Pasi Sahlberg, director of the Finnish Ministry of Education's Center for International Mobility, makes this point all the time, and it's remarkable and kind of hilarious to hear how we have taken everything the Finnish have learned and are doing the exact opposite. We are trying to pay teacher's less and pit schools against each other in the hopes that competition will somehow lead overworked, underpaid public school teachers to perform miracles that erase America's gaping economic inequality. And while proponents may certainly be able to point to limited pieces of data that seem to support increased testing or school vouchers, the inevitable outcome of any market system is that there are losers. In this case, the losers will be poor, troubled kids who need the most from their education, and who will end up costing taxpayers far more when they're in prison.