Race to the Top: Winners and Losers

It's been quite a while since I've utilized the blog, but my new tech discovery/addiction this month is Twitter. Twitter is wonderful for quick finds for #edtech and #edchat but it's also useful as a sounding board and keeping up with educational policy. (If you are a teacher and are new to Twitter, be sure to check out those hashtags - and don't forget to 'follow' me!) I have learned so much in the last few weeks about innovations and upsets in the education world. But it's not always possible to share my thoughts within 120 characters, hence I felt the need to reboot the blog for my occasional long-winded rant. This afternoon I caught up on one of my favorite shows - "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". The last episode on my DVR had Bill Clinton as a guest. You can say what you want about Bill Clinton, he's extremely intelligent. He was talking about how innovation and change happen much faster when the government, non-profits, and businesses all work together instead of having competing interests. This reminded me of an article that I had read recently on Twitter about what makes the school system in Finland so successful - one of the features is that they do not encourage competition, but instead promote teamwork. This is exactly what is wrong with the Race to the Top program that is currently transforming education. It seems like Arne Duncan has forgotten a key component in any race, there is a winner and losers. Let me make that more plain - there is ONE winner; everyone else is a loser. It doesn't matter what your ending time is or which position you finish in - everyone past the number 1 spot loses. I'm sure that Duncan would point out that the nature of Race to the Top is not to create losers, but that everyone wins because they tried and participated, and innovation occurs in the race to beat everyone else. But that is not the way things work in the real world, and certainly not in a classroom. Let's look at the trickle down effect of the Race to the Top competition-based incentive. At a state level, Illinois has already put into place requirements that a percentage of a teacher's evaluation is based on student data. In my district, data also reflects on the principal. At least in my own experience, the principal is less worried about what interventions are best for the child's learning and classroom performance and more worried about making sure that the child is receiving interventions specific to the data set that they (the principal) will be judged on. The principal will be compared to others in the district to see where their data falls. Every principal wants their own data to look good and wants to "beat" the others, so they are less likely to share knowledge about what is or isn't working in their own building. At a school level, innovation can not happen when teachers are competing. Teachers who are competing with each other to be the most successful are much less likely to share successful resources, lessons, and materials with other teachers. When it comes time for an evaluation, the principal (or at least mine) will look at my data and compare it with the other Kindergarten teachers - and if my kids are not performing better than the other classes, it will be reflected in my file. What incentive do I have to share great lessons, intervention activities, etc. when I'm trying to "beat" the other teachers around me? Competition is a fundamental component of American society, and there are times and places to employ it in the classroom. But I think the people in the Education Department who are making up the rules to the game as they go should consider the fact that this game is going to have a WHOLE lot of losers...And those could ultimately be our country's children.