[r7000]

> demographics

Canada scores in the top 10 in all PISA categories, not far off from Finland, and shares much more demographically and geographically with the United States than with Finland.

The provinces of Canada with higher ethnic diversity and immigration (the more prosperous ones) tend to score higher within Canada than the ethnically homogeneous provinces.

[potatolicious]

> "The provinces of Canada with higher ethnic diversity and immigration"

What kind of immigration? The USA has the unfortunate status of being home to a huge population of generally impoverished immigrants, thanks to its over-focus on family reunification and humanitarian immigration paths, the ease/prevalence of illegal immigration, and combined with a complete ignorance of skilled immigration.

This is the opposite of Canada, where the immigration policy has for decades strongly favored skilled immigrants - and have let them in in far greater numbers (and greater ease) than humanitarian immigrants. Similarly, Canada has for the past decade or so slowly shut the door and raised the bar on family reunification. It should also be no surprise that illegal immigration is a substantially smaller problem here than it is in the USA.

The somewhat inconvenient and blunt way to put it is: Canada has, for the most part, received a socially desirable demographic of immigrants, and the USA has not.

On top of this, America has to deal with the legacy of slavery - which has created a huge population that continues to be marginalized (despite advancements) to this day. You can't oppress and systematically destroy a population's chances of success for nearly 200 years in a row and then magically expect them to pick right back up a mere 4-5 decades later. This race dynamic drives a huge part of American demographics, and in Canada this issue may as well not exist.

The issue of race in the US is a labyrinthine beast that the vast majority of Canada could not even begin to imagine. And for that Canadians are lucky.

[m-photonic]

It's misleading to discuss matters of ethnic demographics in such terms as "diversity" and "immigration." The fact of the matter is, while immigrant and/or minority status can be a variable in its own right, it's usually just a proxy for effects that are specific to the minority and/or immigrant group in question.

[learc83]

The US and Canada have vastly different demographics. In the US black and hispanic children perform far worse than white and asian children.

Wikipedia says that black and hispanic Canadians comprise less than 4% of the population.

[msbarnett]

It's not obvious that this statistic is an argument against the success of the Finnish system being translatable to America, though. Black and Hispanic children are disproportionately likely to be poor and subject to underfunded schooling, and may in fact be the demographics who would stand to improve the most under a system more interested in equalizing such disadvantages than the current one.