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When Norway wanted to radically increase the performance of their students, they took two important steps. They required all teachers to have a masters degree and radically limited the number of schools offering that degree program. In that way, they made it very competitive (and high status) to become a teacher. They also significantly increased teacher salaries. Those measures led Norway to become a world leader in high school education. That would not solve all of our educational challenges in the US because of our vast wealth distribution disparity and the impact of poverty on student performance, but it sure would help if we raised the bar and prestige for teaching as well as the salaries. <<
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I believe that this example describes Finland with a couple of caveats. They required the Masters’ degree to be in the subject taught (as opposed to be in pedagogy) and did not have to substantially raise the salaries as they were sufficiently competitive for a Nordic country. What they did do is refrain the generalists to attain the higher levels in the education sector. In so many words, their reform is as the antipode of the US changes in the past 60 years. Finland rewards excellence, competence, and performance. Our system rewards allegiance and planned mediocrity.