Education Acronyms and Teacher Jargon: A Plain-English Guide for Teachers

Education loves acronyms.

IEP. MTSS. PLC. PBIS. FAPE. LRE. FERPA. UDL. EL. RTI.

You can sit through a ten-minute faculty meeting and hear enough capital letters to make it sound like everyone is discussing a classified government project instead of reading instruction.

I taught for 24 years, and eventually most of this alphabet soup stopped sounding strange. That can make experienced teachers forget what it feels like to be new and hear someone casually say:

“We need to take this to MTSS, look at the Tier 2 data, check the IEP, and probably do an FBA.”

Then everybody nods.

You nod too.

You have no idea what just happened.

This guide is for that moment.

It is not just a giant list of education acronyms with the words spelled out beside them. Knowing that MTSS means Multi-Tiered System of Support is not especially useful if you still do not know what someone means when they say, “We need to move this student to Tier 2.”

The goal here is to explain the terms in normal language, show you where teachers actually encounter them, and point out some terms that are commonly confused.

One warning before we start: education terminology varies by state, district, school, and sometimes even by building. The same kind of student-support team may be called an SST in one district and something completely different ten miles away.

When somebody uses an acronym you do not know, asking what it means does not prove you missed a secret chapter of teacher training.

Sometimes the acronym really is just local.

Just need to decode one term?

If you landed here because somebody dropped one mysterious acronym into an email or meeting and you just want to know what it means, you do not have to dig through the whole guide.

The free Teacher Jargon Decoder on InstructionalStrategies.org lets you look up education acronyms and teacher terminology quickly:

https://instructionalstrategies.org/teacher-tools/

If you are trying to actually understand the language teachers hear every day, keep reading.

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Education Acronyms New Teachers Should Know First

If you are brand new, do not try to memorize every acronym in this guide.

Start with these:

You will encounter plenty more.

Those twenty will at least keep a lot of meetings from sounding like somebody dumped a Scrabble bag onto the agenda.

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Special Education Acronyms Teachers Hear Constantly

Special education probably produces more acronym anxiety than any other part of education because many of these terms affect what teachers are actually expected to do for students.

You do not need to become a special education attorney.

You do need to know when a term affects your classroom responsibilities.

IDEA — Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

IDEA is the federal special education law.

Among other things, it establishes protections and services for eligible students with disabilities, including Individualized Education Programs, special education services, Free Appropriate Public Education, and education in the Least Restrictive Environment.

For a classroom teacher, the practical point is much simpler:

If a student has an IEP, the parts of that IEP that apply to your classroom are not optional suggestions.

Know them.

IEP — Individualized Education Program

An IEP is the written educational program developed for an eligible student receiving special education services.

It can include information about the student’s current performance, annual goals, special education services, accommodations, related services, behavioral supports, and other individualized needs.

When you teach a student with an IEP, find out:

• Which accommodations and supports apply in your classroom
• Whether there is specially designed instruction you provide or support
• What goals or needs affect your subject or setting
• Whether behavioral supports apply
• What progress information you are expected to provide

Do not wait until there is a problem to find out what the plan says.

504 — Section 504 Plan

A 504 plan comes from Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

A student can receive disability-related protections and supports through Section 504 without qualifying for special education under IDEA.

A 504 plan might include supports such as extended time, seating arrangements, breaks, access to medical needs, or other accommodations depending on the student.

IEP vs. 504

The quick classroom version:

IEP: Special education under IDEA.

504: Disability-related protections and access under Section 504.

They are not simply two names for the same thing.

The most practical rule is also the easiest one:

Read the plan you were given and follow the parts that apply to you.

FAPE — Free Appropriate Public Education

FAPE stands for Free Appropriate Public Education.

Notice that it is Free Appropriate, not Free and Appropriate. That little wording difference gets mangled constantly.

For classroom teachers, the main idea is that required educational services and supports are not favors being extended to a student.

They are part of the student’s educational program.

LRE — Least Restrictive Environment

LRE stands for Least Restrictive Environment.

The basic idea is that students with disabilities should learn alongside nondisabled peers to the greatest extent appropriate for the individual student.

A common oversimplification is:

“LRE means every student has to stay in general education all day.”

It does not.

LRE is an individualized decision based on the student’s needs.

SDI — Specially Designed Instruction

SDI means Specially Designed Instruction.

This is instruction adapted to address needs related to a student’s disability and help the student access and make progress in the curriculum.

SDI is not simply “being helpful.”

