The brainy questions on Finland’s only high-stakes standardized test

ORIGINAL: Washington Post

BY VALERIE STRAUSS

March 24 at 10:30 am

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Much has been written in recent years about Finland’s vaunted education system, which has consistently scored at or close to the top in international test scores and has the distinction of operating under policies very different from those that drive U.S. corporate-based education reform. In Finland, teachers are respected and students don’t take a mountain of standardized tests. In fact, they take one high-stakes standardized test, as explained here by Pasi Sahlberg, a visiting professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education and former director general at the Finland’s Ministry of Education. He is a schoolteacher and teacher educator who has advised governments around the world about education policy and change. He has served the World Bank in Washington D.C. and the European Commission in Turin, Italy.  His best-selling book, “Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland,” is the winner of 2013 Grawemeyer Award. Sahlberg has written some earlier pieces for The Answer Sheet, including this provocative piece: “What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools?”  He can be reached at pasi_sahlberg@gse.harvard.edu and @pasi_sahlberg.

By Pasi Sahlberg

Many Americans who visit Finland to examine its education system are surprised by how rarely students are required to take standardized tests during their 12 years of schooling. They learn that students are primarily assessed by multiple teacher-made tests that vary from one school to another. At the national level sample-based student assessments similar to the National Assessment of Educational Progress that have no stakes for students, teachers, or schools are the main means to inform policy-makers and the public on how Finland’s school system is performing. Teachers and principals in Finland have a strong sense of professional responsibility to teach their children well but also to judge how well children have learned what they are supposed to learn according to curriculum designed by teachers.

This customized school system that attempts to meet local and individual needs is a poor host for external inspections and standardized tests. The only external standardized test in Finland is the national Matriculation Examination, a high-stakes exam that determines college readiness and which all students are required to pass in order to graduate high school exit and  enter university. At the time of writing this over 30,000 Finnish high school students are taking this all-important examination that enjoys high esteem as a sign of being a mature, educated person in Finnish society.

Only a few education tourists to Finland have an opportunity to explore this 162-year-old establishment of Finnish education system in depth. Although the examination has changed profoundly during the years, its existence has never been seriously challenged. Most Finns, including students and teachers, are happy with one examination given at the end of high school rather than more frequent tests and the side-effects that often come with them during the course of schooling.

The Matriculation Examination is administrated by an external board appointed by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The Board has about 40 members consisting of university professors, high school teachers, and education policy-makers. Exams are prepared and marked by separate subject committees that have altogether some 330 associate members.  The Secretariat of the Board that is responsible for technical matters related to employing, safeguarding and managing the examination has a staff of 22 people. Typical examination fee per student for five exams is about USD200. Entire administration of the Examination is financed from these student-paid fees.

What is the structure of this exam and what does it measure?
First, students must take at least four individual tests in order to be awarded the Matriculation Examination certificate.

1. An exam assessing students’ competencies of mother tongue (Finnish, Swedish or Saami) is compulsory for everybody. 
2. Second, each student chooses three further tests from the following pool: 
   • second domestic language (e.g. Swedish), 
   • foreign language (most often English), 
   • mathematics and  
   • one test from the humanities and sciences category. 
3. Additionally, students may add optional exams in the following subjects: 
   • various foreign languages, 
   • history, 
   • civics, 
   • biology, 
   • geography, 
   • physics, 
   • chemistry, 
   • health education, 
   • psychology, 
   • philosophy, 
   • ethics, and 
   • religious studies.

Exams are offered twice a year, in September and March-April. Student musts complete all required tests of the examination within three consecutive exam periods of up to six hours each. All tests, except listening and reading comprehension in second domestic and foreign languages, are pencil-and-paper tests, typically requiring extensive writing in open-ended tasks.

Teachers whose students are taking the exam in school first read the test papers and give their initial marks. Then the Board’s subject committee members give their final marks independently from what teachers have marked to each exam that then leads to a grade. Subjects are graded using a seven-point scale adjusted to normal distribution. This means that number of top grades and failed grades in each exam is approximately 5 percent. One failed exam can be compensated by good performance in other exams. Exams and their grades are included in the Matriculation Examination Certificate that is awarded to a student who successfully passes the mandatory exams and has sufficiently completed required high school studies.

