Education Reform Buzzwords: Links and Glossary

• Accountability - set quotas for performance. Reward / give bonuses to the schools that have the rich white kids. Punish / fire the ones that get poor minorities. Punishes 99th percentile schools because there's nowhere to improve. Punish the schools that need the most help because they get the kids that don't, won't or can't study. Dandy way to give control to a state education bureauacracy that otherwise doesn't have much to do.
• Affirmative Action / Diversity"Diversity IS excellence" Never mind grades and test scores or any measure of merit. The only true measure of excellence is whether or not we have x% blacks, and we don't care how few whites we get.
• Alignment Jumping on the bandwagon to whatever "standards" are cool that day. This insures that everyone will learn all of the new "higher standards". Example: Washington State defines Essential Learning Requirements roughly equal to traditional grade levels. Set the 4th grade WASL assessment to the 10th grade by the EALRs. Then encourage adoption of National Science Foundation / SSI Science Systemic Initiative textbooks like Mathland or Investigations which don't even cover half of the grade level EALRs.
• All Students Will Learn. Same Rate, at the Highest level of proficiency. Regardless of background. And if you believe that....
• Application of Knowledge: Instead of just learning facts, using it. (same as "in context"). Problem is it might mean spending a week doing a project about African civilizations when the topic was fractions.
• Assessment Not to be confused with testing. First step in reform. We don't need no stinking Bell Curve. Free response, multicultural, any answer can be a correct answer, no credit for correct answer w/o explanation or final draft, partial or full credit for wrong answers, scoring depends on which human scored it at $30 to $300 per student. Converts acceptible 50th percentile average to only 20% met standard crisis. Just as bad or worse than IQ tests, with respect to minority performance, but liberals love them.
• Authentic - based on "real-life", natural, etc. vs. purely academic or abstract.
• Authentic Assessment A term for "new" styles of tests with "alternative" skills etc.
• Back to Basics Viewed as dumbed down return to mindless drill and kill rote learning as opposed to "deep mathematical understanding". Except "deep" understanding usually means low basic skills.
• Bilingual Education Keeps kids from learning english by teaching almost entirely in their native language
• Block Scheduling Switch to fewer 90 min sessions with math for only half the year. Disasterous for AP math scores, music, students lose interest.
• Break the Mold Term used by Marc Tucker and NCEE to mean "change".
• Certificate of Mastery It's suppposed to force all to "master" high school level skills, inspired by School To Work. Since it's driven by OBE, it either means you got the radical new know-nothing curriculum and only 10th grade skills, or takes away diploma from massive number of people who won't pass super-hard tests.
• Child-Centered Education The teacher doesn't teach, and isn't at a higher level than the student, and isn't the one who can be assumed to know the right answer. The kid has to discover it on his own.
• Christian Right has been identified as an evil threat to education reform
• Community Service Require community service for high school graduation = forced labor, waste of time for many
• Competition is evil, and it, along with ranking and tracking will no longer be tolerated.
• Consensus and Facilitation A process by which everybody agrees whatever the promoter is promoting, thereby giving the illusion of local control, such as approving a 4th grade test that has already been set with 10th grade level problems, they can blame it on the public. You WILL be facilitated. Resistance is futile.
• Context Students aren't capable of learning abstract math or english concepts, it has to be in a real-life context. For example, using matrix operations to compute proceeds of a bake sale.
• Constructivism The teacher no longer teaches, the students "construct" their own learning
• Context Students are incapable of absorbing abstract concepts like english and mathematics unless it is grafted onto "contexts" such as Iroqois history, or carpentry. Also called "application" or "real life".
• Cooperative Learning, Grouping The smart kids come up with the answers and do the work. Also contrasted with competition, which is bad
• Core Knowledge E.D. Hirsch system that students actually need to know content, not just "learning skills for lifelong learning". They should know how to add and divide, and spell, not have to figure it out when they'll need it. A top enemy of reform, up there with Saxon.
• Correct Answer An archaic concept that is damaging to self esteem of students who are judged to have "incorrect" answers. Questions are rated on a "rubric", and often questions which demonstrate mastery of a concept can be given full credit even the the answer is not numerically correct.
• CPM: College Preparatory Math Integrated math tailored to kids who don't like math, results in kids who do poorly on test of algebra and geometry compared to traditional sequential math courses.
• Criterion Referenced Testing A committee sets a cut-off and decides what constitutes proficient, makes it possible to flunk 80% or more of a sample in order to create an atmosphere of "crisis", or pass everybody at a low level. Often deliberately omits any rank order norm referenced score to prevent comparison to average.
