Last year, Nancy Bailey and I co-authored a glossary of words, terms, and the names of organizations in education today. It is called Edspeak and Doubletalk: A Glossary to Decipher Hypocrisy and Save Public Schooling. Truly, folks, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, and this book is the scorecard for education policy today.
Nancy has a great eye for how language is used to deceive, and in this post, she warns educators to beware of the infiltration of business language into education. When those terms are used, she says, there is an effort underway to turn parents into customers and promote privatization.
Beware when your superintendent is called a “CEO” instead of a school superintendent. In some districts, the switch covers up the superintendent’s lack of proper education credentials.
Beware “alignment,” which is an effort to standardize curriculum, instruction and testing, and to squelch teacher creativity and autonomy.
Beware “benchmarks” and “data-driven” anything, which fit widgets but not students.
Beware the use of “customers” instead of “parents”:
With privatization, parents are customers who choose the school they want because the school is a business.
When communities are devoted to their public schools, they follow and attend Friday night football games. They attend class plays and cheer for student accomplishments. They visit student art fairs and help with school fundraisers. Public schools can be a source of pride for the community.
Parents and those in the community never used to be called customers because they had ownership of the schools. The schools belonged to them.
Open the link and see many other examples of business language that does not belong in the lexicon of educators.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Up next: The Balanced Scorecard?
Education folks have a tendency to borrow terms from business and to misuse them. So, for example, in manufacturing and in business generally, a benchmark is the highest performance achieved–a goal to be met by competitors (e.g., the quickest read-write time for a hard drive). Education pundits half hear these terms and adopt and misuse them. So, in EdSpeak, a benchmark became any result from an interim examination. In manufacturing, a standard is uniform specification. In education, this becomes a goal, with the phony association with precise measurement still attached to the notion. There are MANY, MANY examples of such idiotic borrowings.
cx: ignorant borrowings–ones in which the original term wasn’t really understood and was misapplied
Ha ha ha.
We should be working for the other side.
We could make a fortune.
This is in the Great American Flim Flam Tradition! And oh, there is a great river of green running from the oligarchical Dark Tower of Sauron! The revolutionarily disruptive Six Smegma Eduprogram from SomeDAM Good Shepherd Education for Tomorrow Today will ensure successful training of human capital (your students) for international competitiveness in today’s economy. This final evolution of educational processes depends upon the fundamental transfer function equation, Y = ƒ(X) + e, where Y is the educational outcome or dependent variable; X’s are the significant online educational inputs, or independent variables; and the Greek letter epsilon (e ) is payments in cash to SomeDAM/Shepherd. We don’t make idle promises like making adequate yearly progress toward 100 percent proficiency. That’s so 2001! What we can GUARANTEE is that your school will operate at 3.4 defective students per million opportunities over the near-to-middle term, which, given the size of a typical school, is ALMOST THE SAME THING! In other words, 99.99966 percent of the values on your Common Core tests will lie within the upper and lower specification limits for proficiency! Yes, this won’t be cheap, but hey, Quality Is Almost Free because quality = results of process (educational outcomes)/total cost (our modest consulting fees), and given the results you’ll be delivering, well, you know what an asymptote is, right? This is all very scientific. Call us for an audit of your internal and external critical-to-quality customer requirements, gathering the voice of the customer (VOC), the voice of the business (BOV), and the creation of a high-level process map today!
Supposed to be below.
Random WordPress, you know
One that really irks me is continuous improvement, the term from the quality control movement in manufacturing. In the name of this, the Deformers have done precisely the opposite of what the great gurus of the quality control movement–Shewart, Deming, and Juran–proposed, basically making a farce of it at every level of detail, from the most general to the most specific.
AMEN, Bob.
I so agree. I know that Deming’s work has been hijacked by some to mean MORE PROFITS, not better working conditions, which in the end means better product quality.
The full methos is called “lean management and continuous improvement”. This method enters colleges as well.
Lean sometimes works.
And sometimes it doesn’t.
As when you are the federal government and you don’t have a stockpile of masks and gloves and ventilators and materials for constructing field hospitals.
Lean management is a concept not something you are supposed just read and imagine what it means. It was invented at Toyota quite some time ago. In general, it means lots of extra self evaluation for workers—bureaucracy. It talks about “shared management” but it ends up with what I just stated.
https://kanbanize.com/lean-management/what-is-lean-management
Yes, very familiar with this stuff, Mate.
