Each generation has its own edu-speak, those coined words used by educational professionals that are spoken so often and in varying contexts that they soon have no meaning. These are not the acronyms that abound in school conversations. We have long abused parents and the public with IEPs, RtI, and BIPs; educators love their acronyms. I point to the whole words, single stand-alone words, that are used to convey a universal understanding of a concept or value that once stated assumes an end to the conversation. The word transparency has become one of these and it is meh! We say “Our decision-making processes will be transparent to the public” as if “transparency” is the end all. The word is uninformative, uninspiring, unexceptional, and too often is a slight of hand or mouth. “If I say we are transparent, we are transparent.” Meh and more meh!
I read of a school board who touts transparency yet when the administration removed two dozen book titles from the school libraries, no board member could provide a rationale other than “we support the administration”. End of conversation. They lived their version of transparency.
Another school board claims transparency yet when the administration announces a multi-million-dollar post-pandemic shortfall coming in the next several years’ school budgets, there are no explanations of the decisions that led to gross expenditures over revenue in the recent past. The task force delegated to create a solution to the huge shortfall is hand-picked and, by design, there will be little voice for the community who sit in school board meeting audiences governed by a very restrictive public participation policy. Transparency up to a point but no further. One has to appreciate the complicity of a person who says, “It is transparent to me”.
I know a school administration that grieves over the drop of student achievement scores in the post-pandemic yet will not make achievement data available to the parents beyond the statewide school report card. School leaders declare they are being transparent about the continued school ratings of “This School Does Not Meet Expectations” yet there is no accountability for low achievement year after year in the same grade level and classrooms. It is a personnel supervision problem more than a student achievement problem. This is an example of being transparent about what does not matter and not transparent about what does.
Stop using the word transparency. Another way to explain the need for changing this word is that people today say transparent, but they mean translucent. The clarity of truth and facts has given way to lies and non-facts that are spoken so openly and freely that no listener can take the words of a person in authority at face value. We have come to expect if not accept cloudy translucency. This is wrong.
Start using the word integrity, as in “We make all decisions with the integrity our students, parents, and community deserve”. Integrity, meaning the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, is not meh. Integrity describes the direct, honest, data-based, straight-forward answer that a person who asks an honest question deserves. While there may be a shading in information that claims transparency, a response to a question or problem either is made with integrity, or it is not.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/integrity
I know a superintendent who told his faculty and staff first and then his parents and community, “… regarding the teaching of reading, we have been doing it wrong. For the past 30 years we have taught children about reading but not how to read. We did not use a phonics-based, literacy creating instructional program. Instead, we asked each child to look at the pictures or listen to an adult read and asked children to memorize words hoping that these three strategies would cause a child to become a reader. And we did this year after year. Today, we stop that nonsense and are beginning to teach each child how to read. I invite you to come to school and watch us make these changes”.
Transparent, yes. But more to the point, his declaration has integrity. Communicating and acting with integrity is easier and less stressful than the work needed to obfuscate and maintain an obfuscation.
We find examples in our daily communications about children and school that are simple and factual and relatable. As listeners and observers, we must thank and applaud clear and uncompromised communication and actions. And we must be more stalwart in calling out “Nonsense” and “Bull Roar” when we are treated to an episode of translucency. At the end of the day, it is better to deal with bad news than with a lie.