This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If you want to win a public policy debate, one of the most useful tricks is to bend the language to elicit the emotional response you want from your audience.
For example, over the weekend two different op-ed contributors to The Salt Lake Tribune wrote about education policy. Both are skilled policy wonks and political advocates.
So Royce van Tassell knows that if he wants the readers of the Tribune to support his cause — charter schools — he is well advised to call them, "public charter schools." That's fair, because charter schools are a variety of public schools. At least, they are paid for mostly with taxpayers money.
— Charter schools help Utah learn what works in education — M. Royce Van Tassell | Utah Association of Public Charter Schools | For The Salt Lake Tribune
[Full disclosure: My younger son attends a Salt Lake City charter — er, public charter — school.]
Meanwhile, Connor Boyack wants to discourage people from backing a proposed tax increase that would go to public schools. Except people like public schools, and even like paying for public schools (and public parks and public libraries and public safety). So he adopts the lingo often used by both anti-government conservatives and libertarians. He calls them "government schools." Because, I guess, the same people who like "public" things don't like the "government" that creates and maintains them.
A thorn by any other name.
— Higher taxes won't improve our education outcomes — Connor Boyack | The Libertas Institute | For The Salt Lake Tribune
" ... According to a recent Dan Jones poll, 30 percent of Utahns apparently feel that they pay too little in income taxes (and in Utah, all income taxes are allocated to government schools). Of course, nothing is stopping these individuals from voluntarily paying more of their own money to the government should they truly feel this way. And yet, shockingly, that's not happening. ..."
This last argument, by the way, is among the worst ever put forward by those discussing tax policy. Which doesn't stop it from being used a lot.
If you give more money to a government program when nobody else is, you are a chump. You are out of what may be a significant amount of money for you, but you, and the few who join you, cannot possibly cough up enough to make a difference at a community, state or federal level. That's why taxes are mandatory. Without the scale, they are pointless.
Also meanwhile, it might do us all good to set aside the semantic quibbling and look at some hard data.
— What America Can Learn About Smart Schools in Other Countries — Amanda Ripley | The Upshot | The New York Times
" ... Here's what the models show: Generally speaking, the smartest countries tend to be those that have acted to make teaching more prestigious and selective; directed more resources to their neediest children; enrolled most children in high-quality preschools; helped schools establish cultures of constant improvement; and applied rigorous, consistent standards across all classrooms.
"Of all those lessons learned, the United States has employed only one at scale: A majority of states recently adopted more consistent and challenging learning goals, known as the Common Core State Standards, for reading and math. ...
" ... Standards like the Common Core exist in almost every high-performing education nation, from Poland to South Korea. ..."