"And these students truly are desperate. They couldn't write a convincing grocery list, yet they are in graduate school. They really need help. They need help learning and, separately, they need help passing their courses. But they aren't getting it." I volunteer in a 3rd grade classroom, I am there for reading and social studies, and during my time, I am walking around asking if the kids can find what they misspelled and respell it for me. I am very nervous about the lack of spelling, grammar, and phonic awareness in classrooms today. If the students aren't getting it in school, they are not going to get the help anywhere else.
The FCAT writes is finally adding spelling to the checklist, and I am thankful, because maybe now there will be some sort of emphasis placed on the ability to spell correctly. Unfortunately, the fact that spelling wasn't on the FCAT writes before has lead to it becoming pushed to the back burner while students struggle to pass the essay portion of the test.
This article was really eye opening to me overall; I had no idea that there were services like this, and if they exist, I feel as though it is just a matter of time before they trickle down into high and middle schools. Scary.

"Preschools are nonacademic in the sense that no clear academic targets are set. Socialization into school culture and learning to work together with children is the central role."
I think all of the things said about the Finnish school system depicts what the American school system wishes to be. Personally I think that the Finnish school system does something great by keeping preschool out of "grading standards". Preschool in America was originally founded for the purpose of learning through play, and I think that it has gotten really far away from that; especially because day care begins at a young age, parents want children to be learning at that young age.
I also think that the county wide curriculum helps keep Finland on track, although after our readings in class I am not sure how I really view them.
Overall, I think that teachers being held to higher standards is something lacking in America that can easily be fixed without much opposition. No one will say "Why are those teachers so highly qualified. I don't want that!" and that would be a place to start fixing American schools.

"Meanwhile, "special needs" remains a vast umbrella, under which huddle all kinds of children, from the primary-school pupil with a mild hearing problem, to profoundly autistic adolescents and children with complex physical disabilities." I think that this article addresses a valid point about special needs education. I chose this quote from the article, because I think it is pertinent to how special needs is thought of in America. I am a strong believer in inclusion in classrooms, and I really wish more people had the view of Alan Dyson, a "professor of education at Manchester University, who has a specialist interest in the area" who states in the article that "The only thing these kids have in common is that they've been labeled special needs." I have volunteered in a classroom where there is a student with a feisty temperament, labeled special needs because of ADD, to a little girl with leg braces, a walker, and strong speech troubles. These students had little in common, and I think that it would have been helpful for them to be in separate classes where they could get the help they needed, not just a blanket of help trying to do the same thing for each of them. The article states that "the curriculum needs to be totally different for children with severe difficulties" and I absolutely agree.