Eduspeak can hinder your district’s work. 

Unfortunately, the negative effects of jargon go beyond disengagement or disinterest. In some circumstances, eduspeak can actually spur opposition to important district initiatives. 

In 2021, the education policy think tank Thomas B. Fordham Institute released a study on what K-12 parents think about social-emotional learning, or SEL. The research dives into the factors that affect whether parents support SEL—from their own political, religious or racial backgrounds to the terminology schools use to describe SEL programming. The findings? Parents generally support SEL—they just don’t like the term “social-emotional learning” itself. 

In the Fordham study, parents were asked whether schools should teach students nine SEL-related skills, such as “setting goals and working toward achieving them” and “empathizing with the feelings of others.” Parents showed overwhelming support for every single one of these skills; for each, more than 80% of participants said schools should teach them. 

But here’s where it gets especially interesting: Parents were then given a list of school programs related to “aspects of child development beyond academic skills” and asked which ones they would most and least want their child enrolled in. Among the options on this list—ranging from “emotional intelligence” to “21st century skills”—“social-emotional learning” was the second-least popular. By far the most popular was “life skills.” 

“So the substance of SEL is very popular with parents,” says Dr. Adam Tyner, Fordham’s national research director. “But the term ‘social-emotional learning’ itself is much less popular than the substance behind it. It just doesn’t particularly resonate with parents.” 

And for some parents, social-emotional learning has become a flashpoint akin to “critical race theory.” Conservative news outlets like The National Review, for example, have decried SEL as a vehicle for indoctrination. But despite conservative opposition to programs branded as “SEL,” Fordham’s research revealed that a majority of conservative-leaning parents do support schools teaching those nine SEL-related skills. They’re just more averse to the term “social-emotional learning” than left-leaning parents are. It stands to reason that schools could avoid at least some opposition to SEL work simply by calling it something different—something more straightforward and less jargony. 

Whether we like it or not, certain terms elicit knee-jerk reactions from parents—sometimes viscerally negative ones—while the same concepts explained in simple language don’t have the same effect. Your schools are facing enough opposition as it is; don’t let eduspeak contribute to the problem.

Eduspeak can intimidate and exclude families.

Perhaps the most pernicious effect of educational jargon is that it makes families feel inadequate or unwelcome in your schools. This isn’t all that surprising when you consider the psychological reasons why we use jargon in the first place. A 2023 study by researchers at Columbia Business School found that we often use jargon as a status signifier—a way to prove to our peers that we’re smart and capable. 

But unfortunately, when uninitiated audiences encounter technical jargon, an equal and opposite effect occurs; while the speaker feels smarter, the listener feels dumber. In Shulman’s study, participants who read the jargon-heavy paragraphs didn’t just express less interest in science. They were also less likely to think of themselves as good at science or qualified to talk about scientific topics.

As a parent of two elementary schoolers, Shulman has encountered this phenomenon firsthand. When we spoke, she described her experience attending an info night on the science of reading at her child’s school. “When I left there, I certainly felt like my school district was really good, and I was very proud that my kids were there,” she says. “But I also felt kind of unqualified to be doing assistance at home. I was falling into all the traps I study without realizing it.” 

By its very nature, jargon excludes those who are “outside” an in-group. In the case of eduspeak, anyone who isn’t an educator is an outsider. “Jargon is a signal that tells you whether or not you are a part of the group making decisions. It’s a linguistic marker,” Shulman explains. “And if you perceive yourself as being on the outside, you might take a back seat in decisions that impact you.” 

The eduspeak problem can be solved.

It’s clear that left unchecked, constant use of educational jargon produces a lot of undesirable outcomes. So what can you do?

Run your language by someone less fluent in eduspeak.

It’s true that when used outside education circles, eduspeak tends to exclude the uninitiated—but that’s rarely intentional. Oftentimes, we just don’t realize that not everyone is fluent in eduspeak. In his book Magic Words, researcher Dr. Jonah Berger calls this “the curse of knowledge.” “Once people know about something,” he writes, “it can be difficult for them to remember what it’s like not to know that much.” 

