Avoiding Misunderstanding

Language matters.

Choosing the words with which we describe our students, their parents, and their communities presents an opportunity to actively promote the Core Value of “Respecting All Stakeholders.” Specifically, try to avoid inadvertently defining stakeholders with negative descriptors.

As a rule of thumb, consider how a student, parent, or community member would feel if they were to read your characterization of them. The following examples provide further guidance in what can often be a nuanced area of communications.

Students Ethnicity Socio-Economic Status Student Subgroups Communities Green Dot Public Schools Unions

Students

Green Dot respects students and genuinely believes that all have the innate potential for success in college, career, and life.

Do:
We refer to them as “students” or, less commonly, “children”, depending on the context.

Don’t: They should not be referred to as the overly-familiar “kids” or the too-impersonal “scholars” or “youth.”

Ethnicity

Unless directly addressing issues of social justice or racial inequity, the use of ethnic, racial, or cultural descriptors should be carefully considered. Be especially mindful of inadvertently suggesting that a problem exists because of a stakeholder’s ethnicity.

Do: Use “Our school experiences high levels of truancy at this time.” And elsewhere, “The students we serve are mostly—65%– African American.” Alternatively, consider if either fact is relevant to the argument and, if so, separate them to void suggesting a correlation.

Don’t: The sentence, “The student body is 65% African American and experiences high levels of truancy,” may be factually accurate but wrongly suggests that students are truant because they’re African American.

Socio-Economic Status

Unless directly addressing issues of social justice or inequity of access and opportunity, avoid using socio-economic descriptors. Even in those instances when it is appropriate to discuss an individual’s socio-economic status, be respectful and avoid adjectives that suggest individuals are defined by their relative wealth: “poor”, “needy”, or “most wanting.” Instead, focus on the effects of low wages or under-employment on a family or a community. Be especially careful of inadvertently making causal relationships between socio-economic status and a perceived negative behavior.

Don’t: The sentence “Green Dot operates in socio-economically disadvantaged communities with high instances of violent crime,” may be factually accurate but could be interpreted as suggesting that those living in low-income communities are naturally more inclined to criminal behavior.

Do: “Green Dot operates in socio-economically disadvantaged communities that have been heavily impacted by high rates of violent crime.”

Student Subgroups

Green Dot students are individuals, not data points, and should not be described in terms of statistical categories. Outside of charts and graphs and the specific context of data analysis, avoid reducing students to acronyms such as SpEd, AA, ELL, FRL, or SED. Consider a Student First approach.

Don’t: “FRL students…”. We do not serve “Free and Reduced Lunch students;” we do not serve “SpEd students”

Do: but we do serve “students eligible for Free or Reduced Price Lunches” or “students receiving special educational support due to disability or special needs.”

Communities

Green Dot actively seeks to open schools in those communities that can most benefit from our model. As a result, the residents in our communities typically earn significantly less than the national average and are exposed to higher levels of violent crime and trauma.

These characteristics, however, do not define the community and we should avoid describing people’s neighborhoods—the places they call home—in solely negative terms. Doing so promotes the idea that our communities are something to escape from, or worse, something that Green Dot aims to save people from.

When discussing our communities, we should use language that highlights the underlying causes of a problem, not the symptoms, such as “historically neglected”, “under-served and under-resourced”, or “socio-economically disadvantaged”.

Do: Describe the neighborhoods truthfully, for example, “Students live in under-resourced communities that have been negatively impacted by high crime rates.”

Don’t: The sentence, “Students live in poor communities where violence and abuse are rife,” both labels our communities as ‘bad’ and blames residents for the problem.

Green Dot Public Schools

Unions

Green Dot has embraced meaningful collaboration with its teachers since its founding and is proud to be a pioneer in labor relations within the charter movement. As we move into regions with very different labor environments, we remain committed to including teachers in our decision-making process and prioritizing their needs in the workplace. As such, the voices of teachers are respected regardless of formal union representation.

Where Green Dot teachers have joined a union, it is important to respect that the union is independent of Green Dot. In California, for example, teachers are represented by Asociación de Maestros Unidos (AMU) and our classified personnel by the Ánimo Classified Employees Association (ACEA). Both are affiliates of the California Teachers Association (CTA) and the National Education Association (NEA). They should never be inaccurately described as “Green Dot’s union” or other terms that inadvertently suggest that power lies in management and not members.

Example: The sentence “AMU, Green Dot’s teachers’ union, approved the adoption of a new evaluation system last year,” should be replaced with, “AMU, an affiliate of CTA and NEA that represents Green Dot teachers, approved the adoption of a new evaluation system last year.”