Linda Darling-Hammond talks to Dan Rather

Last month, the Stanford News Service published a story titled “How the Finnish school system outshines U.S. education.”

The article featured a Jan. 17 lecture delivered by PASI SAHLBERG, a Finnish education expert, about how the previously failing Finnish educational system had become a success story.

“Finland had been traditionally thought of as the lowest achieving country in Scandinavia, and one of the lower achieving ones in Europe for a very long time. It was not a highly developed education system,” said education Professor LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND, who introduced Sahlberg.

Recently, veteran journalist DAN RATHER interviewed Darling-Hammond for a two-part series on Finland’s education system on his show Dan Rather Reports. According to the website for the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, Finnish First Part One “looks inside Finnish schools to examine the practices behind the so-called ‘Finnish miracle.’ Part Two asks, What can the United States learn from Finland’s success?

An excerpt of Rather’s interview with Darling-Hammond is below. The full episodes of Finnish First are available for download from iTunes.