The Finnish Matriculation Examination is a measure of students’ general academic maturity, including their readiness to continue studies in higher education. A student’s successful performance on the Matriculation Examination becomes an asset to his or her university application. Whereas the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE)  is guided by the list of “potentially biased, sensitive, or controversial” topics, the Finnish examination does the opposite. Students are regularly asked to show their ability to cope with issues related to evolution, losing a job, dieting, political issues, violence, war, ethics in sports, junk food, sex, drugs, and popular music. Such issues span across subject areas and often require multi-disciplinary knowledge and skills.

Below are some examples from this spring’s Matriculation Examination:

Sample essay topics:

“Some politicians, athletes and other celebrities have publicly regretted and apologized for what they have said or done. Discuss the meaning of the apology and accepting it as a social and personal act.”

“Has your body become your hobby?”

“Media is competing for audiences – what are the consequences?”

“Choose three world religions and compare the role and use of a holy image within them.”

Sample health education questions:

“What is the basis of dietary recommendations in Finland and what is their aim?”

“Compare chlamydia and condyloma.”

Sample psychology question:

“Design a study to find out how personality affects individuals’ behavior on Facebook or other social media. Discuss the ethical considerations for that type of study.”

Sample history question:

“Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels predicted that a socialist revolution would first happen in countries like Great Britain. What made Marx and Engels claim that and why did a socialist revolution happen in Russia?”

Sample philosophy and ethics questions:

“In what sense are happiness, good life and well-being ethical concepts?”

“High school students often require that they are served a particular diet as their school lunch. Reasons may be medical, religious, ethical or moral. Describe students’ requirements and their reasons; and assess the righteousness of having any particular diet in school.”

The mathematics exam consists of 15 problems of which student can choose no more than ten. The mathematics exam held this spring is available (in Finnish) here. The English-as-a-foreign-language written exam (also includes a listening comprehension test) can be viewed here.

Finland’s universities still offer world-class academic studies free of tuition fees for all students (including foreign students), and most degree programs are offered in English. If an American wishes to study in Finland without the burden of college fees, she or he is expected to be on par with Finnish students in variety of knowledge domains, some of which may not be included in CAHSEE or other American high school exit tests. If your path brings you to learn in Finland, be prepared to engage in deep discussions about politics, religion, poverty, spiders, junk food, young people questioning authority and other topics absent from the tests you took in high school, regardless how you feel about these topics. College readiness is to be ready to deal with all aspects of the world we live in, not just those that resonate well with your own.

How To Run 30 Health Tests On a Single Drop of Blood

Elizabeth Holmes holds a vial of one drop of blood—all that's needed for a new method of simultaneously testing for a gamut of health threats, such as STDs, heart disease and diabetes. (Theranos)

Say goodbye to lengthy blood work. A new lab called Theranos says its method is faster, more accurate and much less painful

A drop of blood can tell you a lot about a person—whether he or she might have heart disease, an STD or diabetes, for instance, or tell-tale signs of certain cancers. But having blood drawn is somewhat of an arcane process, sometimes requiring nurses or phlebotomists to extract vials upon vials of blood. And when those vials are sent to a lab for testing, a lot can go awry. The vials can be misplaced, mishandled or simply misread; moreover, it can take days or even weeks for patients to learn the results.

To Elizabeth Holmes, an entrepreneur with a background in chemical and electrical engineering, waiting a week for such a crucial diagnostic procedure seems unacceptable. The delay could put the patient at serious risks should his or her condition worsen without immediate interventions, such as taking medicines or seeing a specialist. 

"The art of phlebotomy originated with bloodletting in 1400 B.C. and the modern clinical lab emerged in the 1960s—and it has not fundamentally evolved since then," Holmes tells the Wall Street Journal.

For a 21st-century society striving for technological efficiency, the arrival of Theranos, a blood test Holmes began developing a decade ago, has the feel of a long-overdue upgrade. Instead of putting a patient through what's known colloquially within the medical community as "blood work," Holmes says all she needs is a micro sample, equal in volume to a raindrop, to sufficiently run as many as 30 tests, the results of which can be available in less than a day.

