Stakeholders?!

After reading The Governor’s Commission on Quality Education in Maryland I came to the conclusion that I have no idea who or what a “stakeholder” is. People throw around the term casually as if we all share a common definition. When I use the term “stakeholder” I am referring to people who are directly involved with education on a daily basis but I get the feeling that others don’t share this same definition. In my mind stakeholders include students, parents, teachers, and administrators. When politicians use the term they are referring to stakeholders they are often referring the local community, state population, or even our American society as a whole.

If you accept the politicians’ definition of the term then every single American is a stake holder in our educational system. Using the term in this sense also absolves people of their individual responsibility. If we’re all stakeholders then it’s assumed that someone else will step up and take charge of spearheading reform movements. If things don’t turn out as we expected then as stakeholders we have the right to criticize the decision makes since we are “invested” in our school systems.

Since we don’t take the time to be specific and identify our stakeholders many times we all let out a collective sigh and shake our heads at the lack of progress. We hear things like “The stakeholders aren’t invested!” or “…it’s because of North ave “. The problems in our schools are always somehow traced back to North Ave.; we have all the problems in our school system because North Ave exists. No, it is not North Ave as a whole. North Ave is a building filled with individual people who make policy decisions. When the results of these decisions are not what the public expected these people are able to escape responsibility for these decisions because we all continue to use ambiguous language.

This all leads to the issue of semantics in education. As a community of educators we all use the same language but don’t necessarily hold the same definitions. Whether we are discussing “investing” students or “reaching out” to “stakeholders” we have a general sense of what the speaker is getting at. This general sense, however, doesn’t necessarily result in a common understanding. We use all of these terms with confidence and conviction but does it really mean anything? Can we come to a true consensus or act on identified problems if we lack a common understanding at the very basic level, the meaning of our words.