I worked in management consulting and had some first-hand experience of this stuff. I also read voluminously about it.
Consultancies often couch whatever they are going to be doing in lean terminology because the language of “optimizing” fits with cutting costs to justify those big consultancy fees. LOL.
I’m wondering, Mate, whether you have run across the Socio-Technical Systems people. I did work, for a time, for a group derived from this organization. Their interest is in the inadvertent negative impacts of technical and process innovations that come about because those implementing them don’t understand the human, often emotional, consequences because of ignorance of how people think and operate and the ways in which the new systems or processes will impact those. This is an organization dear to my heart. Many, many examples. Here’s one: CRM systems that supplant salespeople’s little black books and secret knowledge of their customers that is life itself to those salespeople. There’s much that people don’t want to give away. And capable people resent being micromanaged.
After years in publishing, I did some time in the consulting industry, Mate, which I naively expected to be mostly about folks with lots of business experience helping businesses to solve problems. There’s a lot from the lean and quality control movements that’s really valuable. And then there’s how consultancies often actually operate, for whom, and why. You probably don’t want me to go there. LMAO.
Bob, it would be great if we could have a discussion of lean management and stuff. Pls write me an email. You can see my email address at https://www.memphis.edu/msci/people/mwierdl.php
I’m just waiting for them to start applying ” 6 sigma” to education.
“To within how many standard deviations of a normal distribution the fraction of defect-free outcomes corresponds”
As applied to education, it would be better know as “Sick Sigma”
Sick Sigma
Sick Sigma is the goal
An output that is free
Of “defects” on the whole
And “bad” are not to be
“Nonstandard Deviation”
(versification of Yong Zhao – aka “The Zhao
of Education”)
Deviation from the norm’s
Anathema to school reforms
But variance is future’s seed
And not a thing that we should weed
Devious minds think alike, SomeDAM. Note my suggestions for aspiring EduPundits, below.
It’s actually very funny.
Even when applied to business, 6 sigma is often just a joke.
A company that I worked for that did government contracting claimed it was six sigma after making the employees just through a bunch of ridiculous hoops
Among other things to make such a claim they had brought in these so called “experts” to educate all the scientists and engineers that I worked with. They had us doing stuff like watching I love Lucy on the candy assembly line.
The whole thing was a complete waste of time.
A lot of the business stuff coming out of places like Harvard Business School is just totally ridiculous.
And when it is applied to education it is just doubly ridiculous.
You are in luck, SomeDAM, for I am a fully self-certified Educational Six Smegma Black Belt Sensei!
So, in manufacturing, to get a benchmark, you measure something (like the read-write times of a lot of manufacturers’ hard drives, and the highest one becomes the benchmark. The EduPundits caught the “you measure something” part and missed the rest of the definition. And this is how it typically works when people borrow business terms for education. However, even if they borrow the entire definition somewhat accurately, the end up applying to students a principle applicable to widgets, which is kind of like using a tuba to do neurosurgery.
However, if you want to go into the EduPundit business and get big checks from Gates, the Waltons, Bloomberg, Hastings, etc., pick up a copy of The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook, by Michael George et al., or of Juran’s Quality Handbook, by Joseph Juran and A. Blanton Godfrey. Open one of these at random. Pick a term. Half read what’s said about it. Then apply it to education. Presto! Gurudom!
or you can take this approach:
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/becoming-an-edupundit-made-ez/
Bravo! Thank you Diane Ravitch and Nancy Bailey!
Oops. Gotta go. Time for to do some online tutoring of my granddaughter, or, as we refer to her, our recently acquired bit of human capital. Gosh, I totally forgot to construct a dashboard for the data derived from this tutoring! What a terrible CEO I am!
Maybe you can get Emily Oster to help you.
She’s an expert at dashing stuff to bits.
An Oscar for Oster
Dashing stuff to bits
The forte of the Oster
If studies were just fliks
Then she’d deserve an Oscar
Not CEO but CET, Chief Exec Tutor. But you are not bad at all. You are not supposed to do stuff, just have a strategic plan for it.
