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SARC BITE 6

Education Jargon Gets in the Way of Truthful Accountability Reporting

As I read through accountability reports from dozens of California schools, I am awash in ed-speak.This is hardly a problem confined to the realm of accountability reporting. When principals are talking about their work to parents, they often utter buzzwords and acronyms that leave their public in the dark. This ed-speak phenomenon is so prevalent, I have to consider it an occupational hazard.

Martin Mozloff, a sociologist from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, has studied the creep of ed-speak into teacher training programs. He calls it "unmatched twaddle, unbelievable bilge, absolutely staggering nonsense."

An article in the August 16, 2001 issue of the Los Angeles Times took aim at the perpetrators of what the reporter called "a blizzard of buzzwords." He concluded that ed-speak serves a purpose: "It allows teachers and administrators to insulate themselves from scrutiny and maintain a grip on power."

An education historian cited in this article, Jeffrey Mirel of the University of Michigan, said, "It's a way to underscore the message that, 'I'm a professional, so give me your kid and leave me alone.' All professional language is turf language."

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO CREATE CLEARER SARCS

Here are five things you can do to raise the quality of your annual accountability reports.

Take charge and edit. I suggest you practice what English teachers preach, and start to edit what your principals write. Like faculty authors in universities, principals need the help of good editors. If you are publishing their SARCs, editing is your responsibility. If your principals are fussy about having their words altered, hand them Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" and ask them to read it before you proceed with your discussion.

Decide what matters most. All items in your accountability reports are not of equal importance. Decide what matters most, then communicate it. You communicate this in deciding the sequence of topics, in your choice of typography, when you allocate page space and word count, and when you invest in visualizations of data elements.

Banish jargon, both educational and statistical. Forget quintiles, rubrics, and national percentile ranks. Banish the festival of acronyms your public doesn't know. Forget the spin. Just get to the heart of your schools' facts, and show your public where you see progress — and the lack of it. When you point to curricular areas or grade levels that are lagging, explain in plain English what you intend to do about it.

Explain what numbers mean. Data is not information. To make the data into information, you have to find the meaning in the numbers, and then convey that meaning to your public. You'll create more of those "aha" moments if you practice show-and-tell. Show the numbers with data visualizations, and tell your readers what it means with words. If astronomers can explain black holes and solar flares, surely educators can explain the measured progress of learning that occurs in classrooms.

Respect your reader. Above all, trust your reader's interest in how schools are doing, respect your reader's intelligence, and have faith in your public's ability to make sense of real things measured wisely. If parents are making sense of their team's baseball stats and their 401-K's financial performance, they're certainly capable of following your explanation of your schools' API results.

RELATED REFERENCES

George Orwell is perhaps the most articulate observer of the ways in which language betrays thought. Consider this quote from "Politics and the English Language."

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."

More information is available online about the sins of ed-speak, at:

Finally, if you want one reference to help you "translate" your own in-house terminology into English, take a look at the glossary built by the editors of Education Week.

(If you want help making budget conscious investments in your SARC program, give us a call at (415) 337-7971. Or contact us via e-mail at raghur@schoolwisepress.com.)