Why The Most Talented Teachers and Administrators Are Opposed to Race to the Top

It is no accident that our most talented and experienced teachers and administrators are the one’s most opposed to the Race to the Top initiative coming out of the US Department of Education. RTT, with its attacks on teacher tenure and emphasis on scripted lessons, continuous testing, and merit pay, incorporates two principles that are profoundly insulting to people who have devoted their lives to the teaching profession- the presumption of incompetence (the idea that teachers will do as little as possible if they have job security) and the belief that material incentives are superior to moral ones in prompting high performance. These management techniques almost precisely duplicate those practiced by major industrial corporations during the heyday of welfare capitalism in the 1920’s, when they helped produce short term gains but long term catastrophe ( the Great Depression). Removing all creativity and autonomy from any portion of the workforce is questionable- doing this with teachers and school administrators will be disastrous. http://dumpduncan.org/