At many schools, 6-year-olds don't compare books anymore — they make "text-to-text connections." Misbehaving students face not detention but the "alternative-instruction room," or "reinforcement room," or "reflection room." Children who once read now practice "SSR," or "sustained-silent reading." And in Maryland, high-schoolers write "extended constructed responses" — the essay, in a simpler time. Jargon has been a mainstay of bureaucracy for centuries, satirized in the works of Jonathan Swift and George Orwell. Education is particularly fertile ground: At school-board meetings, stakeholders gather to align curriculum to content standards; in class, teachers vertically articulate and differentiate instruction and give authentic, outcome-based...