It is instruction connected to a student’s individual needs.

Accommodation

An accommodation generally changes how a student accesses instruction or demonstrates learning without necessarily changing the learning expectation itself.

Examples might include:

• Extended time
• Alternate presentation formats
• Seating arrangements
• Chunked directions
• Assistive technology
• Different ways to respond

Do not assume a common accommodation applies to every student.

Follow the student’s actual plan.

Modification

A modification generally changes what a student is expected to learn or demonstrate.

That is a bigger instructional change than an accommodation.

Teachers sometimes use accommodation and modification as though they mean the same thing.

They do not.

FBA — Functional Behavior Assessment

An FBA is a Functional Behavior Assessment.

The goal is to examine a behavior and the circumstances surrounding it so the team can better understand what function the behavior may be serving.

That moves the conversation away from:

“He acts that way because he doesn’t care.”

and toward more useful questions:

What tends to happen before the behavior?

What exactly does the student do?

What happens afterward?

Is the student trying to obtain something or avoid something?

That gives a team something useful to work with.

BIP — Behavior Intervention Plan

A BIP, or Behavior Intervention Plan, describes strategies and supports for addressing a student’s behavior.

It may include prevention strategies, replacement behaviors, reinforcement, staff responses, environmental changes, or data collection.

If a student you teach has one, know your part.

A behavior plan followed by two of the student’s seven teachers is not much of a behavior plan.

ESY — Extended School Year

ESY means Extended School Year.

These are special education services provided beyond the normal school year when they are determined to be necessary for an eligible student.

It is not simply another name for summer school.

PWN — Prior Written Notice

PWN means Prior Written Notice.

You may hear this during special education meetings when discussing formal decisions involving evaluation, identification, placement, or services.

A general education teacher may rarely prepare one, but it helps to recognize the term.

SLP, OT and PT

SLP — Speech-Language Pathologist
OT — Occupational Therapist or Occupational Therapy
PT — Physical Therapist or Physical Therapy

These professionals may provide related services or help students participate successfully in school.

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MTSS, RTI, PBIS and All Those Tiers

This is where the acronyms start stacking on top of one another.

The easiest way to understand them is to stop thinking of every acronym as a completely separate program.

MTSS — Multi-Tiered System of Support

MTSS stands for Multi-Tiered System of Support.

It is a framework for organizing different levels of academic, behavioral, social, emotional, and other supports based on student need.

You will commonly hear three tiers.

Tier 1

Universal instruction and support available to all students.

Tier 2

Additional targeted support for students who need more than Tier 1 alone.

Tier 3

More intensive and individualized support.

One small wording habit is worth changing.

Instead of:

“He’s a Tier 2 kid.”

say:

“He’s receiving Tier 2 support.”

The tier describes the support.

It does not define the child.

RTI or RtI — Response to Intervention

RTI means Response to Intervention.

RTI has traditionally focused on providing increasingly intensive academic interventions, monitoring how students respond, and adjusting support based on evidence.

Some districts still use RTI as a separate term.

Others treat RTI as one piece of a broader MTSS system.

If you move schools and discover that everyone suddenly uses different terminology, do not panic.

Ask what the local process actually is.

PBIS — Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports

PBIS stands for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports.

It is a tiered framework for organizing behavioral and schoolwide supports.

PBIS does not simply mean:

“Give kids prizes for behaving.”

Some schools have reduced it to tokens, stores, rewards, and point systems.

The actual framework is much broader than that.

SST, IST, CST and Other Student-Support Teams

Depending on your district, you may hear:

SST — Student Support Team or Student Study Team
IST — Instructional Support Team or Intervention Support Team
CST — Child Study Team
SAT — Student Assistance Team

These terms vary tremendously.

If somebody says, “Bring this student to SST,” it is perfectly reasonable to ask what that process looks like in your school.

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English Learner Acronyms and Language-Support Terms

Language-support terminology is another area where wording varies across schools and states.

EL — English Learner

EL means English Learner.

This is a common term for a student who is developing English proficiency.

ELL — English Language Learner

ELL means English Language Learner.

You will still see this term in schools, older documents, and teaching materials.

MLL — Multilingual Learner

MLL means Multilingual Learner.

Many schools and organizations prefer this wording because it emphasizes multilingualism as an asset rather than defining students only by the English they are still developing.

ESL — English as a Second Language

ESL means English as a Second Language.

Depending on the school, ESL may describe a program, course, service, department, or teacher.

The terminology is imperfect because English may actually be a student’s third, fourth, or fifth language.

