By Tracey 

I’ve always been taught that a healthy dose of competition
is a good thing.  It can motivate
you and help you to set and reach goals for yourself.  We value it in the marketplace as it can encourage
innovation and lead to better products and services.  But does it have a role in education?

 

More and more I’m seeing the business model seep into the
school structure.  My principal is
the manager, charged with increasing production – a.k.a. raising test
scores.  I am in the position to
carry out the job. We’re seeing what happens in the schools that don’t get the
job done, such as in Rhode Island and now at Beach High School in Savannah,
Georgia.  Teachers and principals
are getting fired.  And as we all
know, very soon our pay will likely reflect how much we’ve “increased
production”. 

In my school, I’ve noticed a change in the workplace
environment.  While we are
encouraged to collaborate with each other and work together to address learning
needs, we are doing so in an increasingly competitive environment.  Our newsletters are prominently
displayed in the office next to our names.  We can quickly see which teachers don’t have a new
newsletter every time we use the copy machine.  Our progress in the district’s pacing guide is also
displayed for all to see, as we watch our names leap-frog over those of our
colleagues.  Frequent instructional
walk-throughs culminate with emails detailing which teachers utilized the
instructional strategies the district embraces.  Attached to these emails are pictures of evidence in
classrooms and graphs of the percent of classrooms in which a 3-minute visit
demonstrated evidence these strategies are incorporated in instruction.  Unfortunately, this isn’t the type of
competition that increases motivation to set and achieve goals.  This type of competition is divisive
and creates barriers. 

There used to be a feeling that we are all in this together
and together we can help our kids. 
Now it seems I am constantly reminded of how my students performed on
various reading and math tests, and I’m asked to explain what I plan to do about it.  My students’ teachers last year set the standard.  Now I have to make sure more of them pass than last
year.  If I am successful at increasing the pass rate, I look good. 
But the teachers last year who didn’t get the students to pass will look
less successful.  We are in
competition with each other. How does that help us to achieve a collaborative
environment?

I love the staff at my school.  We’re all an extremely hard-working and dedicated group of
teachers who genuinely care about our students and each other.  While this competitive environment has
sunk its teeth into our school, it hasn’t changed how we relate to each
other.  We’re nothing like the
salesmen in Glen Gary Glenn Ross.  But I wonder how long that will last?

At an MDT (multi-disciplinary team) meeting about one of my
hard-working students who is making very slow progress in both reading and
math, I naively asked whether we’d be starting up an after school tutoring
session again this year.  In nearly
all the years that we’ve had state testing, we’ve always had a school-wide,
district-funded tutoring opportunity for students who need an extra push before
testing begins.  Feelers went out
to the staff to see who was interested in putting in the time and earning the
extra money.  We discussed as a
staff what grade levels we wanted to target and which students we should invite
to attend.  We usually started this
after the holiday break in December. 
It was already February and I hadn’t heard anything. 

This was the response I got:  “Usually the teacher offers
after school tutoring if she feels it would benefit her students.”  Usually?  I was
floored.  Speechless.  So, because I hadn’t set up an
after-school tutoring program, my students would lose out.  It was true that I could think of three
teachers in the building who were tutoring their students after school.  But, that wasn’t usual.  This
was new.  One of those teachers was
the other fifth grade teacher- my
competition.  Suddenly I felt guilty for leading an
after-school film-making club.  And
I opened it to anyone, not just my
students.   It didn’t matter
though.  My efforts in teaching
kids how to make movies weren’t directly helping them to read better or improve
their multiplication facts. 

How did we get to this place?  Is this the model for school improvement?  I’m sad to say that since the startling realization that I'm in a competition, competing against my colleagues to raise my students' test scores, I’ve quit the
film-making club.  Now, I'm organizing an after-school tutoring session in its
place.  And, I’ll continue to buy
my own coffee.