text: Bureaucracy... Isn't Finland like a lot of European systems - a national education system? A larger system compared to Hawaii in terms of bureaucracy. IIRC there was a SA article about their system. 
  
  To me the big difference is that the Finns weigh parental satisfaction very heavily.  In our system, classroom problems go to the principal as a disciplinary problem and the parents and the principal fight it out. Sometimes the problem actually gets solved or teachers on their own and with their own personal resources will solve it.
  
  With Finns the teacher spends a lot of time dealing directly with parental satisfaction and they deal with the problem as an educational problem which does get solved to the satisfaction of the parents. In that environment, teachers get the respect from parents and students that they deserve as well as the cooperation and respect from the administrator of the school. 
  
  I've also seen this in a Dutch IIRC movie on their secondary students.