Disclaimer
This dictionary is not a manual, though many in government may mistake it for one. Nothing here is legal advice, educational policy, or professional guidance, that is unless you are the kind of leader who thinks slogans count as solutions, in which case you’ve been using worse sources already.
The Broken Dictionary™
by Jeff A Pierson
School governance is where the principle of local control goes to die quietly. Boards convene, superintendents perform, parents vent to stoic faces, and the system trudges on exactly as before. What was once the noble duty of shaping young minds has been reduced to compliance paperwork, staged consensus, and glossy pamphlets about “vision.”
This dictionary does not exist to improve the process. It exists to expose it. Every definition here is a cracked mirror held up to the slogans, acronyms, and rituals that pass for leadership in modern education. You will not find fairness or reform in these pages, only the satire of words that have been broken until they mean their opposite.
If you are a parent, you will recognize the hollow phrases you have been fed at open houses, budget hearings, and listening sessions. If you are a trustee, you may hear your own voice reflected back at you, and that sting you feel is called accountability, the real kind. And if you are a superintendent, you will probably skim this introduction and it will remind you to send out another email about how you “value transparency.”
Accountability (Broken Definition):
Apologies without resignations, reports without reform.
Commentary: Leaders write their own hall passes and call it justice. Accountability today is a performance ritual: a press release, a somber tone, and a return to business as usual. The guilty escape consequence by redefining failure as “learning,” while citizens are told to admire the bravery of leaders who survived their own incompetence.
Best Practices (Broken Definition):
Copying someone else’s idea, stripping it of context, and declaring it sacred.
Commentary: The phrase kills debate and canonizes mediocrity. “Best practices” are borrowed mantras used as shields against scrutiny, proof that innovation has been outsourced to someone else’s mistakes. It is not a path forward but a shortcut to conformity.
Board Authority (Broken Definition):
A ceremonial gavel with no nails. Real authority is handed down from the state, while the board pretends its votes still matter.
Commentary: Trustees cosplay as rulers, but their real job is to ratify decisions already written by administrators and lawyers. The gavel makes noise, but the hammer never strikes. Local control is pantomimed governance — a stage play where the script is state law and the actors are unpaid volunteers.
Board Minutes (Broken Definition):
The official record of everything that didn’t happen.
Commentary: Stripped of context, sanitized of debate, and polished to a dull gloss, minutes transform messy arguments into tidy checkmarks. They prove only that a meeting occurred, never what truly transpired. In practice, they are the institutional eraser of history.
Budget Hearing (Broken Definition):
The annual ritual where numbers are recited in monotone until parents stop listening.
Commentary: Called a “hearing,” but designed so nothing is actually heard. Questions are brushed aside, jargon flows like molasses, and the audience is lulled into fiscal hypnosis. It is less oversight than sedation — democracy by anesthesia.
Community Input (Broken Definition):
An open mic where parents speak, officials nod, and nothing changes.
Commentary: The illusion of democracy: citizens vent, officials endure, and policy marches on untouched. Input is treated as steam release, not decision-making. In truth, it’s therapy for parents and theater for leaders.
Community Partnership (Broken Definition):
The school district’s way of borrowing your money and your silence.
Commentary: A handshake for the cameras, a backroom deal in practice. “Partnership” often means taxpayers provide resources while leaders claim the credit. It’s less cooperation than coerced compliance dressed up as community spirit.
Compliance (Broken Definition):
The real mission of governance: obey regulations, file paperwork, and prove loyalty to the state. Students come later.
Commentary: Bureaucracy survives; children adapt — or don’t. Compliance consumes leaders’ energy while outcomes wither. A compliant district is one that passes inspections, even if it fails its students.
Consensus (Broken Definition):
The theater of agreement, where trustees nod along to what the superintendent already decided.
Commentary: The public sees smiles and unity, but the real debate happened behind closed doors or never at all. Consensus here is not truth discovered but dissent suppressed. It is a velvet muzzle.
Crisis Management (Broken Definition):
Spin, delay, and hope the news cycle moves on.
Commentary: The formula is simple: deny, deflect, distract. Leaders never solve a crisis they just wait for public memory to fade. Survival, not resolution, is the only measurable outcome.
Department of Education (Broken Definition):
The mothership of mandates, where one-size-fits-all policies are forged and shipped down the chain.