LOL. I’m enjoying spending this time, if only virtually. And I think it’s not entirely a waste of my granddaughter’s time. We’re having a lot of fun, and she’s learning a great deal.
LOL. Well, I do have one of those!
The book by Bailey and Ravitch is magnificent, btw. It should be assigned in every teacher preparation program and should be on every educator’s bookshelf. Brilliance on every page, though I would have been less kind, less generous, in my definitions of many of these terms than they were. I admire their balance of objectivity and subtle humor.
I would say to young people interesting in the field of education, get this. It will really give you a leg up, the lay of the land, insights into a wide range of thought and practice in contemporary education.
In other words, young educators, reading this book (or simply reading around in it) will put you in the know, give you the 411, the 311, the 140, the skinny, the dd (diet dirt), the intel. . . .
Absolutely right, Bob. I use it heavily.
Here’s my satirical send-up of contemporary business jargon. It’s from an as-yet unpublished novel of mine, a scene in which a hotshot from a consulting firm is giving a presentation to brass at Centcom–the United States Central Command. The presentation is almost entirely meaningless but sounds profound (“They muddy the waters to make them look deep,” Nietzsche wrote.) and is made up entirely of contemporary business jargon, with a heavy emphasis on jargon in the consulting industry.
Note to aspiring EduPundits; Lots of business terms you can appropriate and misuse here! Hey, it works for consulting firms!
https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/06/26/centcom-dxs-ts-kpis/
I find the term “human capital” particularly offensive. It reduces anyone not of billionaire status to a widget.
We not only need to expunge the language, we need to expunge market based ideology for education from our policy. Markets do not help most students, and they hobble the public schools that serve the most vulnerable. They create opportunity for some at the expense of many, and they promote segregation. So-called choice imposes inefficiencies on public schools and leaves them with stranded costs while the market skims the cheapest and easiest to educate. An unregulated, unaccountable market creates avenues of waste and fraud at the expense of taxpayers and communities.
Billionaires are strong supporters of market based education because they do not want to send their tax dollars to other people’s children. The best model to provide equitable education is well-funded and resourced democratically operated public education. This country should stop pandering to the whims of billionaires. it should expect them to pay their fair share.
I’ve spent years by now sifting through line item donations of self-reported individual’s occupation and employer. It’s very easy to tell who’s chartery even when employed by the District. But many charter ed types will list their charterer as the employer so it can be misleading. The language they use in just three words to describe their title is often enough. You can tell who’s Pahara and who’s Gates Fdn, who’s Broad Fdn, who’s on charter boards. It’s pretty remarkable.
My favorite is accountable. This word is thrown about constantly as the triumphant word in any argument. If I hear it again, I will scream so loudly that the world will hear me.
School Accounting 101
Debit and credit
Accounting for teacher
The debit’s to edit
And credit’s to feature
Out, damned tools! out, I say!
Expel the terms
And also firms
Expel from schools
The business tools
(Washes hands frantically)
“. . . Expel from schools
The business fools
Although tool can be used as fool, eh! Not the sharpest tool in the shed.
Thanks
I actually considered fools, but decided that tool covers both the fools(Bill Gates and his acolytes — aka tools) and their products (software and hardware)
You see, there is actually some thought that goes into these ditties (sometimes)
It’s bad enough when they apply business terminology.
But when they apply science terminology (eg, from measurement science and statistics) it’s even worse.
Agreed. Scientism and pseudoscience.
They actually know nothing about science.
Where I went to undergraduate school, as a student understood that he (mostly he’s were there) was incapable of completing a science curriculum, he ‘changed majors’ to and engineering one. And, then when it became obvious that even Civil Engineering was way over his head, he opted for ‘Management Science’. Few flunked out of that.
Economic “science” (sic and sick) is the other common endpoint for the science and engineering flunkies.
YEP!
Duane
I thought of you when I wrote that.
I know how much you love it when the deformsters use the “measurement” word.
I once did some work with an actual “measurement scientist” at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
I tell you , that fellow really knew his stuff.
I learned a great deal from him.
I was working on an optical (laser) device for performing measurements on threaded fasteners (bolts) and the guy at NIST was perhaps the world expert at the time on screw threads. He had literally written the book on them, having compiled most of the standards for the US.
Nothing makes me sicker than when people co-opt scientific terminology (with very precise meaning) to make vacuous nonsense sound scientific.