ESOL — English for Speakers of Other Languages

ESOL means English for Speakers of Other Languages.

Like ESL, it commonly refers to programs or services supporting students who are learning English.

ELD — English Language Development

ELD means English Language Development.

It usually refers to instruction or standards specifically aimed at developing students’ English proficiency.

One practical reminder

Limited English output is not the same thing as limited thinking.

When the learning goal is appropriate, the job is often to improve access to the task, not automatically lower the level of thinking.

The free EL Task Access Planner on InstructionalStrategies.org was built specifically to help teachers work through that problem.

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Instructional Acronyms Teachers Hear in PD

Not every mysterious term comes from federal law.

Some come from professional development.

Many arrive on slides.

UDL — Universal Design for Learning

UDL stands for Universal Design for Learning.

The basic idea is to design learning experiences while anticipating that students vary in how they access information, engage with learning, and demonstrate what they know.

In plain English:

Know what students need to learn.

Think ahead about unnecessary barriers.

Give students reasonable ways to access the learning and show what they know.

UDL does not mean creating 30 separate lessons.

CFU — Check for Understanding

CFU means Check for Understanding.

This acronym deserves to survive because the idea is useful.

A CFU asks:

Did they actually understand what I just taught?

A check for understanding might be:

• One problem on a whiteboard
• A short written response
• An exit ticket
• A quick poll
• Asking students to explain a process
• Having students identify an error
• Listening to partner explanations

“Does everybody understand?” is technically a question.

It is usually a terrible check for understanding.

DOK — Depth of Knowledge

DOK means Depth of Knowledge.

It refers to the complexity of thinking required by a task.

DOK is often misunderstood as a simple difficulty scale.

A long worksheet can be difficult and still require routine thinking.

A shorter task may require students to analyze evidence, connect ideas, justify reasoning, or make strategic decisions.

More work does not automatically mean deeper thinking.

GRR — Gradual Release of Responsibility

GRR usually refers to the Gradual Release of Responsibility.

You may hear the simplified version:

I do → We do → You do

The useful idea is that instructional support gradually shifts as students become more capable of doing the work independently.

Actual classrooms are messier than the arrow suggests.

Sometimes you reach “You do” and discover everyone needs to go back to “We do.”

That is teaching.

PBL — Project-Based Learning or Problem-Based Learning

PBL has an annoying feature for an acronym guide.

It can legitimately mean two different things:

Project-Based Learning

or

Problem-Based Learning

The approaches overlap, but they are not identical.

If your principal announces that everyone will be using PBL next year, it is worth finding out which PBL you just agreed to.

SEL — Social and Emotional Learning

SEL stands for Social and Emotional Learning.

Schools use the term for a broad range of instruction and practices involving areas such as relationships, self-management, social awareness, decision-making, and emotional skills.

The acronym alone tells you very little about what a school actually does.

Ask what it looks like in practice.

STEM and STEAM

STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics

STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics

You may encounter other versions too.

Education is apparently unwilling to stop until we have eventually reconstructed the alphabet.

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PLC, PD and Teacher-Work Acronyms

PLC — Professional Learning Community

PLC means Professional Learning Community.

Ideally, it is a group of educators working together around curriculum, instruction, assessment, student evidence, and improvement.

Sometimes your PLC will involve useful collaborative work.

Sometimes everyone will sit in a room while someone reads a slide to you.

Both may appear on your calendar as “PLC.”

PD — Professional Development

PD means Professional Development.

Training, workshops, coaching, conferences, courses, and school-based learning may all fall under that label.

Veteran teachers eventually develop another category:

Actually useful PD.

That category tends to be smaller.

CPT — Common Planning Time

Some schools use CPT for Common Planning Time.

Others call it team planning, department time, grade-level planning, collaborative planning, or something completely different.

Once again, local vocabulary wins.

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Assessment and Data Acronyms

Education does not simply collect data.

We also abbreviate it.

BOY, MOY and EOY

These are easy once somebody finally tells you:

BOY — Beginning of Year
MOY — Middle of Year
EOY — End of Year

You will usually hear them connected to benchmarks, screeners, or progress data.

CBM — Curriculum-Based Measurement

CBM means Curriculum-Based Measurement.

CBMs are brief measures used repeatedly to evaluate student performance and growth in particular academic skills.

They often appear in intervention and progress-monitoring systems.

Progress Monitoring

This one is not an acronym, but you will hear it constantly.