Commentary: The DOE talks about “supporting schools” but operates like a command tower. It measures success in compliance reports, not student outcomes. Its true product is red tape; binding districts, muzzling boards, and turning classrooms into test labs for national experiments.
Director of Transportation (Broken Definition):
The district’s bus czar, armed with spreadsheets, excuses, and a GPS that never seems to work.
Commentary: Once responsible for simply getting kids to school safely, the role has ballooned into a bureaucratic fiefdom. Failures are blamed on software, parents, or “unexpected challenges,” while accountability is left idling in the yard. The fleet may collapse, but the director’s job never stalls.
Efficiency (Broken Definition):
The magic word used to cut corners, trim services, and justify failure as optimization.
Commentary: In district hands, efficiency rarely means saving money or improving outcomes. It means fewer buses, larger class sizes, and more stress on fewer staff. What looks lean on a spreadsheet looks like chaos in real life.
Equity (Broken Definition):
The incantation that justifies central control.
Commentary: A word that sounds like fairness but functions like a warrant for uniformity. Equity erases parental authority, reduces local discretion, and installs ideology as law. Its promise of justice is delivered as sameness and compliance.
Equity Audit (Broken Definition):
A consultant’s report that says what the state wanted to hear all along.
Commentary: The conclusion is written before the invoice is paid. Equity audits are purchased to validate ideology, not investigate truth. They are pay-to-play sermons masquerading as research.
Esports (Broken Definition):
The district’s newest “athletic program,” where video games are branded as character-building competition.
Commentary: Sold as innovation and opportunity, esports often function as a distraction from academic collapse. Districts chase grants and headlines, while taxpayers buy gaming chairs instead of working HVAC. A digital pastime is repackaged as progress while literacy scores sink.
Expertise (Broken Definition):
Credentials used as a shield against questions from the people who actually live with the consequences.
Commentary: Expertise today means never having to answer for failure. It is the armor of bureaucrats: degrees and jargon wielded against the lived reality of parents and students. The more an expert insists on authority, the less they admit to results.
Federal Funding (Broken Definition):
The leash disguised as a gift. Take the money, lose the freedom.
Commentary: Federal dollars come wrapped in rules, conditions, and bureaucratic strings. Once districts swallow the hook, the line and sinker follow. What begins as aid ends as servitude.
Governance (Broken Definition):
The polite word for management by people you didn’t elect and can’t remove.
Commentary: The state governs, the board convenes, and the community pays. Governance is authority without accountability, a managerial aristocracy that survives elections untouched. Parents may vote, but power is permanently outsourced.
Innovation (Broken Definition):
Breaking what worked in the name of improvement.
Commentary: Change is celebrated, collapse ignored. Innovation in schools often means dismantling functional systems for buzzword-driven experiments. When failure follows, it is rebranded as “lessons learned.”
Levy (Broken Definition):
The “voluntary” tax that must be passed or children will be held hostage.
Commentary: Levies are framed as love offerings to students, but the real choice given to parents is obedience or guilt. When voters say no, districts return with a bigger smile and the same demand. It is less democracy than ransom.
Listening Session (Broken Definition):
The staged event where officials nod gravely while ignoring every word.
Commentary: Performance art disguised as democracy. The script is written, the outcome fixed, and the audience dismissed. Listening sessions are therapy for parents and cover for leaders.
Local Control (Broken Definition):
A myth told at campaign time. Every decision is pre-approved by the state and bound by federal strings.
Commentary: The slogan is “local,” the reality is remote. Boards campaign on control they do not possess, then govern on behalf of agencies they cannot defy. Local control survives only in speeches, never in practice.
Open House (Broken Definition):
A self-congratulatory tour where parents admire bulletin boards while real decisions stay hidden.
Commentary: Families are welcomed with cookies, posters, and smiles, but the event is more marketing than substance. Policies, budgets, and failures are nowhere on display. Open houses showcase the stage set, not the play.
Open Meeting (Broken Definition):
A legally required performance where decisions already made in private are read aloud for show.
Commentary: The agenda is scripted, the votes unanimous, and public comment politely ignored. Open meetings are pageants of compliance, sunshine laws with blackout curtains. They protect the appearance of transparency while ensuring nothing of substance is revealed.
