School officials in Massachusetts want to redefine failure. Literally. “To soothe the bruised egos of educators and children in lackluster schools, Massachusetts officials are now pushing for kinder, gentler euphemisms for failure,” the Boston Globe reports. “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.’”
Leave it to the lone student representative on the board to speak truth to power. “Why are we spending time on this?,” said Zachary Tsetsos, a 17-year old senior at Oxford High School, who said he finds the debate frivolous. “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.”
In the South Bronx community where I taught, I used to say that the schools came in three flavors: bad, worse and holy #$@!. I don’t suppose those would be useful distinctions. But they might be more accurate and convey a more appropriate sense of urgency. If it’s not a school to which you’d send your child, they only term that obtains is unacceptable.
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I find “priority schools” a bit hurtful, personally. It sounds neutral at first, until you realize it’s a loaded term with a hierarchy looming behind it. I would go for “deficiency-rich schools.” After all, the greater the deficiency, the greater the potential improvement.