http://www.qando.net/ - False "self-esteem" at the state level

To soothe the bruised egos of educators and children in lackluster schools, Massachusetts officials are now pushing for kinder, gentler euphemisms for failure.

Instead of calling these schools "underperforming," the Board of Education is considering labeling them as "Commonwealth priority," to avoid poisoning teacher and student morale.

Schools in the direst straits, now known as "chronically underperforming," would get the more urgent but still vague label of "priority one."

It's not like those who attend those schools don't know they're awful. I'm not sure what calling a lousy school a "Commonwealth priority" vs. a failed school is going to do for the self-esteem of a kid who can't read and doesn't know what "commonwealth" or "priority" mean.

Leave it to a 17 year-old to be the most mature voice in this "debate":

Zachary Tsetsos, a senior at Oxford High School and the only student on the board, said he finds the debate frivolous.

"Why are we spending time on this?," said the 17-year-old. "I don't want to tiptoe around the issue. I'm not concerned about what title we give these schools. Let's work on fixing them."

Zacahary you've nailed it - but of course, if you leave "fixing them" up to the adults who're engaged in this "debate" can you guess how little is going to happen in that regard? Most likely their first priority would be to euphemize the term "fixing them".

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I think all this outside linking is starting to take its toll in bots.

Anyhow i read about this earlier and its quite ridculous to spend so much time of figururing out the best way to tell people they suck. Pretty soon they will give up and decide that they are not sucking, just being who they are, and thus its no longer their fault so the government should take care of these below average people, we will just call them "Epsilons"

Written By: josh b
URL: http://

Instead of calling these schools "underperforming," the Board of Education is considering labeling them as "Commonwealth priority," to avoid poisoning teacher and student morale.

In other news, Massuchesets has new designations for the finishers in races. From now on, the last-place finisher in the first heat will be said to have finished before all of the contestants in the second heat.

Written By: Steverino
URL: http://

As I posted elsewhere ..

I have some friends that used to work for the Philadelphia public school system as teachers in a West Philly school.

They complained that there weren’t enough books to go around for all the students, that they didn’t have a copying machine to make up for the missing books and didn’t even have enough paper to put into a copying machine if they had one.

All the while the members of the board of education went to meetings in chaufeured limousines.

A new label won’t help this problem.

Written By: Neo
URL: http://

I remember once, after some level of research, discovering that the New York City had more school administrators (not teachers) than the entire country of France. The state of New York had more school administrators than all of the European members of NATO (Western Europe) at the time. This was some 20 years ago and I wonder if this is still true - I have no cause to doubt it.

Written By: SShiell
URL: http://

I like this one:

"For our teachers, it’s a blow," said Wilfredo Laboy, Lawrence superintendent. "It demoralizes staff completely."

Failure is demoralizing. That is life. It is tough sometimes. If you don’t want to be labeled as a failure then you have to do better than what got you that label to begin with. Putting a smiley face on it accomplishes nothing.

Written By: tkc
URL: http://

Eh, when an organization isn’t managing the basics of its mission, there’s a catastrophic failure of leadership.

If you’re still talking to that leadership, you’re part of that catastrophic failure.

Written By: ben
URL: http://

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