Parental Engagement (Broken Definition):
A binder of signatures proving you were present, not that you were heard.
Commentary: Participation without influence, democracy without teeth. Parents are invited to clap, sign in, and nod along, but never to redirect the course. Engagement here is decoration, not decision.
Policy (Broken Definition):
A copy-and-paste document imported from another district, stamped with your board’s name, and declared “local.”
Commentary: Governance by Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V. Policies arrive prewritten, preapproved, and preloaded with legalese. Boards adopt them like hand-me-down uniforms — never tailored, always borrowed.
Professional Development (Broken Definition):
A taxpayer-funded retreat where staff are trained to obey the next acronym handed down from the state.
Commentary: Teachers return with new buzzwords, not better tools. PD is less development than indoctrination, a vacation in jargon that leaves classrooms unchanged. Real skill is the last thing produced.
Progress (Broken Definition):
The illusion that compliance equals improvement.
Commentary: Progress is measured by paperwork, not outcomes. More forms, more binders, more failures buried. Change for its own sake is baptized as reform, even when students regress.
Resilience (Broken Definition):
The expectation that parents and students will keep enduring abuse without demanding reform.
Commentary: Survival is praised so leaders can avoid change. Families are congratulated for patience instead of served with solutions. Resilience becomes an alibi for negligence.
Safety (Broken Definition):
The trump card that trumps liberty.
Commentary: Every restriction is justified in the name of safety, even when safety decreases. The word functions as a universal veto: whatever you oppose must be unsafe, and whatever they impose must be protective. Reality is irrelevant.
School Bond (Broken Definition):
Debt wrapped in the language of destiny.
Commentary: Bonds are sold as “investments in the future,” but in practice they shackle taxpayers with long-term bills for short-term glory projects. The building may crumble before the debt is paid, but the ribbon-cutting photo lasts forever.
School Counselor (Broken Definition):
The district’s in-house therapist, career coach, and compliance officer rolled into one.
Commentary: Counselors were once guides for students navigating academics and life choices. Now they often serve as soft enforcers of district ideology — redirecting parental concerns, distributing talking points, and nudging children toward “approved” identities. They counsel less with wisdom than with worksheets.
Stakeholder (Broken Definition):
Anyone except the people footing the bill.
Commentary: Stakeholders are handpicked cheerleaders, not the community at large. The word is camouflage for exclusion: those most affected are almost always absent.
State Oversight (Broken Definition):
The art of demanding compliance while disclaiming responsibility for results.
Commentary: The state says, “Follow the rules.” When things collapse, it says, “Not our fault.” Oversight ensures obedience but never ownership.
Strategic Plan (Broken Definition):
A glossy pamphlet with photos of children and goals no one intends to meet.
Commentary: The shelf life is one election cycle, the cost is permanent. Strategic plans are propaganda booklets that age like milk — stale before the ink dries, irrelevant before the goals expire.
Superintendent (Broken Definition):
The ventriloquist who makes the board’s lips move.
Commentary: A CEO without shareholders, wielding power without market consequence. Superintendents exercise authority without risk, celebrated for success and excused for failure. The board exists to echo their voice.
Task Force (Broken Definition):
A committee designed to bury responsibility in subcommittees.
Commentary: Action is delayed until memory fades. By the time the task force reports back, the crisis has either passed or been forgotten. Accountability dies by committee.
Transparency (Broken Definition):
The frosted glass of governance. Records exist, but you’ll never get them without a lawyer and a bill.
Commentary: Transparency is the art of hiding in plain sight. Documents are redacted, fees inflated, and timelines dragged until the public gives up. It is a window dressed in blackout curtains.
Unity (Broken Definition):
Not citizens working together, but trustees agreeing to stay quiet for the sake of appearances.
Commentary: Dissent is the sin, obedience the sacrament. Unity in governance is silence rebranded as harmony. The louder the call for unity, the more corruption it conceals.
Vision Statement (Broken Definition):
A string of noble words untethered from results.
Commentary: Vision is the excuse for blindness. It is leadership’s way of claiming credit for dreams that never leave the brochure. The more poetic the vision, the less it connects to reality.
The Broken Dictionary™ is a trademark of Jeff A. Pierson. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use of the name, mark, or associated works is prohibited.