What’s in an acronym?

While education experts undoubtedly share credit with society at large for the declining quality of public school programs and graduates, we can’t overlook their creativity in devising clever acronyms, the pronounceable initials of education marvels that have long plagued our schools in the name of saving them. From NCLB (No Child Left Behind), often pronounced “nickel bee,” to NECAP (New England Common Assessment Program), rendered “knee cap,” experts have excelled at creating memorable names for forgettable initiatives.

Some tortured acronyms pretend to mean something. Consider the TIME Collaborative (Time for Innovation Matters in Education), a cutesy sequence of initials selected despite the fact that the words themselves in that order fail to convey a coherent, useful idea.

TIME’s “expanded learning time models” promise to “boost student achievement” by offering “broader educational opportunities.” Participating schools “agree to add 300 hours of instruction and enrichment” to their standard school days. In most schools, that averages out to an hour and a half of “extra time” per day.

While regular people might expect that means an extra 90 minutes of math or reading, TIME programs are weighted toward “enrichment based subjects.” These “activities” feature “personalized learning technologies,” which translates into English as “playing on computers,” as well as “fitness and healthy living,” which means recess and snacks, and academic heavyweights like “scrapbooking.”

Naturally, advocates prefer that students “get to choose which classes they want to take.” Boosters croon that this adds “voice and choice,” which not only promises unspecified “good things,” but also rhymes.

According to proponents, all this “more and better learning time” will “improve student achievement and close the opportunity gap in America.” Of course, eliminating the chronic misbehavior that plagues American classrooms and the social services interruptions that already truncate the academic day would doubtless do more to improve achievement, and also make school more pleasant for most children.

Unfortunately, there’s no acronym for that.

In a related development, a “new study” has discovered that students who attend school regularly tend to do better academically than students who are chronically absent. That’s right. The more you’re in school, the better your grades tend to be.

Tactics to improve student attendance include “mentoring,” an advisory and wake-up service formerly provided by parents. A call home to absentees can “show students school leaders were paying attention,” as in, “Hello. We know you’re not here today, and you know there’s nothing we can do about it.” Free gift cards to “places like Starbucks” can serve as “incentives for improved attendance.” Yes, in addition to providing a free public education, taxpayers will now be footing the bill for overpriced, burnt lattes.

Finally, in a demonstration that he knows as much about public speaking as he does about education, Arne Duncan, our former Australian professional basketball player turned secretary of education, recently blamed opposition to the increasingly beleaguered Common Core on “white, suburban moms” who “all of a sudden” discover “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were.”

You have to wonder if he thinks black, Hispanic and Asian suburban moms feel differently from their white neighbors, or if he meant to blame those moms, too. It’s also worth noting that if he’d made the same statement about black, urban moms, he would’ve instantly been branded a racist.

The most troubling aspect of his remark is his persistent blindness to the Common Core’s real flaws — its often age-inappropriate standards; its curricular biases dictated by the small cadre of non-teacher experts who wrote it; its bloated, flawed assessment regimen, its roots in corporate agendas and the public funds it’s funneling to corporate coffers; and its unabashed assault on local school control.

In short, having foisted this elaborate national blueprint for schools on parents and taxpayers, without their participation or consent, he’s faced with the fact that the more those parents and taxpayers find out about the Common Core, the more we don’t like it.

We shouldn’t.

Peter Berger teaches English at Weathersfield School. Poor Elijah would be pleased to answer letters addressed to him in care of the editor.