• Death Education Death is cool, so shooting classmates is not such a big deal.
• Decodable Text Starting readers are given words which are simple to decode using phonics, compared to throwing big, irregular words common to whole langauge readers.
• Desegregation It used to mean assigning without regard to race, but now it means enforcing "diversity" and "racial balance", usually making assignment by race mandatory.
• Developmentally Appropriate PracticesLet kids go at their own pace even if they're not getting anywhere. Don't stuff them with facts until they've developed to like learning them.
• Discovery Based Learning Constructivism asks why spend 10 min just teaching kids when they can spend a week "discovering" the pythagorean theorm or that circumf = 2 * Pi r?
• Drill "Drill and Kill": Constructivists believe that practice is bad.
• Dumbing Down Conservative treat the new "real life" curriculum as lowering standards, even though their new tests are a bear.
• Education Reform Start out with a system that teaches math and reading at average levels. Then use the latest education fads with the goals of teaching to higher levels. Result, end up with kids that can't add or read with lower test scores.
• Education Training Train teachers so that they won't teach children how to read or add, but "facilitate learning" and conform to progressive education fads.
• Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I program to pour money into disadvantaged and minority students has proven to be a near-total failure, now to be used to enforce OBE.
• Enemies of reform Parents, Religion, and those who dare question progressive wducation
• Engaged / Meaningful Learning
• Essential Skills. We'll only teach the "essential" skills, even if only the top 20% pass our standards and it means 4th graders have to know about independent probability, frequency histograms, and comparing fractions like 3/16 and 1/3 in their heads. Yeah right.
• Environmentalism One of the pillars of political correctness to be instilled as outcome values along with multiculturalism and group-ism
• Experiment Critics charge that new untested reforms constitute dangerous experimentation where students will harmed if the results are bad.
• Exploration / Guessing Don't just teach the kids what they want to know, and drill them. Let them waste a week discovering on their own what you could have told them in 10 minutes.
• Fuzzy Math - Opposition name for standards math. Also used in "fuzzy standards" such as "students shall learn math" without specifying any skills or content.
• Gay / Lesbian / Bi / Transsexual Issues Another big PC issue to be integrated at all levels from preschool and up.
• Global Economy - threat used to force adoption of education reform even though USA is the world's most competitive and dominant economy
• Glossary See some more terms defined on the net
• Goals 2000 Federal initiative to improve educational standards, it supposedly started under Bush, but critics now say it's another Bill/Hillary Clinton Ira Magaziner / Marc Tucker monstrosity that driving every other nutty reform movement that threatens to destroy education as we know it, OBE, STW, whole language, fuzzy math, authentic assessment and the whole works.
• Grading: Portfolios Who needs grades, just keep a file of stuff that shows they "mastered" some work, teachers sometimes tamper with the work, or give them inflated evaluations.
• Graduation Standards Change HS diploma from did 12 years barely to a school to work "mastery cerficate" with college-level skills, C average, minimum test scores, senior thesis and presentation, community service etc. This is supposed to make kids smarter, but it also makes it a lot easier for anyone who isn't in the top 25% to simply flunk out.
• Grouping Heterogenous, Multi-age is usually a recipe disaster unless groups are tailored by ability (which is tracking!)
• Group Study Kids learn to work together in groups, but justifies wacky seating arrangements, and loses individual accountablility when the smart kids do all the work, and grades and given to groups.
• High Performance Organization Marc Tuckers' term for the "new organization" where every worker performs management functions in the 21st century, but Ford of Mexico does will with 9th grade level workers!
• Higher Order Thinking If you don't get high scores with basic skills, then maybe you should work on higher order thinking instead. If you can figure things out, then you don't actually have to learn or know anything.
• Higher Standards movementStandards not based on fact-based knowledge, promoting whole language and new new math, throwing out norm-based references for new standards with arbitrary cutoff "proficiency" points based on what people think kids can do, not what real kids can do.
• High Standards High standards has different meanings for each student, and it definitely doesn't mean high levels of basic skills, vocabulary or memorization of facts and formulas. That's why they don't want rankings, competition, comparisions, or norm-referenced tests.
• Homogeneous Grouping Goes with peer tutoring, keep advanced kids in normal kids to help them out.
• Integrated Thematic Instruction Teach about 1/4 normal amount of academic material around a theme, like Indians or the environment. Based on "Brain Compatible Thinking"
• Invented Math Now math encourages learners to invent their own methods of computatoin.
