Time for Teachers to Take Responsibility
Identifying the problem.
In today's society, many factors contribute to the academic failure in urban education. As time passes, however, schools and teachers are placing more blame upon the students for lack of potential, discipline, and motivation to learn. In reality, however, this scapegoat allows many teachers' to relinquish any responsibility for their students' not learning. Many students in urban schools live in poverty, have learning disabilities, or come from bilingual backgrounds where English is not their native language. When in this society did we start blaming the victim, or in this case the students, for not having the resources needed to nourish their bodies and minds, let alone their educational needs. As teachers, we need to break the vicious cycle of blame and start being held accountable for the achievement gap that progressively grows wider as urban children develop.
The current status of the issues.
In January of 2002 the Bush administration passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which "proposes to close achievement gaps and aims for 100 percent student proficiency by 2014" (Guilfoyle). This law requires schools to give standardized tests to students and holds individual schools, districts, and teachers accountable to nationwide standards. These tests carry consequences for schools and districts that perform poorly. If schools fail to bring enough of their students to proficiency, they face government reprimands. Are our schools measuring up to academic standards? According to a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, "most states
are doing a poor job of narrowing achievement gaps despite attention focused on poor and minority students by the fe...
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...hey became a teacher in the first place.
Works Citied
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Guilfoyle, C. (2006). NCLB: Is There Life Beyond Testing? Educational Leadership, 64(3),
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Jacobson, L. (2006). States Get Poor Grades on Closing Achievement Gaps. Education Week,
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Laitsch D., Lewallen, T. & McCloskey, M. (2005). The Whole Child: A Framework for Education in the 21st Century. InfoBrief, 40.
Washor, E. Murkowski, C. (2006/2007). What Do You Mean by Rigor? Educational Leadership, 64(4), 84-87.
Welsh, P. (2006). Mclean, Virginia. For once, Blame the student. USA Today http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-03-07-forum-students_x.htm.
“Responsibility is the state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something. Being responsible means having an obligation to do something, or having control over or care for someone, as part of one's job or role.” “Being responsible means being the primary cause of something, and so able to be blamed or credited for it.” This is what the dictionary says, responsibility, and being responsible means. To me, responsibility means nearly the same as the dictionary, taking blame, or being accountable
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