Race to the Top essay
Today, the US education system confronts considerable challenges because of the exclusion of a large part of students, mainly from low-income families and minorities from the education process. In such a situation, education becomes a privilege rather than a social good. In response to the widening gap between students, the US government introduces measures that aim at closing those gaps and providing all students with education and the overall improvement of the quality of education. In this regard, the introduction of the Race to the Top program is one of the steps toward the improvement of the quality of education because the program implies the involvement of all students in education and the improvement of the quality of education through the wider introduction of innovations. The Race to the Top program grants the federal funding for schools, which introduce innovations and, thus, improve the quality of education and increase its availability to all students.
The Race to the Top is the program that focuses on the reform of the national education system. Four core education reform areas in terms of the program are:
Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy; Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction; Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and Turning around lowest-achieving schools (Race to the Top, 2013).
Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy is an essential condition of the school and education reform because many students now come unprepared to work successfully in the workplace environment after ending their education or after their graduation (Race to the Top, 2013). Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction is also essential for the contemporary education (Race to the Top, 2013). In fact, the measurement of success of students’ performance and progress helps to identify whether the national education system keeps progressing or, on the contrary, degrades, if students’ performance deteriorates. Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most because well-qualified professionals are essential for the development of the effective education system (Race to the Top, 2013). Well-qualified professionals help to increase the effectiveness of education and make schools keep progressing. Turning around lowest-achieving schools is also very important, taking into consideration widening gaps between low-achieving schools and the rest of schools (Race to the Top, 2013). In fact, this core area aims at closing gaps between students representing different social classes that have access to different schools.
The priorities of the reform include several key issues: comprehensive approach to education reform; emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math; innovations for improving early learning outcomes; expansion and adaptation of statewide longitudinal data system; P-20 coordination, vertical and horizontal alignment; school-level conditions for reform, innovations and learning (Race to the Top, 2013).
The Race to the Top program has encouraged many schools to change their policies and focus on the introduction of innovations, on the one hand, and the inclusion of more students, on the other. Schools attempted to make their applications more competitive to match criteria of the program to obtain funding from the federal government. Schools have started to implement common K-12 standards nationwide to meet requirements of the program. On the other hand, the implementation of the program has evoked the opposition from the conservative part of the society, which views education as a private matter but not a social good (Yagelsh, 2005).
In fact, the Race to the Top comes into clashes with the Hallway Hangers’ ideology, which neglects achievement-oriented education. In this respect the program is achievement-oriented since the implementation of the program stimulates schools to focus on the introduction of innovations that improve students achievements and make education accessible to them. Anyway, the Race to the Top program increased the interference of the government in the national education system. The involvement of the government in the funding of schools contributes to the introduction of national standards of education and increases the pressure on the federal budget.
At the same time, schools become more and more dependent on the government support and Hallway Hangers’ ideology opposes to such interference because education is supposed to be the private matter. In such a situation, any attempts of the government to grant schools and students with larger support turn education into a social good rather than an individual matter.
On the other, hand, the program contributes to the wider inclusion of students from low-income families. In such a way, they get an opportunity to obtain education because schools include them in the education process to match national standards and criteria according to the Race to the Top program.
The effectiveness of the program is still quite controversial because positive outcomes, including the inclusion of minorities, such as African American students, are still, to a significant extent artificial. What is meant here is the fact that the inclusion occurs through the expansion of the eligible population that gets access to schools, while the academic background and skills of eligible students turn out to be secondary. In other words, there is a risk that, in pursuit of federal grants and funding, schools can include more students, including students from low-income families, regardless of their education level. As a result, schools will include even those students, who would normally drop out of schools, if there were no federal funding.
From Hallway Hangers’ standpoint, such policy is apparently unacceptable because it leads to the inclusion of students that fail to learn successfully. At the same time, these students will need time and costs being spent on their education and the government will bear the large share of the funding burden. In this regard, the quality of education is under a question because the poor academic development of students will raise the problem of the adaptation of the academic programs and curriculum to needs of those students. Therefore, it is not students that will raise their academic skills to the level of national standards of education. On the contrary, it is the national standards of education that will drop to the lower level to meet skills and abilities of all students, including under-performing one as is the case of Hallway Hangers.
However, the impact of the program on the development of the national education system is not necessarily and absolutely negative. On the contrary, the national education system focuses on the elaboration of effective approaches to the development of national education standards, which aim at the inclusion of all students into the education process. However, steadily these national standards of education can increase respectively to the overall progress of students and education. What is meant here is the fact that the education for all will increase the general level of literacy of the US population. The higher level of education will lay the foundation for the further increase of the quality of education and enhancement of national standards of education. For instance, within ten-fifteen years, the new generation of students will have the stronger educational background due to the higher education level of their parents because they have had an opportunity to obtain education due to the Race to the Top program (Witt, 2009). As a result, they will receive a better educational background. Therefore, the new generation will be able to match the higher national standards of education. Hence, the Race to the Top is a long-run program that aims at the development of the national education in a long-run perspective.
Thus, the contemporary education system and schooling need the reform. The Race to the Top may be not the perfect program but, at the least, this program is long run and aims at the inclusion of all students in the education process closing gaps between successful and under-performing students through the introduction of national standards of education in all schools.
