I did a PISA score item myself in 2009. Education bureaucrats seem to think that they can get Finnish type high school results in, for example, the Los Angeles Unified School District by importing Finnish methods. This won't work. However, they could get Finnish results by importing Finns. In 2009 I wrote
In fact there are a couple of high schools in America that have Finnish students. They do fairly well because they have fairly bright students. Houghton High School, in Michigan’s Finnish Upper Peninsula gets ten out of ten at GreatSchools.net. Here’s a snapshot of its student body: StudentsAs you can see, this is not the problem that the No Child Left Behind Act is trying to solve.
Source: MI Dept. of Education, 2007-2008 Ethnicity This School State Average White 95% 71% Asian 3% 2% Hispanic 1% 5% American Indian <1% <1% African American <1% 20%