Typically, blood samples undergo a somewhat complicated journey that involves first transporting them to a facility, where they are either mixed with chemicals or put through various pieces of equipment to be examined. It's during this transfer of liquids that up to 70 percent of errors occur, according to a report by the ECRI Institute, a heathcare nonprofit. Potential complications can arise if the sample's freshness isn't properly maintained during transit or while manually centrifuging samples to separate plasma and red and white blood cells. The risk of an error is compounded by the fact that labs use equipment from different vendors, which aren't always properly calibrated. Follow-up tests also tend to make the process even more time-consuming, error-prone and expensive. 

The system that Holmes has perfected, however, is designed to run a wide range of tests, including follow-up assessments that can be completed in as little as a couple of hours. Rather than trucking samples to a lab, the Theranos testing is carried out on-site at either of its two current locations in California and Arizona—a decision, she says, that not only reduces the likelihood of mistakes, but also lowers costs. 

Currently, her company aims to provide its services at half the price of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates. For instance, cholesterol and HDL measurements, which normally cost about $30 out of pocket, cost $2.99. Customers can peruse the entire menu of blood tests, which are all be run from the same drop of blood, on Theranos' website. In a health care climate in which the cost of blood tests can vary wildly—illustrated recently through the story of one California woman who paid $4,000 for tests at one lab and $260 for the same tests at a lab down the street—Holmes hopes Theranos' menu can bring some transparency to the process.

So how does the technology work? 

Though Holmes doesn't reveal any specifics about the proprietary method, she does say the approach is similar, in some ways, to conventional blood tests.

“We test for the same analytes,” she explains in an email. “The difference is in the size of the sample that is required. We also spent many years investing in infrastructure to be able to automate many of the processes that were traditionally error prone and overhead-intensive to produce our systems at a very low cost.”

Those who have taken the test haven't been privy to laboratory details, either, but some—including the Wall Street Journal's editorial writer Joseph Rago—have described the streamlined process they undergo in a clinical setting:

• A Theranos technician first increases blood flow to your hand by applying a wrap similar to one of those skiing pocket warmers, 
• then uses a fingerstick to draw a few droplets of blood from the capillaries at the end of your hand. 
• The blood wicks into a tube in a cartridge that Ms. Holmes calls a "nanotainer," which holds microliters of a sample, or about the amount of a raindrop. 
• The nanotainer is then run through the analyzers in a Theranos laboratory. 
• Results are usually sent back to a physician, but a full blood work-up—metabolic and immune markers, cell count, etc.—was in my inbox by the time I walked out the door.

Most importantly, Holmes notes, her company has figured out how to help patients avoid having to give an inordinate amount of blood. There have been documented cases in which hospitals have drawn from patients in excess of 45 times the volume of blood than is necessary as a way of compensating for the possibility of rejected samples.

"We are very focused on the ability to mitigate the pain people who have to give blood frequently experience as their veins collapse from frequent blood draws," Holmes says. "This helps make it possible for little children to get tested without being scared, or for elderly patients, oncology patients, people whose veins are difficult to find."

Ultimately, her goal is to have testing sites within five miles of a every person's home. The startup took a major step in that direction back in September, when they it partnered with Walgreens to set up testing facilities at two locations in Palo Alto, California, and Phoenix, Arizona, with the possibility of expansion throughout 2014. 

ORIGINAL: Smithsonian

By Tuan C. Nguyen SMITHSONIANMAG.COM 

MARCH 6, 2014

A young woman was restrained, force-fed and injected with cosmetics in a high street shop window as part of a hard-hitting protest against animal testing.

http://www.cienciaencanoa.com/2013/01/the-cosmetics-directive.html

“A young woman was restrained, force-fed and injected with cosmetics in a high street shop window as part of a hard-hitting protest against animal testing.

Jacqueline Traide was tortured in front of hundreds of horrified shoppers in a bid to raise awareness and end the practise.

The 24-year-old endured 10 hours of experiments, which included having her hair shaved and irritants squirted in her eyes, as part of a worldwide campaign by Lush Cosmetics and The Humane Society.

The disturbing stunt took place in Lush’s Regent Street store, one of the UK’s busiest shopping streets.

Jacqueline appeared genuinely terrified as she was pinned down on a bench and had her mouth stretched open with two metal hooks while a man in a white coat force-fed her until she choked and gagged.

The artist was also injected with numerous needles, had her skin braised and lotions and creams smeared across her face.

Passers-by were gobsmacked to see Jacqueline, a social sculpture student at Oxford Brookes University, forced to have a section of her head shaved.