Next time I talk with my friend who used to sell high end CNC, Citizen (he was the Western Hemisphere’s dealer of the year for them one year) Nakamuras and others I’ll have to ask him about laser measuring devices. It seems to me that they were able to insure accuracy of measurement by the record of the computer code of a given process. I may be wrong, hence wanting to check with him. His programmers made the machines do things that even the Japanese owners of the companies couldn’t believe. Great stuff. (I was a screw machine operator back in 74, before heading to college, so I have an idea of the challenges of accuracy involved)
For many unintentionally hilarious examples of utter misuse of scientific terms, check this out, SomeDAM: It’s from a bat-guano crazy New Age-y cult: https://www.marconicrecalibration.com/marconic_recalibration.html
CEOs…. Oy.
File this one under “Connecticut Charter CEOs”…
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-br-1980s-rapes-arrest-jumoke-group-ceo-cold-case-20201117-utyrrjh3wzcdrkl6mccddp2fra-story.html%3foutputType=amp
I wonder what a faith-belief term list in public education would look like?
It would look like Betsy DeVos.
Scary
Duane,
Some atheists are as fanatic as the religionists they criticize. They think their way is the only way.
I’m glad that you qualified by using ‘some’. There are always ‘some’. But, how many? And, are the ones who write books actually ‘believers’, or are they simply posers looking to make money?
As an atheist, I could care less about religion in general or in any particular religion, as long as it doesn’t try to inflict itself upon the rest of society. Atheists don’t proselytize, they simply come to their own private conclusion after reviewing the evidence of their lives. Some of us think that we have enough difficulty sorting out physical and ethical issues without worrying about ‘metaphysical’ ones.
I suspect that there are many atheists, and most feel the same way. Of course, I’d be hard pressed to prove my suspicion because ‘atheism’ is a personal philosophical choice, not an organized creed with membership lists.
I don’t doubt that what you say is true. Are there a few fanatics? I wouldn’t doubt it, but the vast majority of atheists, who understand the historical treatment of said group-torture, death ostracizing, etc. . . actually have a good feel for not forcing their beliefs on others.
I have consistently stated that whatever works for a person in his her beliefs FOR THEMSELVES is fine and dandy. It is when a faith believer attempts to force their beliefs, i.e., abortion, gay marriage, god and all the attending myths, etc. . ., on others is where the problems lie.
As a foundational attitude for society, skeptical rationo-logical scientific thought is really the best basis for a pluralistic society as America to utilize in developing public policy. And until I see about 10% of the Congress/Senate, the presidency and the Supreme court, and concomitant state and local levels are atheists, this country certainly is not free as atheists are not allowed in those positions, not by law, but by social sanction which many times is far worse than the law allows.
And I’ll be long time worm food before that opening of the avenues of political power will take place.
Faith Based Biology
Faith based list
Of edu terms?
Creation blessed
EndTime-o-derms
I do not think the privatizers know what the word ‘parent’ means. They seem to believe the definition is: well-financed, private organization, with a CEO, that falsely represents individuals with children.
Haven’t you ever heard of a parent company?
Apparentcompanyly so.
Parent Company
Apparently
You haven’t heard
That company
Is parent word
My favorite new term in education is “value added.” I love adding value to human capital (à la Bob). And I’m so glad there’s a rubric that tells me how much value I’m adding!
Personally I am partial to the Devalue Added Model (DAM) because I invented it.
I can only reiterate what I wrote In Dr.Ravitch’s column on NAEP.
Link?
I used the word customers when I was a principal. That drove me to do what I could to meet the needs of all of my customers. That included students, parents, and staff. My vision was to serve as I lead. There are things we can learn from businesses, but unlike businesses, we don’t get to select our raw materials. Also, businesses aren’t run by elected volunteers who have little expertise regarding the organization they are in charge of. Businesses also have firm targets and solid metrics, while a lot of what we do produces subjective results that are difficult to quantify.
Bad choice of words, Douglas. You weren’t doling out a ‘product’, you were overseeing a school. Neither students, nor parents, nor faculty were your ‘customers’.
As our language devolves, it’s easy to be hoodwinked into using these terms. It’s what propaganda is all about. It’s been around since the elder Rockefeller made his living selling ‘snake oil’ (Seneca oil).