P.S. 55 is testing this remote tutoring program in all of its first-grade classes. The remote tutor and student share the screen, but the tutor has complete control of what the child sees. They interact in real time and speak via telephone. The software, created by Seth Weinberger of Innovations for Learning is being tested in under-performing classes in Chicago, Detroit, Miami, and Washington.

There seems to be a “disconnect”, too, because some parents are really interested in finding someone to help kids with homework. Tutoring centers usually offer comprehensive programs that are designed to remediate weak areas. Many centers will help students understand how to do the homework, but the company guarantee is for completion of the center’s program. While many parents are quite happy with the kind of help their children receive at a learning center, “critics say the behemoth learning centers can be at odds with the individualized teaching that successful tutoring requires. And even with the traditional one-on-one, kitchen-table tutoring, there’s an inherent instability to transient, part-time workforce heavy on college students and moonlighters.” Finding tutors affiliated with companies that certify their tutors is a way to overcome this.

Once a parent understands the kind of services that the tutor or the learning center offers, how much is reasonable to pay? Pay attention to the tutor’s credentials and experience. Credentialed tutors with advanced degrees typically cost more than those with less education and little experience. “…while the average rate for big-chain tutoring ($45 to $60 an hour) is comparable to the average for one-on-one instruction, that kind of attention is actually rare; usually, three students share a tutor, who works with each of them intermittently, round-robin style.”

With so many choices, it still might be confusing. What do educational best practices suggest? Edward E. Gordon, an education consultant and the author of The Tutoring Revolution, a summary of research in the field says, “Personal, one-on-one attention and customized teaching (not work sheet curricula) is the preferred way to help students deal with their academic challenges—especially since many youngsters need help and encouragement just learning how to learn.”

While America’s education system is failing, ranked only as “average” last year, Finland’s is standing above the rest. Although Finland did fall behind countries such as Singapore and Hong Kong, the country still boasts one of the most successful school systems in the world – one that often entices the U.S. elite to either send their children abroad for schooling or to hire Finnish tutors.

So what can the U.S. system take away from the Finnish school system? While there are dozens of other lessons, a few stand out the most:

No Assessments

One of the biggest problems with education in America today is the use of standardized testing. We test our kids at a young age and do so throughout their public education career. If students don’t achieve high scores, then their teachers and schools suffer the consequences of losing their contracts or funding.

While this may seem like an acceptable system to keep educational standards high in America, it is actually hurting our kids. By implementing these tests and by allowing so much to ride on them, they force teachers to establish entire curriculum around the tests – reducing the amount of discovery learning which often promotes the hands on experiments involved with getting kids interested in science – a field that the U.S. is currently struggling to find enough professionals to fill the positions.

Students aren’t even measured in Finland until they have completed at least 6 years of education, and there is only one mandatory test and it occurs when children are 16. Otherwise, teachers are left to their own devices and simply follow a country mandated curriculum that serves more like guidelines than a rigid structure.

Equality Reigns Supreme

The U.S. education system thrives on segregation. Students from wealthy families are able to attend private schools with the best teachers and reputations, more affluent suburbs have better schools than poorer urban school districts, and alternative schools and schools for disabilities remove those who don’t quite fit in with the rest. Even classrooms within schools are separated. Those deemed to be of higher intelligence take AP or IB classes, while those of average intelligence are stuck in classes with average expectations.

In Finland, there is no private education or separate classrooms for those that may be falling behind. Every teacher has high expectations for each of their students, and the school system as a whole strives to keep every student on the same level. So if U.S. teachers want to get leaders out of their students, instead of putting a label on every student that walks through the door, they should perhaps keep high expectations of them all, and focus on giving more after school attention to those falling behind as opposed to moving them to another classroom where they are immediately labeled as average and have lowered expectations.

Collaboration is Key

If a student fails in America, one teacher is generally to blame; in Finland if a student fails, the whole school is to blame. Finland experiences such a high success rate with its students because teachers collaborate. If one teacher finds that their methods aren’t working with a student, they consult other teachers to find other methods that may work better. They don’t abandon the student.

For teachers in the U.S., a move toward collaborative teaching may be in the students’ best interest, but may take too long to fully integrate to help students now in the system. If U.S. teachers are struggling to find alternative teaching methods that may better help their students now, they can always turn to online resources – collaboration doesn’t just have to be face to face, especially with our ever growing level of connectivity. Online sites such as the Bill Gates endorsed Khan Academy or YouTube EDU provide thousands of different lessons in unique formats with lessons ranging anywhere from physics to organic chemistry to art history to prep work for radiography courses or other tests such as the SAT or ACT.

If America wants to stay a leading world power and driving economic force, it needs to start getting its students excited about math, physics, engineering, and science. The careers of the future will be in these fields and will require innovative minds – ones that are often snuffed out by America’s current educational practices. So if you are working with struggling or bored students, take a lesson or two from Finland’s educational practices.

Kimberly Hefling writes on The Huffington Post website in her article, “Public Pre-Kindergarten Programs Slowed, Even Reversed, by Recession,” that the current budget cuts mean that many three- and four-year-olds are not going to preschool.

Research shows that many of these students will start far behind their peers, never catch up, end up in exceptional education classes, and often drop out of school. Usually, students are eligible if they qualify for free or reduced lunch, but in this economy more students fall into that category; however, there are not enough slots to accommodate them.

The future is bleak for these children because, according to Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education in Albany, New York, “more of them will end up out of work or they will make less money than they would’ve otherwise and more of them will end up in prison.”

Here’s an example of how this situation is hurting Michigan preschoolers:

Of course, these versions have interactive features such as animation and explanatory videos to accompany the content.  The primary allure of this offering is that each electronic textbook is only about $15.  The drawback?  The iPads are about $500 each.  Currently, school systems go through a lengthy adoption process to choose the textbook, and they use those adopted texts for several years before choosing another one to replace it.

How this would play out is unclear.  Spending thousands of dollars on a textbook adoption happens about once every five or six years, so would electronic textbooks mean that a school system would be spending money each year for textbooks?  Another consideration is that the initial outlay for iBooks would be significant and would need to be replaced every three or four years.  It will be interesting to see how Apple and its eventual competitors will infuse this into the education culture.

The following video gives a more enhanced explanation of this educational launch:

Colleges realize that many of them continue to be involved, and they want to leverage that desire by inviting them to participate in specially formed parent boards.  These parents are seen as a rich fundraising group that also can assist with internships and recruiting of new students.  These colleges also comply with these parents’ need to have information about “financial aid, graduation rates, and job placement.”

Despite this new trend, the blog writer, Caralee Adams, referred to a piece written in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that suggests that colleges should balance this trend with “the need to maintain policies of privacy that allow students to fight their own battles with grades and disciplinary issues so they can emerge from college as adults ready for the real world.”

These services are available in several locations:

Sex-Ed Loop – Chicago-based subscription service that includes automated weekly texts

Hookup – California teens can text their ZIP codes to receive health clinic locations

Sexetc.org – national site “run by and for teenagers”

Real Talk – run by AIDS Council of Northeastern New York as an H.I.V. prevention program

In response to abstinence-based proponents, the National Abstinence Education Association will launch a new online service for teens.

The WISE Prize, given by the World Innovation Summit for Education, is “an honor awarded for transformative work in education.  The first WISE Prize laureate, Dr. Fazle Hazan Abed of Bangladesh, received the gold medal and $500,000 “in recognition of his 40-year career dedicated to alleviating poverty through education.”

Dr. Abed was chosen after a committee of 11 experts made a preliminary assessment from an international call for nominations and a high-level jury of five individuals including the WISE Chairman.