• Invented Spelling. Don't burden kids with having to correct minor stuff like spelling, they'll learn more if they come up with their own ways to spell. Endorsed by the National Research Council. Despised by parents everywhere.
• Indoctrination Teachers should free children of the "mental illness" of allegience to parents, government and god (Chester Pierce, Harvard Dept of Ed)
• Integrated Math. They say that the Asian nations add geometry to 8th grade, why don't we? But US teachers aren't used to this yet, and it may not fit with college entrance requirements which require distinct courses. Use $120 calculators to add 200 college level math topics on top of algebra and geometry. Like going from single shot to full-automatic, and hope the kids know how to solve a simple algebra problem by the time they're done. WASL expects 4th graders to be able to solve algebra story problems, yet many integrated math texts don't even teach how to do this in high school!
• Invented Spelling Don't even try to point out incorrect spelling, they will eventually get it right, in fact, encourage them to make up their own spelling. Teachers can now spot classes that are taught whole language when none of them can spell.
• Job ShadowSpend class time hanging around employees at a real job site instead of spending time learning academic skills.
• Learning Education and Teaching are Out. Learning is "in".
• Learning Styles There are "many" ways of learning, not "right" or "wrong". Yeah, right.
• Legislation Legislators are now outlawing practices such as Whole Language. Is this Totaltarianism, or the will of the people exercising control over education?
• Life-Long Learning (we won't teach you what you need to know now, you can always pick it up later)
• Looping Teacher stays with children in elementary school for more than one year
• Mastery, Mastery Learning One of the first names for Outcome Based Education
• Math Reform: New-New or Performance Based Math Math as social studies, green science
• Memorization In this new age of computers and the internet, no one will have to memorize anything (unless you're Asian...)
• Merit In affirmative action terms, grade points don't matter, test scores don't matter, but gender and ethnicity matters.
• Methods: Collaborative and Cooperative Discovery-based Engaged Problem-based Whole language learner-centered
• Mission :( : Multiculturalism, OBE, STW.
• Mixed Grade / Multiage / Split Grouping Mix or split two years together, so 1st graders get assigned sentence writing their 2nd week of homework. Who needs sequencing or expectations that all will master the same skills at the same age?
• Multiculturalism :( Spend time teaching children about important scientists of color and Mayan counting systems, and avoid stuff writtten by dead white males. Spend more time teaching blacks and Hispanics their culture and less about math and english.
• Multi-Age Grouping :( An essential lever to "continuous progress"
• Multiple Intelligences :( The response to low test scores is that students must be good at something else, instead of working towards high scores for everyone.
• Music Man In the musical, a scam artist comes to town, fabricates a crisis, and sells the town a boys band even though he can't read a note of music. Marc Tucker of the NCEE is the real music man promoting education deform.
• Natural Learning Style :( Studying hard and memorizing lots of facts isn't natural, so we want to discourage underperformers from emulating the nerds who get high grades and test scores "unnaturally".
• New New Math - Opposition name to reform math, refers to failed 60's attempt to overhaul math based on set theory.
• Neuroscience:( Brain research "proves" that child-centered and "natural" learning is best
• Outcomes - See Outcome Based Education
• Outcomes AccreditationOBE accreditation system
• Outcome-Based Education (AKA Performance Based Education)
All children will learn to high standards if we dumb down the tests, and emphasize process over content, or confuse feelings with knowledge, and pretend that everybody is going to perform as well as the college bound. Some say its a socialistic / marxist education model, it tends to bind together all of the education reforms.
• Problem Solving Who needs to know basics, problem solving is more important?
• Proficiency All students will learn, and everybody will be "proficient". No need for letter grades or test scores once everybody passes the bar, right?
• Real Life See "authentic", "application", "context", there is no meaning to the abstract 2+2, or pythagorean theorem unless it can be applied to something entirely different from math like the Russian revolution or saving the earth. Real life mathematics means spending 90% of class time on life and only 10% on basic math.
• ReconstitutionIf students don't study, fire the teachers.
• Research Shows...Anything said by a professor is called research, regardless of data. More recently, research-based means a program that actually proves that it worked better than the alternative, as in phonics works better than whole language.
• Peer Tutoring Why use teachers, let kids teach each other, and have the advanced students teach the slower kids instead of offering accelerated classes.
• Performance-Based Education A variant of Outcome Based Education, which gives very hard as opposed to very easy value-based tests, but still believes that "all will succeed". Tends to replace standards that everybody can pass with standards that flunk everybody, especially minorities.