The gruesome spectacle aimed to highlight the cruelty inflicted on animals during cosmetic laboratory tests and raise awareness that animal testing is still a common practise.

The Humane Society International and Lush Cosmetics have joined forces to launch the largest-ever global campaign to end animal testing for cosmetics.

The campaign, launched to coincide with World Week for Animals in Laboratories, is being rolled out simultaneously in over 700 Lush Ltd shops across forty-seven countries including the United States, Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Russia.

Lush campaign manager Tamsin Omond said: “The ironic thing is that if it was a beagle in the window and we were doing all these things to it, we’d have the police and RSPCA here in minutes.

“But somewhere in the world, this kind of thing is happening to an animal every few seconds on average.

“The difference is, it’s normally hidden. We need to remind people it is still going on.”

For more information about the campaign, visit www.fightinganimaltesting.com”

I HOPE EVERYONE READS THIS AND REBLOGS IT!

ORIGINAL: Creestal Breeze

¡Gran victoria! La UE prohíbe definitivamente la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos

ORIGINAL: Anima Naturalis

30 de enero del 2013.

Esta revolucionaria victoria significa que del 11 de marzo en adelante, cualquier persona que desee vender nuevos productos e ingredientes cosméticos en la UE no debe probarlos en animales en ninguna parte del mundo. La prohibición afecta a todos los cosméticos, incluyendo artículos de aseo y productos de belleza desde jabón a pasta de dientes.

Europa Press | AnimaNaturalis

The Body Shop es una de las pocas marcas de belleza que no se verá afectada por la prohibición, ya que siempre ha estado en contra de la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos.

La prohibición propuesta supone un fuerte mensaje para todo el mundo en apoyo de la belleza sin crueldad y en particular para países como China, que aún exigen pruebas animales para los cosméticos, con el fin de que se prohíban también. 

La consejera delegada de Cruelty Free International, Michelle Thew, dijo: "Este es un acontecimiento verdaderamente histórico y la culminación de más de 20 años decampaña. Ahora aplicaremos nuestra determinación y visión a una escala global para asegurar que el resto del mundo sigue este camino".

Paul McGreevy, Director de Valores International en The Body Shop rindió tributo a los clientes que han apoyado la campaña de la compañía en contra de la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos durante muchos años, y dijo: "Este gran logro en Europa es solo el cierre de un capítulo. El futuro de la belleza debe estar libre de crueldad".

En 1991, BUAV (fundador de Cruelty Free International) estableció una coalición europea de organizaciones de protección animal líderes en Europa (ECEAE) con el objetivo de terminar con el uso de las pruebas animales para cosméticos. Esto fue el inicio de una campaña pública y política de alto perfil en Europa que abarca más de 20 años.

En 1993, The Body Shop, la primera compañía de belleza en tomar medidas en contra de la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos, secundó la campaña reclutando el apoyo de sus clientes en Europa. Tres años más tarde, en 1996, la Dama Anita Roddick, fundadora de The Body Shop, se unió a miembros de la ECEAE y MPE para presentar una petición con 4 millones de firmas a la Comisión Europea.

En 2012, la BUAV fundó Cruelty Free International, la primera organización global dedicada a terminar con la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos en todo el mundo. The Body Shop junto con Cruelty Free International lanzó una nueva campaña internacional a la que se unió AnimaNaturalis, que hasta ahora ha conseguido que clientes de 55 países firmen una petición global que respalda el fin definitivo de la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos.

Nueva campaña global: The Body Shop, AnimaNaturalis y Cruelty-Free International contra las pruebas en animales

Beatriz Rico se une a The Body Shop, AnimaNaturalis y Cruelty-Free International contra las pruebas en animales

Chimps a Happy Retirement

ORIGINAL: Yahoo
By Bridget Marquardt | Animal Nation
Jun 7, 2012

We recently visited Save the Chimps. It's a very unique chimpanzee sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida. Most of the chimps there are former research chimps who endured difficult living conditions in harsh facilities where they were often confined to cages.

Today, their lives are very different. There are no cages at Save the Chimps, just twelve islands, separated by moats and filled with tall grass and platforms for them to climb. The chimps live in family groups of 20-25 on the islands, where they are free to interact with each other. They play with each other, groom each other, and hug each other. It's a great place to be a chimp.

If you want to find out more about Save the Chimps, you can visit their website at www.savethechimps.org.