Heh. It was 8:15 AM here in Finland when I was in school, but recently there has been more and more talk about having school start later, especially for adolescents.

I'm liking those ideas especially the angle of encouraging student to want to learn and develop the reflex to question things.

That's irrelevant.  My point was the the criteria are too subjective, and can be cherry picked to give just about any result one wants to see. 

In my district (Fairfax County) middle and high schools are starting later than they did when I was in school (HS class of 1998).  The summer break is exactly the same as when I was in school - early/mid June through Labor day.  Student to teacher ratios have moved way, way down.   Teacher pay has gone up a fair amount, to the point where it is no longer reasonable to argue that they're underpaid, especially when you consider that their work weeks average to about 32 hours over the course of a year.  

With that said, I agree tat the US education system needs a major revamp.  Public schools have become ridiculously expensive, to the point where it is much more expensive to send a kid to public school than private, for a far inferior education.  I favor getting government completely out of it, so that kids can get a decent education at a much better price, free from political interference and bureaucratic bloat.  

Tell them to bell curve it and shift the other student s results up lol.

'Demographics' can mean many things as it relates to statistical data for populations and a low student to teacher ratio is arguably very statistically significant. Finland is also a relatively ethnically homogeneous population as well so that can also distort comparisons as well. It's a multitude of factors that allows Finland's educational system to succeed that can't be easily replicated ... 

No, you're right on the point that it's exactly what standardized testing is all about and that is a uniform way to benchmark the students. A test tailored by the teacher isn't fair to the other students in the country because some tests could end up being either easier or harder with other teachers ... 

I'm not quite certain what you mean by 'grades' but if you meant the letter grades that are handed out in secondary schools then it is exactly what standardized testing is meant to combat against. Universities should not tolerate grade inflation from secondary schools so there's another argument to be made in favour of standardized testing from this perspective which is why SATs or a gaokao are treated as post-secondary school entrance exams. I can't even fathom why there's so much objection to standardized testing when universities are not so different in this aspect. School wide final examinations are held for the same course in different class sections but on top of it all schools at least want to be decent enough to meet accreditation standards so their testing methodology would have to meet some rigorous intellectual standards ... 

For many other countries, using standardized testing as a way to enhance results is not necessarily wrong like we see with East Asia. Finland has their own educational system but that doesn't mean we should construe it to be the only correct model for education because there exists just as viable alternatives ... 

The major thing I took away from the video is that it is illegal to start up a school (I'm assuming non-university level) and charge money for admission in Finland. That is enormous. So much of the problems of US education are because of how lopsided our school systems are. Even with public schools, there is a public school for the rich neighborhoods and a public school for everyone else. But then you add in private and charter schools and it's so, so much worse.

What county are you in?  

Admittedly, Fairfax County is not a good representation of your typical American, or even Virginian school system.  There's a shitload of money around here, so that makes it a lot easier for government to fund school stuff.  But, even here, there are tons of "temporary" mobile classrooms outside of many schools, starting about 5 years after their last expansion, and staying until their next expansion (which usually seem to happen on a 15ish year cycle).  Then they disappear for a few years, and the cycle starts anew.  

Your teacher salaries sound about 25% below the salaries here.  But, this is a super-expensive place to live.  They may actually be living better in your area.  But, you gotta remember the tons of time off, extremely good benefits, including (in most places in the US) retirement programs much, much, much better than anything in the private sector these days.  Those benefits are worth a fair amount, and make teaching a pretty good career in many areas.  It certainly isn't the most financially rewarding job, but I don't think the old line about teachers being underpaid really applies much anymore (there are some exceptions, of course).  

Currently going trough night class in Belgium (for a webdev degree) :
- Smoke break when I want to
- Pretty much 100% of the people who want to pass do : if someone lags behind the teacher will help him more, people who are not motivated just stop showing up.
- No standardized testing, either exercises done during class are all graded at the end or a practical exam that does not involve any memorizing.
- Small classes, the most I've seen is 15 before the people who do not like programming go away and leave a 7-10 people class after a couple month.
- Teachers have real world experience they practised 2 hours earlier, as they have a day job in web development.
- Homework are necessary as we only have 12 hours per week, usually people spend as much time on homework.

Would have loved to have that as a kid to be honest, maybe I wouldn't only be getting an undergraduate degree now.

We do have standadized tests on the state level though and their merit has been debatable imho... It's not that many but the Haupt- and Realschul graduation tests (wich you also have to take if you attend a Gymnasium (highest tier of german high school*)) as well as certain parts of the Abitur (german A-Levels/graduation, wich permits you to go to a university) are standardized.

*We have a split Highschool system. There's three schoolforms with three distinct levels of graduation, the shortest strand being the Hauptschule or 'general school' wich you can graduate after nine years of school at age 15, 'Realschule' wich you graduate after 10 years of school at 16 is the middle option and gives you middle of the road optionas after graduation and the 'Gymnasium', wich you graduate after 12-13 years of school at 17-19 years of age. The Gymnasium graduation, called 'Abitur' is the only one that immediately allows you to apply to a university.

I think the tiered system does create some class divide even though it is supposed to be a meritocracy, the system tends to favor kids from rich or at least intellectual backgrounds, just because these kids tend have an educational headstart because of the resouces that were available to them before school even started.

Germany has been trying to champion earlier entry into school as well as preschool and has launched extensive language and education programs in kindergardens as a counter measure to this inequality. They've also been moving to a more integrated system and many states have started adopting 'Gesamt'- and 'Stadtteil'-schools, wich both serve the purpose of integrating all three highschool strands at the same school and within the same classes in order to lessen the divide and help people acend more freely through the educational system.

'Gymnasuims' tend to stay around though and accumulate rich and gifted students, by virtue of being able to pick and choose who they let attend the school, despite being public schools.

Personally I attended a Gymnasium with prolonged school hours (08:00 - 16:00 on most days, some longer), wich was supposed to be a homework-free system. It's not. We still got tons of homework, wich I dodged wherever I could.

We never had multiple choice tests and in fact the teaches used to dunk on them. Instead most of our exams were Essay-based and while there were brief sections of reading comprehension and opportunity to show what was learned in the last months, the focal point was always to apply the knowledge to a new situation and draw your own conclusion. Critical thinking and the importance of cause and effect in larger systems was always a major focus.

Honestly Germany used to do 'bad' at the stadardized 'PISA' tests and priding itself on it's reputation as 'the land of poets and thinkers' as well as their work ethic, completely panicked and screwed up big parts of the school system (switching the graduation system from selected 'advanced courses', wich could be freely and individually chosen, to 'school profiles', wich have every student do a set of mandatory courses depending wich school they attend, for example was a biiiig mistake) making it more focused on arbitrary standarts and less focused on actual learning. It didin't really help with the 'PISA' results either, Germany still sits more or less in the middle of the field.