The new Broad leader in Dallas has hired a communications director and a PR team to craft a list of “power words” and “power phrases” that teachers and principals are supposed to use when communicating with the public.
Dallas principals and teachers: Please take care to say what you are told. Memorize your lines. If you say the wrong thing, you are in trouble. Let the superintendent and his PR team do your thinking for you. Just do as you are told.
Here is a sample:
If a parent asks about the new administration, a principal might reply, “District leaders are student-focused in their decision making.”
Or: “The superintendent’s plan brings stability and a clear direction to the district.”
Or perhaps: “Destination 2020 will take five to eight years to achieve, but we will make significant progress in one year.”
Or even: “We are all about improving student performance and the quality of instruction; that is the expectation.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Jeez.
Here’s one: “Destination 2020 will take five to eight years to achieve, but we will make significant progress in one year.”
I thought it was all about urgency! We don’t have the time.
If I were the parent I would follow up and ask the following question. How will you know that you’ve achieved significant progress? What ‘metrics’ are you using? Are they sound and research-based or did you just threw them together?
I guess I’ll never work in Dallas.
The answer to that question would only be one of the other three answer choices given above.
So I’m assuming the Dallas ISD office houses a Ministry of Truth now.
Time to read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”:
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
This isn’t satire, right? Ay yi yi!!!
The glorious five-year plan will make wit too cheap to meter.
You are not alone. This is a familiar symptom of the GERM. One of the most frequently-cited quotes from the final report of the Cambridge Primary Review, which has comprehensively and exhaustively investigated the condition and future of elementary schooling in England, and which has charted the increasing level of political control over school and classroom life, is this:
‘Teaching should be taken out of the political arena and given back to teachers. There is a necessary relationship between how teachers think about their practice and how students learn. Students will not learn to think for themselves if their teachers are expected merely to do as they are told.’
To which one might add: what price democracy if it is not enacted in education?
Retired superintendent here, this is absurd and ridiculous! Principals as puppets, now there’s an idea! Geez Louise!
I guess they want Deltas, not Alphas!
Now that I think about it, I think your headline is too generous. It’s not that you must not say what you think; it’s that you must not think.
” …you must not think.”
Yes, just believe the “power words and power phrases” of the doublespeak authors.
And we thought all the spin came from political parties & candidates!!!
If you read the Dallas blog you find out that IT DOES come from political operatives – the ones that did Swift Boat:
“Sprague, Miles and consultant Merrie Spaeth, the cruise director of the Swift Boat, of Dallas-based Spaeth Communications, Inc. crafted the phrases and words. Sprague said that the district hired Spaeth with private donations.”
Wasn’t Merrie Spaeth an actress who was in the movie, “The World of Henry Orient” and television shows?
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina and commented:
Thank goodness this all is behind us.
For real? Oh my lord, that is truly an utter disgrace. Isn’t the USA meant to be the champion of free speech? I am truly shocked, and not much in education shocks me any more.
In related news, the New TFA Boy Wonder Charles Glover, Head of DISD HR with no experience just lost what was widely seen as an experienced, stable right hand. Executive Director Jamal Jenkins resigned abruptly. He was hired back in June, before Wunderkind Glover came in.
It will be interesting to see if he’s replaced by another TFA alumni. That would allow them to claim one more who ‘stayed in education’, right?
Wow! Not only do they control the schools, they are now developing Jedi mind powers!
“Your mind powers will not work on me, boy.”