asian kids, but I've never seen data on this.)

The Finnish schools are equal in the sense that socio-economic background has a smaller effect on study outcomes than elsewhere (and the difference between worst and best performers is small). If the US schools would pay more attention to this, it would be one significant attempt to improve their study outcomes. This could affect both the immigrant and the non-immigrant lower social classes (as well as "underachievers").

As to immigrants causing non-immigrants to perform badly, that's how I understand the arguments that concentrate on the immigration differences while that's hardly the only difference between the two countries (as if the poor in the US didn't lower the average as well, and as if the scores of the Caucasian students weren't below Finland as well).

As to the proposed mechanism, I could imagine school funds and teacher resources being directed towards integrating the immigrants in the school. At least in Finland it is a concern, as the schools have less funds than the US ones.

>The Finnish schools are equal in the sense that socio-economic background has a smaller effect on study outcomes than elsewhere

Wouldn't Finland's flatter income distribution be a potential confounding variable in this case? When the difference between the 25th and 75th percentile in income means less in absolute terms, there are probably a whole lot of things that are associated with income in the US that show less of an association in Finland. For example, high-IQ types might be less likely to strive for high-income occupations in Finland than in the US, lessening the correlation between income and IQ. With child IQ being strongly correlated to parental IQ, it's easy to see how this could lessen the correlation between school performance and economic background.

Of course, you may have been comparing Finland to other countries with similarly flat income distributions, which would make my above point moot. Even then though, it's not clear that Finland's education system is necessarily "more equal" than other countries -- it could just be more effective. If the school system in, say, Norway is less effective than in Finland, higher-income students are likely to see less of a drop in scores because they have more educational resources outside of the system.

Almost every comment you make is to support your superior race theory. The article compared finnland to its neighbours.

This is the second post you've made ascribing views to me that I never expressed. Please go reread whatever posts you believe I wrote about a "superior race theory", I believe you'll discover that I didn't write them.

Sure:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3353557

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340794

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340315

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321549

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3321511

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315126

The words "superior race" don't appear anywhere. The most you've shown is that I've cited the same Sanandaji blog post a few times.

Your second and third links don't even mention race, though the second does conditionally postulate a superior gender (i.e., "if the post I'm replying to is correct, then women are inferior").

>The words "superior race" don't appear anywhere.

Ridiculous. Of course those specific words don't appear there, but that would be the most appropriate summarization of several of those posts.

Actually the OP was being charitable. He didn't even mention your superior gender arguments.

If you bothered to read the threads maxklein cited, you'll note I'm quite explicitly agnostic as to "superior race" [1] theories:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3316062

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315959

But I guess it's easier to call me racist than to actually dig up some hard numbers, right?

[1] I'm assuming that by "superior race theory" you mean something along the lines of "genetic variation in intelligence causes some races to outperform others in school".

Wow, really ugly maxklein. He cites studies that try to figure out how to improve American schools, with a focus on ethnic differences in academic achievement, in a discussion about ethnic and national differences in academic achievement, and you call him a race warrior?

Absolutely uncalled for.

Flagged.

He has been citing the same figures, always favoring the same group and against the same group for years now. I just went through 5 pages of his posts to find gems. Yes, he avoids be overt, but it's obvious.

Then the onus is on you to find and cite studies supporting whatever the hell your alternate hypothesis is or refuting his. Then have a polite debate about it.

HN is not the kind of place to resort to racebaiting and it's unacceptable and you know that.

I'm not going to waste my time and energy trying to refute someone who believes black people are not as clever as white people, and wraps it up in nice words. Go through his comments or any article on HN that mentions race. He tries to make the same point over and over again.

I'm not interested in any kind of debate about this. It just wastes my energy and brings me nothing. I will just point out that that's what he does when he chooses to do it. The onus is not on me to prove that black people are not dumb.

You still have yet to exhibit a post where I state the belief that "black people are not as clever as white people" or that "white people are not as clever as asians" [1]. (Note: I'm not asian. Am I racist against myself?)

You have, however, exhibited two posts where I explicitly state that I don't know the cause of the school performance gap and that cultural factors are one possible explanation. But I guess that those are part of my secret plan to appear non-racist, right?

Seriously dude, get a grip. There are far fewer secret racists out there than you think, and I'm basically the last person to be secretive about his views. If I thought blacks were, e.g., genetically less intelligent, I'd clearly state my hypothesis and link to data backing it up.

[1] Unless by "clever", you mean "do better in school". If that's what you mean, then I'm guilty as charged - just like PISA, TIMMS, the College Board, etc.

You are clearly someone who is obsessed with racial issues and in particular, issues that have some kind of data backing up what seems to be your theory that blacks are inferior to others. Sure, wrap it up in fancy round-about sentences and quotes from well known race-baiting sites, but do expect to be called out on it. Wrapping up racist statements in PC words doesn't make them any better.

I'm done with this argument, I don't think you deserve much more of my time.

Finland has very few immigrants compared to its neighbouring countries. (Many immigrants are from places like Somalia with low literacy.)

Please note that the size of organisatorical problems increase more than linearly with the number of involved people. I seriously doubt it would work to copy Scandinavian solutions to countries like the US, with more than 50 times the population...

I don't think anyone has suggested copying Scandinavian solutions to the US.

Pasi Sahlberg goes out of his way to emphasize that his book Finnish Lessons is not meant as a how-to guide for fixing the education systems of other countries.

What the article says is you can't use the differences in immigration to blanket-deny all other findings. The US and Finland have their socio-economic issues but the Finnish school system has been able to diminish their effect on education outcomes.

The effect of immigrants on average scores is (% of immigrants) x (size of individual effect). Finland has minimized (% of immigrants), not (size of individual effect).

The only lesson the US can really draw from this is that if we reduced the number of immigrants we have, our average scores would go up. So what? Raising averages due to composition changes is pointless.

> The only lesson the US can really draw from this is that if we reduced the number of immigrants we have, our average scores would go up. So what? Raising averages due to composition changes is pointless.

Nowadays, Finland has much of the same rate of immigration than US. Historically it has not been so. But today, around 20000 people move into Finland every year. Whereas the US gets a bit more than one million new inhabitants. Finland has 1/60th of the population of US. The performance is still better, though there is the same ratio of first-generation immigrants.

And I'd guess a lot less people relocating around the world know Finnish than the dominant teaching language in the US...

Canada scores in the top 10 of all PISA categories and has a higher proportion of its population that are immigrants than the USA.

Yes, but the quality of the immigrant is different. Immigrants to the US are primarily south and central American peasants with a sixth grade education and no ability to speak English. Canada has much better control over who it lets in.

As usual, you make another statement trying to pin the problems of your country on foreigners. Read the article - it makes the comparison to American states and to Norway, both of which do not have this 'non-european menace' you seem so scared of.

"Another"? Please reread both the post you replied to, and whichever previous post you believe I made pinning the problems of the US on foreigners. I can't recall ever making this claim, and it's so wildly divergent from my general world view that I suspect you clicked "reply" on the wrong post.

Let me just point out that:

a) I don't consider variation in average performance due to composition changes to be a problem (in this post I explicitly disavow that view: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3378157 )

b) in the post you reply to I said that composition changes were too small to affect average performance anyway - i.e., I'm saying Finland has too few immigrants to significantly move their averages.

When I looked at Finlands school system awhile back, I also wondered how their lack of immigrants play into it, but also if it could really scale to US size.

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