In the upcoming, much-talked-of presidential election, there are numerous right-wing pundits who claim that the most pertinent issue for the next leader is national security.

Well, the children of today are the leaders of tomorrow, and Generation Y is going to have to clean up some messes the baby boomers will leave behind. So shouldn’t a top priority in this country be education? Maryland’s board of education certainly thinks so.

The Teacher Academy of Maryland (TAM) is a way for the state to provide itself with future teachers. It is giving high school students the opportunity to take college level education classes for credit in order to get a head start.

For some students the program is a risk-free way of testing out the field of study before committing to it. It doesn’t hurt that Towson University is willing to guarantee participating students who pursue a career in teaching $1,000 per year in tuition either.

The University System of Maryland is also hoping to see other colleges in the state join the initiative. The U.S. Department of Education is already on board with TAM’s optimism given that they awarded a $6 million grant to the state for the program.

Towson University is trying to help solve the teacher shortages through offering special programs to high school, and even middle school students interested in the profession.

The college is trying to help build tomorrow’s workforce of teachers by providing supportive incentives for the prospective students. The TAM is still in early stages, but assuming the program is successful, it may prove a beneficial step for other states to follow.

Massachusetts is currently underperforming as far as college readiness goes, despite the fact that the state ranks as one of the highest for high schoolers going on to higher education.

According to the National Student Association, within the coming 10 years the nation will be in need of about two million teachers as many look ahead to retirement. Hence the possibility of TAM starting a trend across the country is an encouraging thought.

According to the Teacher Shortage Taskforce Proposal that fueled the TAM in Maryland, the goal is to improve the local school system’s ability to “grow their own” teachers by implementing the Teach Academy of Maryland (TAM) program in each Maryland school system.”

Part of this includes the institution of Future Educator Clubs in the high schools to help provoke interest. The program is not binding, and the worst that can happen for a student that participates is that they know one profession they don’t want to pursue and got three credits out of it.

The Maryland program wants to increase teacher turnover which is a benefit to the state as well as to future students. It’s a win-win situation. And it should please those who argue that there are plenty of teachers and there is only a lack of skilled or “good” teachers.

The problem isn’t the lack of interest in teaching; it’s the paycheck that is well known to be falling short. To be cynical, there does come a time when beggars can’t be choosers. The bottom line is that having a mediocre teacher in a classroom is better than having no teacher at all.

The Massachusetts Signing Bonus Program for New Teachers was a big flash in the pan a couple of years ago when it went from high praise to high scrutiny for being no guarantee for good teachers but simply a bribe for anyone with qualifications to fill empty positions.

The fact that it was supposed to attract new teachers has come under scrutiny for it acting as a quick fix to the problem. What’s more is that the teachers started to leave after about a year of teaching, which just left the state back where they started. Adjustments were made in the years that followed but nothing has yet had the ability to stick.

Other states had already started to follow the lead of Massachusetts by this time, and it is hardly surprising that as the countdown to retirement has already begun, the time of trial and error is over.

Maryland’s twist on education preservation seems to be a great idea in theory as well, and the very fact that it is aligning its future teachers with the students of the present seems to be a good move on their part. For the sake of the classroom, let’s hope that TAM is more successful than its Massachusetts counterpart.

Hannah Nelson is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].