Chapter 4: Teacher Accountability and Student Responsibility: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of American and Ghanaian Schooling Practices,Policies and a Reflection on NCLB

In the age of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in American schooling, we wonder about the effects of the accountability narrative on school children. With such an emphasis on teacher accountability, might we be deemphasizing student responsibility? This article utilizes qualitative data from a year-long ethnography conducted in three village schools in Ghana to contrast the American school context of teacher accountability as enacted through NCLB. The purpose of the research was to investigate home and school cultural congruency in rural schools in Ghana. What we found, in short, was that the responsibility for schooling in Ghana rests with the children. This finding will be contrasted with the American emphasis on teacher accountability, as delineated in the NCLB Act. The aim of this article is to question how the emphasis on teacher accountability, which is both outlined in policy and enacted in schools, affects American students’ responsibility.