Responsibility and Accountability in the Educational System

From the dawn of time, education has been the past's greatest utility in survival. Through learning, skills that have been passed down from the errors of others, communities were able to learn and grow with each other. Simple public education systems began to pop up to educate the youth and the curious, and ever since the first school systems began there has been room for improvement. The largest reforms of the educational system began at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The changes that occurred to the education system was led by the reformer known as Horace Mann. Horace Mann was the main person that led to the education system that the US has currently. In the early 1800s, Horace Mann created many systems and boards to support education. The reason for causing all these reforms was because he had a set of principles, which he went by. Also, in a newspaper by Thomas Nast, there was a picture with many children in a circle, and it included statements like: “Free all”, and “All hands round”. This means that he wanted school to be free to every student, and that everyone is apart of society. These principles affected education because with those principles, he based the changes on what he thought was right. After creating many changes in the system, his ideas began to spread, and the idea of school, became a lot more popular. Lastly, he his reforms was one of the most important, because it still is important to us today, and it led to the rise of the United

When schooling was first created in the US, there were not nearly as many rules. One-room schoolhouses where there were all different kinds of ages and education levels were the norm, and the type of education that was given to students was far different than what they receive today. As education developed and various needs came to light, larger schools were built and students were segregated based on criteria such as age. Separate schooling based on learning ability (special education) was something that came later, but it was eventually developed. The system that is available today is working well in many cases, but there are areas in which it is still failing the students - mainly because there are still too many countries getting ahead of the US in areas such as science and mathematics (Darling-Hammond, 2001; Figlio, 2002). Until the US takes back the number one spot, today's students will be at a disadvantage based on what they are learning and how they can put that education to use in the job market (Collins, 1999; Darling-Hammond, 2001).

Before one can examine the school system and its flaws, they must look at how it originated and why it is the way it is. For one, it was set up in the late 1800s and early 1900s in order to meet the rampant needs of America's newly industrialized economy. Public schools supplied factories with a skilled labor force, and provided basic literacy to the masses. This was the education that the vast majority of the population received. The overall implementation of our current school system is credited to an educational reformer by the name of Horace Mann, who is known by many to be the father of the American public school system. He studied a wide variety of different educational models before eventually putting into effect the Prussian model.

American education has expanded due to the lack of positive effectiveness, as shown by the lack

For such a sophisticated society as ours to continue to function productively, there must be a readily available supple of competent and adequately skilled individuals to work in many different occupations. Schooling within our education system fulfills this requirement for human capital by providing people with the specialized training and skills they need to be productive and to be able to perform the duties of their occupations. Schooling helps to build the careers that are the backbone of the economy in our country.

Here in the United States education is modeled after our capitalist society which means education holds the interest of industrialization and its image. For example we separate stints into subjects for specific job or career. Through sociology's functionalism and conflict theory and symbolic interactionism people can see how the United States education system functions.

The most important factor would be what is the goal of the curriculum. Through out history, the goal of teaching has changed tremendously. Teaching at first was a means of instilling morals. As time progressed, education became a way to separate the elite from the working class. When the industrial revolution came along education was used to teach workers and common men to respect authority and do not rebel. The goal of the education affects how the curriculum is made. For example, one would not want to teach freethinking to students who were to become industrial workers because it would teach rebellion. What you teach children will affect what kind of adults you have in society, so education has been catered in order to make the “best equipped” adults. The goal of education plays the largest part of how students are taught, but there is many other ways education can be

The history of education is highly relevant to us today. When starting our careers as educators it is essential for us to open our eyes to what happened in the past and why educators before us made their theories and if and why they worked or did not work for

The educational landscape in New Orleans, Louisiana has significantly changed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Public education has undergone transformation. A centralized system of schools has reinvented itself as a decentralized system of schools – the first in the nation. This decentralized system of schools put into motion a change in the educational landscape of the city to include an expanded charter school system, a new era of accountability, and a multi- layered governance structure.

School in America is a stuffed animal. Shot dead on arrival but preserved by elitist taxidermy, we cling to the fallacy that it is alive and well. If anyone who cared witnessed the totality of my high school (or middle or elementary, for that matter) career, they wouldn’t have let me graduate. Not only did I learn next to nothing, I barely did anything. Teachers were apparently satisfied with dull essays lacking insight, obviously BSed or copied homework, and intelligence-insulting lies I fed them to keep my 84% in their class. That was the game I played for all of middle and high school – see how long it takes them to notice that I’m a house of cards. Around the time I turned 17, however, I realized that no one was about to tell me to

Overall, secondary education played a major role in how America developed. Education is the foundation on how a society learns and operates. From humble beginnings when only the elite, white males were able to obtain an education to when schools were provided for each child, even when the child was of a minority. When schools began to work as a free public institution that was mandatory. Without an education system, individuals would not be able to obtain work, read the bible, or be able to provide a life for themselves or their families. Women and minorities had a harder time getting the rights to obtain the same education as their counterparts, and still face that struggle to this day. Colleges and universities began to transform to the institutions that we know them as today.

The vital importance of how education works in our country needs to be centered around the best interest of the students. The more the curriculum is designed towards the close relationship to the individual student, the better the child will receive information and preform. The education in the United States is continuing to decline, and the only way for it to improve is if a drastic change is made. What change is needed? Well, if there are other countries that are excelling, then taking a look at the structure of their education system can help our country mold a new style of knowledge development.

Taking this a step further, the central question has to be, the “why” of education. Why do children need an education? What is the purpose of education? In a rapidly changing world, curriculum has been slow to change. The current curriculum reflects the world as it was in the late 1800s not the world today and certainly not the world of the future. The purpose of school has to be to prepare students for the world of today and of the world of the future.

Most kids go to school expecting to learn the basic math problems, and how to spell “appreciate”. But in all honestly school is bigger than that, education has a broader picture. It’s learning life lessons and basic knowledge of the world around them. It helps them become a better person to be around and work with. Education is important in many ways. Students learn to solve the bigger problems as well as learning communication and organizational skills which are key components to success not only in school, but out of school as well; but these important life lessons are becoming more difficult to achieve due to the growth of technology.