A Lexicon of Learning

What Educators Mean When They Say...

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L

lead teachers

Teachers who have broader responsibilities and higher salaries than other teachers but who continue to work with students as regular classroom teachers, at least part time. The idea for lead teachers was proposed as a way to improve the quality of schooling in 1986 in the report A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century from a task force that included leaders of the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and leaders in business and government. 

The task force noted that education is different from most professions in that opportunities for career advancement are relatively limited. Despite various efforts to improve the status and rewards of teaching, few of today's teachers hold positions that could be considered lead teacher roles.

learning disability

A condition that interferes with a student's ability to learn. Even the definition of this term is controversial. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act amended in 1997 defines a specific learning disability as "a disorder in one or more of the basic psychological processes involved in understanding or in using language, spoken or written, which disorder may manifest itself in imperfect ability to listen, think, read, write, spell, or do mathematical calculations. Such term may include such conditions as perceptual disabilities, brain injury, minimal brain dysfunction, dyslexia, and developmental aphasia." 

Children not included under this provision include those who have learning problems which are "primarily the result of visual, hearing, or motor disabilities, of mental retardation, of emotional disturbance, or of environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantage."

learning disorder

Another term for learning disability, a condition that interferes with a student's ability to learn. For example, some people have dyslexia, which simply means reading disability. People with this condition have difficulty distinguishing among letters of the alphabet and translating words on paper into meaningful language.

Learning First Alliance (LFA)

An alliance of 12 national education organizations devoted to improving public education. The LFA seeks to align priorities, share and disseminate success stories, encourage collaboration at every level, and work toward long-term systemic change based on solid research evidence. It represents more than 10 million individuals engaged in providing, governing, and improving U.S. public schools at the local, state, and national levels. 

It is the only national coalition focused on improving elementary and secondary education in public schools to involve chief executive officers and elected leadership of the major national organizations representing parents, teachers, curriculum specialists, school principals, administrators, school boards, state boards of education, chief state school officers, schools, colleges, and departments.

learning styles

Differences in the way students learn more readily. Scholars have devised numerous ways of classifying style differences, including cognitive style (the way a person tends to think about a learning situation), tendency to use particular senses (seeing, hearing, touching), and other characteristics, such as whether the person prefers to work independently or with others.

Advocates interpret research as showing that teaching underachievers in ways that complement their strengths can significantly increase their scores on standardized tests. For example, strongly auditory students learn and recall information when they hear it, whereas kinesthetic youngsters learn best through activities such as role playing or floor games.

least restrictive environment

A phrase used in the Individuals with Disability Education Act (IDEA) to describe the type of setting schools should provide for students with disabilities. The phrase is generally understood to mean that such children should be assigned to regular, rather than special, classrooms to the extent that they can profit from being there and do not interfere too much with the education of others. Opinions differ greatly over what this should mean for particular children, as well as for such children in general.

LEP students

See limited English proficient (LEP) students.

lifelong learning

The idea that, because people in the modern world must continue learning all their lives, schools should teach children how to learn rather than (or in addition to) teaching them fundamental knowledge and skills. Also refers to changing the mission of public schools from teaching only children through age 18 to providing educational opportunities to people of all ages.

limited-English-proficient (LEP) students

Students who are reasonably fluent in another language but who have not yet achieved comparable mastery in reading, writing, listening, or speaking English. LEP students are often assigned to bilingual education or English-as-a-second-language (ESL) classes.

looping

An informal term for assigning students to the same teacher for more than one school year. Rather than teaching a new group of students at the same grade level each year, teachers stay with the same group of students as they move from grade to grade. The practice is rare in the United States, but has been common for years in some parts of Europe and is now being tried in some schools in the United States. Advocates say it provides for more continuous learning because teachers don't have to take time to learn about an entirely new group of students each year.

low-performing schools

Schools, almost always located in urban or low-income rural areas, in which an unacceptably low proportion of students meet established standards, as indicated by test scores. Also called failing schools.

Some observers believe it is unfair to call such schools failing because, they say, the real failure is society's for allowing the social conditions that hamper student learning. Others point out that some schools, called effective schools, succeed in teaching low-income children, so others could do it too.

Because policies increasingly focus on such schools, and because test scores usually vary from year to year rather than going steadily up or down, state and national officials have devoted considerable attention to procedures for deciding which schools should be declared low-performing.

This document contains some material that was previously published in The Language of Learning: A Guide to Educational Terms, edited by J. Lynn McBrien and Ronald Brandt, 1997, ASCD.