Not A Winner
“I can’t help but wonder about the odds.” Pull Quote.
Since the Minnesota State Lottery launched in the Fall of 1989, I have bought three or four tickets. Every time I scanned one, the kiosk flashed the same verdict: “Not A Winner.” Not exactly life-changing, just a gentle smack to my daydreams of a $300 million jackpot: a Bentley in the driveway, a 10-bedroom home on five acres, and a full country spread, farm (corn, watermelons, tomatoes, herbs), sheep, goats, horses, hogs, cows, dogs, cats, barns, the works. I get it, the lure of ‘winning’ is a sophisticated construct built on powerful digital marketing platforms. Poor people (me) want more. It's interesting to think about the lottery. While I buy that ticket for a shot at millions, I can’t help but wonder about the odds. Paying a dollar feels like a small investment, but in reality, the chances of winning anything significant are incredibly slim. It sort of feels like a gamble, doesn’t it? What is behind the allure of playing when the majority of people end up with nothing? And, of course, think about where that money goes. It raises questions about who really benefits from this system. Modern marketing runs on psychology engineered into digital platforms: algorithms segment audiences, A/B tests optimize “choice architecture,” and interfaces deploy defaults, friction, and variable rewards to steer behavior. In other words, platforms operationalize behavioral science at scale, using prompts, ability, and motivation in tandem (Fogg, 2009) and well-known influence heuristics (Cialdini, 2001). As Thaler and Sunstein note, a nudge is “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options” (2008, p. 6). Online, the nudges, especially defaults, can strongly shape outcomes (UK CMA, 2022; Huyard, 2016). The upside is relevance; the risk is manipulation. My chances of winning the lottery are just as good as those of someone who has never purchased a ticket. The predictable outcomes are amazing, and they exemplify mass consumer manipulation at its best.
So now we know the lottery’s appeal isn’t fate, it’s engineered hope. “Not a winner” isn’t bad luck; it’s the predictable output of a system designed to sell dreams while delivering losses. In 2025, that same architecture shows up in the education of Black youth in the Twin Cities and across the United States. We drape schools in slogans of excellence, equity, and innovation, then run students through a machinery of scarcity, soft expectations, and performative reform. The kiosk message is the same: Not A Winner.
Be honest: the system is calibrated to sort, not lift. We label children “not proficient,” “off track,” or “tier three” as if those tags are neutral diagnostics. They’re not. They’re public stamps that travel with a student from hallway whispers to SIS dashboards to placement decisions. The message lands early and often, sometimes by third grade: Not A Winner. By middle school, the metrics harden into track lists, access gates, and quiet exclusions from advanced coursework. By high school, we call it “readiness.” Readiness for what? Certainly not for a world that pays in reading, writing, math, code, and confidence.
In the Twin Cities, we’ve made a civic habit of marketing improvement instead of doing it. We hold press conferences, launch pilots, rename the same intervention with a new acronym, and let the adults change the language while children experience the same outcomes. Central offices roll out new frameworks; authorizers and boards publish “aspirations.” Meanwhile, in too many buildings, hallways are crowded during class, behavior supports are thin, reading interventions are inconsistent, and teachers churn. Families know the truth: they see the worksheets, the empty feedback, the revolving door of substitutes, the email auto-replies. We ask them to buy another ticket.
School choice was sold as the anti-lottery, pick your school, pick your future. In practice, we replaced one lottery with another: admissions lotteries, funding lotteries, adult attention lotteries. The “choice” is often a bus ride and a brochure. Suppose the fundamentals aren’t there, daily protected literacy blocks, high-dosage tutoring, stable expert teachers, real behavior systems, and relentless feedback. In that case, choice is just a marketing layer on top of the same device, blinking "Not A Winner."
This is not a talent problem. Black students are not broken. The problem is adult systems that refuse to do the unglamorous, high-discipline work of instructional excellence at scale. We tolerate curriculum drift. We soft-pedal expectations because we are afraid of conflict. We let phones, hallway wandering, and adult inconsistency steal hours of instructional time a week, then pretend a new program will fix it. We demand miracles from early-career teachers while underpaying mentors and underfunding mental health staff. And when results disappoint, we blame culture, neighborhoods, parents, anyone but the adults in charge of time, talent, and texts.
If you’re uncomfortable, good. The truth should sting. Black youth show up in 2025 with the same genius they’ve always had, creative, digital-native, entrepreneurial, hungry. They also show up carrying the weight of adult failure: pandemic learning loss we never fully addressed, expired ESSER supports we didn’t replace, and leadership churn that destabilizes classrooms. We keep telling them to be resilient. They don’t need more resilience; they need competence from us.
Here’s the forward-looking fix, and it’s not negotiable:
- Time: Guard a daily, distraction-free 120 minutes for literacy and numeracy in grades 5–9. Phones up, doors closed, bell-to-bell instruction.
- Teaching: Put the strongest teachers in the grades where students are most off track. Pay them more. Give them a coach who actually coaches weekly.
- Tutoring: High-dosage, tightly aligned tutoring for any student more than one year behind, scheduled inside the school day.
- Mastery: Standards-aligned, mastery-based grading with consequences: you haven’t learned it until you’ve shown it. Retakes with feedback are policy, not favors.
- Belonging and behavior: Real Tier 2/3 systems, staffed by trained professionals—restorative practices with teeth and timelines. Classroom doors stay open to learning, not chaos.
- Materials that matter: Culturally rich, knowledge-building curricula. Stop starving kids of complex texts and then wondering why comprehension collapses.
- Data that respects kids: Growth + proficiency, publicly reported, classroom by classroom, quarter by quarter. No more dashboards that conceal the truth.
If you can’t deliver the above, spare us the posters and the press releases. Stop telling families to buy hope. Stop telling Black children to work harder within a system that is inherently flawed. The message they receive from our current system is loud and clear: Not A Winner. That is on us. Here’s my stance: 2025 is the year we stop nudging children toward predictable failure and start building schools where excellence is the default, not the exception. No more engineered hope. No more adult-centered theater. Put the time, talent, and tools where the students are. When we do, the kiosk will finally change. It won’t say “jackpot.” It will say something better: Mastered. Advanced. Ready.
References
Cialdini, R. B. (2001). Influence: Science and practice (4th ed.). Allyn & Bacon. ResearchGate
Fogg, B. J. (2009). A behavior model for persuasive design. Persuasive 2009. https://behaviormodel.org Fogg Behavior Model
Huyard, C. (2016). Nudges: Validité, limites et enjeux éthiques, notamment en santé. M S-Medicine Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1051/medsci/20163212018
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, and happiness. Penguin. Quote text: https://blogs.harvard.edu/nudge/what-is-a-nudge/ archive.blogs.harvard.edu
UK Competition & Markets Authority. (2022). Online choice architecture: How digital design can harm competition and consumers (Discussion paper). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/...
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