"Kids are almost all in some kind of day care, all of whom are working in the same curriculum that's aligned with what they're going to learn in school," she says [Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way]. "That's a level of coherence that most U.S. kids will never experience because we don't have a coherent system with highly trained people in almost every classroom."
It's a level of coherence that President Obama has repeatedly called for. Until there's a national consensus on standards and what quality preschool should look like, Ripley says early childhood education in the U.S. will remain fragmented.
Then there's the money issue. In Finland, of course, preschool and day care are basically free, because people pay a lot more taxes to fund these programs. Another glaring difference is the child poverty rate, which is almost 25 percent in the U.S. — five times more than in Finland.
"And in most countries I've traveled to, they see poverty and education as linked. You cannot separate them," Ripley says.
n Finland, children from poor families have access to high-quality preschool. In the U.S., most poor children get poor quality preschool, if they get any at all.
What The U.S. Can Learn From Finland, Where School Starts At Age 7
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