“To a certain extent, we do get blind to our own language,” says Shulman. “Understanding your audience is critically important—and trying to be cognizant of what words you’re using.” She recommends running your language by people who can offer an outside perspective. “That could mean teachers talking to friends or their partners about word choice—like, ‘How weird is the language I’m using?’”

If your district has a communications professional on staff, they might be the perfect person to help. In our 2024 research study “A Seat at the Table,” we learned that 42% of school communicators worked in public relations or marketing outside of schools prior to their current roles. About a quarter had previously worked as reporters or journalists. As a relative “outsider” to the world of eduspeak, a comms pro with a non-education background might be able to help you translate your messaging to appeal to a broader audience.

If you can’t simplify, call out jargon and define it. 

Hopefully by now it’s clear that if you can avoid eduspeak in your communication with families, you should. But it isn’t always that easy. “It’s complicated because sometimes there’s no plainspoken word for that term,” says Tyner. “I have a Ph.D. in political science, and if you want to talk about the median voter theorem, you can’t really describe that in an obviously intuitive way—because there’s not a concept for that in everyday speech.” Shulman agrees. “The answer isn’t always that you can’t use jargon,” she says. “Sometimes you just need it, and you can’t really replace it with anything obvious.” 

So if you can’t avoid using jargon, Shulman recommends clearly defining it—in real time, as you’re using it. For example, if you need to include a jargony term in a districtwide email, explain what it means in parentheses immediately after you use it. If you’re speaking, be up-front about the fact that you’re about to introduce some unfamiliar terms and define them as you go along. 

“That’s going to make people feel like they’re being let into the district’s terminology,” Shulman says. “By using these very explicit communication instructions, you’re really inviting them into the space.” 

Don’t rely on a handout that defines terms or a link to an explanatory page; your audience is unlikely to use them. (Remember the mouse-over definitions in Shulman’s study.) You need to include the definitions or explanations in the main body of your message—whether it’s written or verbal.

Make it less intimidating.

If eduspeak makes people feel intimidated, how can you defang it? At Educational Service District 112 in Washington, the answer was not only to explain it, but to joke about it.

Even a few years into her career as a school communicator, Senior Graphic Designer and Content Strategist Melissa Burt found herself struggling to keep up with educational jargon. “I remember going to my daughter’s kindergarten curriculum night feeling this rising sense of panic, thinking, I have no idea what they’re talking about—and this is only kindergarten,” she says. Burt and the rest of the ESD’s comms team wanted to provide families with a resource for understanding all that jargon—but they also wanted to make it fun (and funny). 

In the resulting video series “Eduspeakin’ to Me?!”, Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Mike Nerland acts as the audience’s guide to educational jargon. “Mike had been superintendent at a well-known local school district, and he had the public speaking experience and charisma we needed—plus the willingness to do whatever we asked him to do,” Burt laughs. 

And that willingness was key—because these videos get very silly. In one, Nerland acts as a noir detective, investigating what the acronym “DIBELS” stands for. (It’s Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills, by the way.) In another, he explains “SBAC”—the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium—through rap. The goofiness is by design; the videos poke fun at eduspeak itself and how inscrutable it can be. 

“I love comedy. I just think it’s more engaging,” says Burt. “It makes it more likely for people to want to watch and share.” She’s right: These videos take a potentially boring subject and make it interesting. But they also take intimidating terms and make them—and by extension, the ESD and its schools—more approachable.

Of course, this kind of tactic is just one tool in your communication arsenal. This strategy can help familiarize your community with important terms and even make them less intimidating—but you still need to define those terms in context when you have to use them.

There’s virtually nothing more important than keeping parents engaged with their child’s education. But as we’ve seen, incessant eduspeak can make your families feel unwelcome, disinterested or even antagonistic toward your schools. 

So make sure you’re cutting out eduspeak when you can—and when you can’t, make sure you’re inviting parents in by defining your terminology. The more approachable you can be, the better. The key is not only to communicate clearly, but to do so in a way that shows parents they belong in your district. Families can and should be your district’s biggest advocates—don’t let the language you’re using keep them from joining the conversation.