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Comment by crusso | Hacker News Reader

Public schools and the NEA are a monopoly. Monopolies will never fix themselves or act in the best interests of their customers. The only way to fix a bad monopoly is to divest it of power, break it up, and let others take a crack at using the same resources.

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Applying corporate logic to education is a mistake. In Finland there are no private schools, and the education system is ranked among the highest in the world.

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-ame...

As someone who works in a Finnish company and is surrounded by Finnish culture, let me be the first to say that what works in Finland won't work in the United States.

Actually, I'd be the second to say that. My Finnish colleagues would be first.

Is this because of the lack of diversity in Finland, or what?

While schools in Finland are publicly funded the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the principal: "If a teacher is bad, it is the principal's responsibility to notice and deal with it." So it's not really comparable to a monopoly.

It's barely beating out Singapore for second place, and Singapore has a system almost the complete opposite. If Finland didn't exist, your logic would compel you to make everyone follow the Singapore model.

The R-value here is 0.

Nowhere did I recommend following the Finnish model. Rather, I provided a counter-example to the parent comment, which implied that the problem was due to a public system monopoly.

My mistake; you were correct. My comment would argue in favor of your point rather than against it.

I suspect in both cases, it's an entirely different cause than the format of the school system that is responsible for the high results.

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