Snarky Names for Charter Schools

Humor can be a pretty powerful weapon in politics — just watch the trailer for the MPI’s (who are hiring interns, by the way) “Hammer and Tickle.” The film details humor’s role in combating Communism and features jokes and stories from both internal dissenters and external leaders. Ronald Reagan famously used humor to steer the debate on US/USSR relations to great effect.

One side is currently better than the other in terms of utilizing humor to steer the debate. Not everyone finds phrases like “teabagger” and “Koch-head” funny or appropriate, but there’s no question that the humor works some magic with its sympathizers.

It’s not much different in the education world.

Diane Ravitch didn’t invent the #charterschoolnames hashtag on Twitter, but she took the reins de facto and encouraged her followers to come up with politically-charged names for charters.

Here are some examples, courtesy of Jamie Davies O’Leary — who has the best blog line of 2011 (so far) when she says, “Following Diane Ravitch on Twitter is sort of like giving a six-year-old a kazoo on a long car trip.”

* Dollars First Academy
* Privilege Academy
* Test Purgatory Hi-Tech High
* Letuslineourpockets High
* Erasure Secondary
* Dewey, Cheatum & Howe Academy
* Results By Attrition Network, Inc
* Wishful Thinking, Heavy Spending Academy
* I’m Better Than You Academy
* Village of Stepford Charter School
* W.A.S.P. Academy (Why Ask Stupid People)
* TFA Tours

OhioGadfly offered a few names, but it didn’t really catch on.

I’ve been trying to think of some super-witty names for the failing public schools charters replace, but all I can think of are situations I remember from my mediocre rural public high school that make me wish I’d had access to a better quality education. Can you think of a name that expresses…

• A school where teachers can put a pile of economics textbooks on a desk in the front of the room and ride tenure until retirement as they read the newspaper — every day, never once teaching;
• A school where guidance counselors can’t help the best students advance their educations at appropriate institutions nationwide — because they’re only familiar with the in-state public schools;
• A school that ignores using technology in ways that fuel the intellectual development of its students — where teachers complain about tech integration and board members wonder whether something like the internet is “just a fad.”

Maybe we can come up with a funny name for a school that trolls the bottom third of academic achievers to find its teaching staff?

Or maybe we can craft a quip about how $30,000 per pupil annual expenditure can buy you a functionally illiterate 19 year old?

Perhaps an education reform joke more powerful than any of those premises is Diane Ravitch’s status quo rhetoric and second-rate rabble rousing — assuming you’re a fan of black humor.

But I’m starting to think that might not be enough.