branding irony: a description or name chosen for its public relations value that is the opposite of what is actually the case with the thing named, as No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Value Added Learning
era (n): 1. a brief period of time. a. in education, the time between the introduction of a great new reform like value-added learning and the point when it is cast off as unworkable. 2. (obsolete) any long period of time seen in light of a unifying factor
eternity (n.): in a school’s faculty room, the period before everything works as well and looks as nice as it does in the administrative offices.
failure (n): a key to success. The idea of building grit and building self-control … you get … through failure, and in most highly academic environments in the United States, no one fails anything.—Dominic Randolph, Headmaster, Riverdale Country School, New York. Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential—J. K. Rowling in her commencement address at Harvard.
profit (n): a tangible or intangible gain. non-profit education: teaching for the benefit of students. for-profit education: the simulation of teaching for the benefit of investors.