Educators’ candor is welcome

A few years ago, I spent two months visiting rural schools. Among the many dedicated teachers and principals I met, none was as memorable as a larger-than-life superintendent who showed me his schools and outlined his plan to rejuvenate them.

New to his central Georgia district, he was determined to awaken the lethargic system from its slumber. As we walked the halls of his schools, he would gesture to a classroom and whisper, “I’m trying to run that teacher off.” Or, “I want to get rid of her, but her daughter teaches first grade and she’s damn good.”

I was dumfounded by his candor. Most school tours resemble Lake Wobegon —- all principals are strong, all test results are good-looking, and all the teachers are above average.

Superintendents are typically so laudatory about their schools and their staffs that it seems impolite to remind them that half their high school students flubbed the End of Course Test in algebra or that fewer than half their third-graders met state standards in reading. Few admit easily to underperformance.

In fact, candor and straight talk are rare in education, and euphemisms abound. When my son recently mislaid a new jacket, he suggested that he might have left it in a cottage behind the school. I must have looked puzzled because he went on to explain, “You know —- where the fifth-graders have class.”

Personally, I would describe the place where fifth-graders attend class as a trailer. But then, I’m not an education professional.

I have left many education conferences wondering whether the presenters were paid by the acronym. In a field where clarity ought to be cherished, the leading practitioners have established a lexicon cluttered with abbreviations, technical terms and obscure labels.

My husband and I once had a 10-minute sidewalk chat with a school consultant working at a local elementary school. After a conversation about psychometrics, scaffolding, formative assessments and zone of proximal development, we walked away asking one another, “What was she saying?”

The use of education jargon serves as a defense mechanism, to keep parents at bay and to establish from the onset who is the expert and who is the amateur. It becomes a way to silence questions and squelch opposition.

Parents of children with special needs report the most chilling experiences with edu-speak wielded as weaponry. When parents show up for the mandated IEP —- individualized education plan —- meetings, they are typically met by incomprehensible bombast fired by a small army of school professionals. Not surprisingly, many parents describe these IEP meetings more as ambushes than collaborations.

In one sense it’s understandable. As a beleaguered and often scapegoated profession, educators want to wrap themselves in a protective lingo and avoid acknowledgement of real problems. If principals admit to unhappy parents that a new teacher is not proving effective, for example, they may also have to tell those parents that they’re stuck with the teacher anyway, since it’s not an easy task to replace staff midyear.

Resorting to happy talk or edu-babble only contributes to parental mistrust. I have covered and attended school events so disorganized and poorly run, for example, that only the patience of doting parents prevented the audience from storming the stage. Still, cheery principals announce at the end, “Wasn’t that incredible!”

I would love once to hear a principal say, “Gee, that didn’t go too well. We will do better next time.”

Maureen Downey writes about education and soon will be blogging about education on ajc.com. Please e-mail her at mdowney@ajc.com.