At a press conference announcing the “Race to the Top” initiative, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan pledged nearly $10 billion in federal grant money to public school divisions that can deliver on four assurances:

1. Worthy divisions will develop more rigorous standards and assessments.
2. Worthy divisions will monitor growth in student learning and use that data to identify effective teaching practices.
3. Worthy divisions will identify effective teachers and principals, find ways to reward them, and find ways to improve or replace ineffective educators.
4. Worthy divisions will reorganize or close failing schools.

Looking at the assurances, I have to ask: is continuous quality improvement the same thing as innovation, or even change? Does it really cost $10 billion to assure the status quo?

First, the federal government wants to provide states with the money to develop new assessments based on common, internationally-benchmarked standards. These assessments and standards need to go beyond content or we tread water in curriculum and instruction. So long as we use a single measure like external test data to compare students, schools, systems, and states, divisions will allocate resources to teach to the test. If we’re going to stay locked in that mindset, then we’d best dramatically overhaul assessment in American education to drive changes in curricula and instructional practice.

What about paying for common performance standards and a common performance assessment to overlay state content standards? What about funding multiple assessment measures of different types?

What about funding a pilot that excuses participating divisions from yearly testing so they can teach to assessments more aligned with 21^st Century Skills, like the NAEP math assessment or College and Work Readiness Assessment?

What about a pilot that excuses participating divisions from yearly testing and evaluates them instead on high school and 4-year college rates and the consequent changes they make to curriculum, assessment, instruction, scheduling, and community engagement in-house?

What about funding persistent online testing outside of set windows so students can test ahead or test until they demonstrate mastery?

How would you innovate assessment to close the gap?

Second, the “Race to the Top” grants ask divisions to close the data gap, measure student growth, and identify the teaching practices that cause growth. So how about paying for portfolio, project, and performance-based assessment pilots? Look at the College Success Portfolio from Envision Schools, or these projects from an Expeditionary Learning school as examples. Summative assessments like these and the formative measures leading up to them would both be information-rich for teachers making instructional decisions. They would also cause real change as divisions revamped professional development to support teachers in using practices like authentic engagement, entrepreneurship, and service learning. If schools permeated instruction with these practices, there would be a paradigm shift in education. Instead of being siloed in special programs or isolated in rock star teacher classrooms, these practices could be the national agenda, not an add-on to it or a field trip from it.

We already know that to ensure real learning, learning must be relevant to the student. Countless teachers take it upon themselves to design relevant instruction, but the way to make sure all teachers are supported in doing so is to make states assess for learning in ways relevant to students, their education, and careers.

The kind of information-era innovations called for by the Obama administration will not come from enabling all kids able to pass easily-scored tests or by testing kids on school work. The innovation the administration wants will come from adults who were habituated to academic risk-taking and open-ended problem-solving as children in schools where failure was seen as part of the engine of success, not as its opposite. To innovate products and services in the global marketplace, we’re going to need to support brave teachers modeling inquiry for our brilliant students and to administer messy “tests” with canny scorers. We should invest accordingly.

Secretary Duncan says he feels hope for transformational change in American education, but the four assurances of “Race to the Top” only assure that some schools and programs will improve at what they already do: preparing students to pass tests that in the near future will continue to vary in rigor and content from state to state.

This raises questions about merit pay, part of Assurance Three: “reward effective educators.” We have yet to adopt national standards, let alone national assessments; therefore, we are not ready to evaluate teachers fairly, nor should we begin differentiating their pay based on the results of different state tests with inconsistent levels of validity.

I completely support differentiating teacher pay when all teachers can earn increases by meeting benchmarks in their careers that are proven to correspond to teacher quality and student achievement, such as National Board Certification, and when school divisions provide financial support for teachers pursuing such certifications. Teachers should be able to earn pay increases based on a portfolio of professional accomplishments empirically indicative of their learned skills. This is akin to the knowledge- and skills-based pay approach. We should no more assess teachers on a single measure than we should students. There are too many inequities and dangers to catalog, in the notion of paying teachers more just for better student test results.

President Obama did recognize that it’s meaningful to move a student ahead in achievement even if the student doesn’t pass a test, but providing merit pay for student growth is a slippery slope. Imagine two students, both entering 3^rd grade 2 years behind their peers in achievement. The first student has 2 ineffective teachers in a row, and then a fantastic 5^th grade teacher who helps the student be on-grade-level by the end of 5^th grade, still just a bit behind peers ready for 6^th grade. Under the four assurances, perhaps this teacher would get merit pay for causing so much growth.

The second student, though, makes a little bit of progress with three skilled teachers in a row to finish on-grade-level at the end of fifth grade. However, he or she never grows a full grade level with any one teacher. Would those teachers each get a share of merit pay for catching the student up over three years, or none at all for failing to move the student ahead a full grade level in any single year? Are these teachers considered ineffective?

Money would be better spent in rewarding teachers for attaining a menu of meaningful professional accomplishments, rather than in paying an hourly rate increase on the basis of how many grade levels of growth equals an “advanced pass” on a state test. It would also be a real change to how the nation understands merit pay and would provide career paths for teacher-leaders that keep those teachers in the classroom.

The fourth assurance calls on superintendents to re-organize or shut down failing schools. This assurance echoes NCLB sanctions for schools that serially lag behind AYP. I am all for meaningful accountability, but I’m against using a single measure like state testing data to determine a school’s fate. I have more questions here than counter-points. If AYP goes by the wayside, what will be the measure of a school’s success? Will superintendents shake up staffing and appoint successful teachers to failing schools? What if those teachers fail, too? What’s the incentive for risk-taking? What are the incentives for letting a school fail? How much time will be granted for innovative programs to get past start-up jitters? If AYP doesn’t go by the wayside, what happens to schools that only have a 99% pass rate beyond 2014? Is the federal government awarding grants to divisions based on their willingness to shut down failing schools? What if a division wanted to charter a failing school to innovate? Can a division dodge the failing-school assurance by chartering failing schools for charter money? Will a division get grant funding for shutting down a failing school this year that wouldn’t be shut down by post-AYP/NCLB criteria?

We need more than these four assurances to reform American education. Innovation doesn’t come from assurance. In fact, assurance is anathema to innovation. If what Secretary Duncan decreed were innovative, we wouldn’t already be assured of how the money is going to be spent. If success for all were already assured, we wouldn’t need to innovate. We do need innovation and we need it from classroom teachers.

United States Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, our nation’s first CTO, recently implored our schools’ innovators to help him find them. That’s an assurance more inviting than any of Secretary Duncan’s. Help him, classroom teachers; share your ideas. Share them with your colleagues at work and online, with your principals, coordinators, directors, and superintendents. Spread your vision of learning and ask for what you need to make it happen. As your divisions compete in the “Race to the Top,” remember to start a dialogue with CTO Chopra and his office, as well. Get yourself the support you need in your classroom to change your own professional practice and ensure learning through genuinely reformative and relevant practices like authentic engagement, entrepreneurship, and service learning. Students can master any content through the skills needed for these endeavors, but no set of standards spread across separate disciplines will help them master those skills. Students need your help to facilitate the real, joyful work of learning.

Teachers: there’s energy in our country for real change, not just improvement. You are uniquely positioned at an intersection of students and learning, and networked by the technology and PLC-driven practices necessary to help each other with do-it-yourself instructional innovation. You can be the hub of students’ and teachers’ rediscovery of learning. We know what works; it’s difficult to do; we can help one another change our teaching. Advocate for your students, for yourselves, and for each other. Reform our schools on learning’s terms.