U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is currently visiting Europe. DeVos says she wants to learn from European countries, such as Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, for their children “out-perform American students” on PISA tests, i.e. on math, reading and physics. Regarding higher education, the U.S. outperforms European countries with their top-notch institutions, such as MIT and Harvard – so she has come to learn, but perhaps also to teach.
DeVos’ visit is remarkable, since she harbors a strong conviction that private schools are better than public schools, whereas the regular and vocational school systems in the Netherlands and Switzerland (and to a certain extent the U.K.) receive almost complete public funding. Even in the U.S., privatization policies in education are under attack, both in public as well as in academic debates. Perhaps Europe’s lesson for DeVos will precisely be that educational performance is high (on average) in European countries due to governmental support.
An educational system is not only a matter of funding, but also of culture: how teachers are taught, how students are brought up, where schools are located, how excellence is valued, and so on. Changing an educational system is a matter of decades. Finland, renowned for high PISA scores, reveals that a focus on tests is difficult to balance with social needs, such as the teaching of citizenship and simply having some fun during school years. Time will tell what DeVos can learn from Finland and other European countries. It is unlikely that the U.S. will raise general levels of education by copying a few ‘best practices’. Even so, the (cold) comfort of the U.S. is that some of its universities are the very best in the world.