• Portfolio (Grade Replacement) Don't assign grades that might hurt feelings, just keep track of work and suggestions, and keep it from going home to parents.
• Process How you learn is more important than what you learn, so you don't have to learn or know anything as long as you can punch out the answer on a calculator, or find it on the internet. The process of reform is more important than being able to prove better test scores.
• Progressive Education The underlying model for most new reforms. Critics say they are based on Marxism and Socialism in setting equality for all at a very low level.
• Restructuring Our education system is in crisis, and it's not ready for the high-tech 21st century, so lets' toss everything we know about an education system that works, and completely change it with every new fad we can think of.
• Retention Retention is bad (repeating grades), but grade promotion is bad too. In theory, by forcing all students to achieve, no students will fail.
• Rubric - Instructions on how to figure what score to give a student since there is no such thing as a correct or incorrect answer. General rubrics may not even tell the scorer what the correct answer is or might look like.
• Scheduling Four day weeks, 90 min periods, year-round etc.
• ScienceWe need practical applications, not details for top 5% PhD's (what's a practical application for nuclear physics??)
• SCANS Skills Elizabeth Dole headed the commision about "creating a workforce development system that properly prepares workers to compete in the international economy of the 21st century", includes value and attitude outcomes, now the 10 commandments of the reform movement.
• School To WorkChanges 4 years of high school to 2 years plus 2 years job training, changes 4 years of college to last 2 years of high school plus 2 in college, changes a bachelors degree to a vocational certificate according to Marc Tucker's blueprint.
• Science is just a social construct Who needs objective facts?
• Science Integrated Curriculums Whoopee This Stinks! Mix up all kinds of science instead of distinct "real" Biology, Physics or Chem.
• Site Council Elaborate scam to make it look like your school is making its own decisions, but really a fancy way to insure district policy is rubber stamped at the school level.
• Social Promotion New policy is to ban social promotion, but the alternative is retention, or pretend that everyone performs or can be made to perform at an acceptable level.
• Spiral Instead of sequentially studying things until they are mastered, hit them a little each year, and it might sink in "naturally".
• Standards Based Reform Movement Latest mutation of Outcome Based Education. Led by Marc Tucker's NCEE, a witches brew of OBE, STW, progressivism, constructivism, performance base assessment, and other reforms backed up by blue ribbon commision findings and the best PR money can buy. It covered up to half of children educated in US by mid 1990s.
• Student Learning The goal of school is not to have teachers teach, but to have students LEARN, and "increase student learning". Yeah right.
• Systemic Standards Based Reform Another fancy name for transforming all schools to radical outcome based education.
• Teacher Accreditation / Credentials Performance based Teacher training and credentials is OBE for teachers to insure that they conform to progressive outcome based teaching and learning standards.
• Team Teaching
• Textbooks Only approve textbooks with explore, not diretly instruct skills. Or better yet, don't even have a textbook. Make sure that no more than 10% of an Algebra text actually talks about algebra.
• Theories All the wacky theories that underly progressive education
• Tracking: Evil concept which holds that some students will go on to calculus and 4 year colleges, but others don't need to take as much math or english, and might just work after high school. End social promotion, end retention. Replace with "high standards for all" single track for all students, but let students take different amount of time to get there (confused yet?). America has the "worst tracking system in the industrialized world" according to Marc Tucker.
• VocationalWhy waste time learning literature and college level math instead of how to drill rivets or some other useful skill?
• What Students Should Know/Learn and Be Able to Do (TM) WSSKABATD Outcome Based Standards. Those who control the standards control the system.
• Whole Class Teaching Dreaded "Chalk and Talk" lecture to whole class method. Problem is, it appears to get better results than breaking everybody into tiny little independent groups.
• Reading: Whole Language We don't need any stinking spelling or grammar, or easy to read texts. Generally give blame for mass failure in California and in other places, now pushed in combination with phonetics.
• Work Skills "Real Students" need skills for entry level work, not useless stuff like college. Learn how to read McDonalds Technical manuals, not Shakespeare.
• World Class Standards Emulate nations like Japan and Germany that send 70% of their 11th and 12th graders tightening bolts in apprenticeships instead of academic learning for jobs nation or worldwide, and send only 1/2 as many of their children to college as the USA. Claim that a problem or skill is world class even though nothing like it exists in any other nation.
• Year-Round Schooling Another goofy scheduling variation, either to give kids more days of education, or economic reasons.