Education First Draft

For teacher Hernandes D. Stroud, the state of the American education system is in serious peril. In the place of teachers we have script-reading robots, while mindless droids fill desks that formerly held ranks of students. Under the burden of meeting state regulations, he feels that teachers are compromising quality teaching that empowers students as critical thinkers for tips on how to fill out a multiple choice sheet accurately.

And this is all due to one word: Accountability. Specifically, Stroud finds the stringent standardized testing that has come to define American education as backward, ineffecetive, and confining. However, according to US Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, “the existing accountability system is weak to non-existent.”

On September 30, Duncan proposed new measures to improve the quality of teacher preparatory programs, stressing the importance of evaluating, improving, and, if necessary, eliminating failing programs across the country. Duncan requested $250 million for a new Teacher and Leader Pathways program in order to increase accountability standards by paying more attention to “selectivity, accountability, and developing a stronger clinical practice,” and changing the way the feedback loop works.

Duncan believes that the current American education system has failed to identify weaknesses in teacher preparatory programs, which has decreased the effectiveness of schools nationwide.

“And let me be the first to say that the federal government has absolutely been part of the problem,” Duncan said. “For far too long, we have been a compliance machine, rather than an engine of innovation.”

Like Stroud, aspiring teacher and Boston University School of Education senior Ellen Pogson also believes the current American education system is unsustainable. This is a daunting reality for Pogson, since she feels that being a teacher is one of the most fundamentally important jobs there are. Pogson believes the issue of improving education does not lie in beefing up preparatory programs with stricter standards but in cleaning up the current system to make way for better educators.

“There is too much corruption and emphasis on testing, and not nearly enough attention paid to the individual needs of students in order to nurture their learning,” Pogson said. She would rather see money go into poorer school districts so that all children can receive an equal opportunity to achieve more.

Duncan proposed that states be required to report on new aspects of their training programs, specifically student growth for graduates of different programs, job placement and retentions, and how programs provide graduates with necessary skills for the classroom. According to Duncan, “Almost two-thirds [of teachers] report they were unprepared to enter their classroom.”

Pogson is more hopeful about her future as a teacher. “Even though I am anxious and even a little nervous about having my own classroom in the future, given the training I have had thus far…I absolutely feel ready to teach the next generations of American youth,” Pogson said.