The Global Achievement Gap: Chapters 3 & 4

Chapter 3:
This chapter focuses on a few different aspects of the No Child Left Behind law.  This law requires state testing to hold schools accountable for yearly progress.  Wagner asks if these tests are assessing the skills that students are going to need for work and college?  His second question is, what is the impact of teaching for the tests on students motivation to stay in school?  Employers are looking for people who are professional and have a good work ethic.  Also, oral and written communication, critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork, and leadership are essential to employers.

The PISA tests are based on scientific and mathematical literacy.  The PISA results show that American adolescents are very unprepared in these subjects compared to other countries.  Yet, I feel that this does not quite make sense.  If employers are not intrested in these areas, why should students study them.  It is just another area that is attributing to our educational achievement gap.  I think these types of information are continuing the confusion of what our students should be learning.  How are we as future teacher going to address this problem?

Chapter 4:
The main idea of this chapter is to reinvent education.  It is not as easy as it seems, showing from Tony Wagner's workshop.  It is hard to come to consensus between administrators and teachers.  In order to reinvent education we must understand how educators are prepared to teach.  How different people learn and interact with their fellow teachers.  As new teachers we must consider and weigh our experiences.  We want to create an effective curiculum, but how will we do that?  Is it going to take me a few years of failure to become a beneficial teacher?  I hope not, I will learn from my experiences and provide the best education to my students.

Tony speaks about what a new type of teacher could be.  New requirements could make teachers more prepared, and provide supervision that is more effective.  Teacher preparation would look like a system of internships, with more hands on experience and mentoring.  I feel like this is a great idea for future educators.  The more real life experince we have the better we can be.  I would love to see this implemented in the near future, possibly even before I graduate.  During my field experience now I learn so much, I can only imagine the benefits of this type of preparation.  This educational reinvention could possibly change the achievement gap of our students.