Progress monitoring means collecting evidence repeatedly over time to determine whether a student is making adequate progress.

That matters because an intervention should not run indefinitely based on:

“Well, I think it seems to be helping.”

We need evidence.

Formative Assessment

A formative assessment gives you information you can use while learning is still happening.

It does not have to be a test.

Walking around while students solve three problems, noticing the same misconception at six desks, and changing tomorrow’s lesson is formative assessment.

Summative Assessment

A summative assessment evaluates learning after a period of instruction.

A unit test can be summative.

So can a project, presentation, performance, or other culminating task.

The words formative and summative describe the purpose of the evidence, not whether the assessment has multiple-choice questions.

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FERPA, Privacy and Technology Acronyms

FERPA — Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act

FERPA stands for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

It protects the privacy of student education records and gives parents, and later eligible students, certain rights involving those records.

The practical classroom rule is straightforward:

Do not casually share identifiable student information because somebody is curious.

PII — Personally Identifiable Information

PII means Personally Identifiable Information.

In schools, that can include obvious things such as names or student identification numbers, as well as other information that could identify a particular student.

This matters even more now that schools use so many online systems.

LMS — Learning Management System

LMS means Learning Management System.

Canvas, Moodle, Blackboard, Schoology, and similar platforms can function as learning management systems.

Teachers may use an LMS to post assignments, distribute materials, collect work, communicate, and organize course content.

SIS — Student Information System

SIS means Student Information System.

This is usually the system containing official information such as:

• Attendance
• Grades
• Student schedules
• Enrollment
• Contact information
• Demographic information

Your LMS and SIS may share information.

They are not necessarily the same system.

SSO — Single Sign-On

In school technology, SSO usually means Single Sign-On.

It allows users to log in once and access multiple connected systems.

This is also a reminder that the same acronym can mean completely different things in different settings.

1:1 — One-to-One

A 1:1 device program generally means each student has access to an individual device such as a Chromebook, laptop, or tablet.

It does not mean the device will be charged.

We apparently have not developed an acronym capable of solving that.

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District, Government and Program Acronyms

LEA — Local Educational Agency

LEA stands for Local Educational Agency.

In everyday teacher language, this usually means the local school district, although the formal term can apply to other public education agencies.

SEA — State Educational Agency

SEA means State Educational Agency.

That is generally your state-level department or agency responsible for education.

ESSA — Every Student Succeeds Act

ESSA stands for the Every Student Succeeds Act.

It is a major federal K–12 education law.

Classroom teachers usually encounter its effects indirectly through accountability systems, testing, funding, school improvement efforts, and other policies.

ESEA — Elementary and Secondary Education Act

ESEA means Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

ESSA is a reauthorization of ESEA, which is why you will sometimes see both names in education materials.

Title I

Title I is not actually an acronym, although schools throw it around as if everyone attended the meeting where it was explained.

Title I funding is intended largely to improve educational opportunities for students in schools and communities with higher concentrations of poverty.

You may hear:

“Title I school”

“Title I funds”

“Title I teacher”

or

“Title I services.”

CTE — Career and Technical Education

CTE means Career and Technical Education.

CTE programs combine academic learning with technical skills, career preparation, and occupational training.

SRO — School Resource Officer

SRO commonly means School Resource Officer.

It generally refers to a law-enforcement officer assigned to work in or with a school.

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Teacher Jargon That Is Not an Acronym

Some of the most confusing education language does not contain a single capital letter.

Scaffolding

Scaffolding means providing temporary support that helps students successfully do something they cannot yet do independently.

The important word is temporary.

Good scaffolding should eventually be reduced as students become more capable.

Scaffolding is not simply making the work easier.

Differentiation

Differentiation means intentionally adjusting instruction in response to learner needs.

That might involve different supports, examples, groupings, starting points, materials, amounts of guidance, or ways students demonstrate learning.

Differentiation does not require writing 28 separate lesson plans for 28 students.

Rigor

Rigor should mean worthwhile intellectual challenge.

Rigor does not mean:

more pages,

more homework,

more vocabulary words,

or confusing directions.

A task can be miserable without being intellectually demanding.

Fidelity

When educators talk about fidelity, they usually mean whether a program, intervention, or practice was implemented as intended.

This becomes important when someone says:

“That intervention didn’t work.”

Maybe it did not.

If it was supposed to happen four times a week and happened three times in a month, though, we did not really test the intervention.

Evidence-Based

Evidence-based means meaningful evidence supports the practice.

It should not mean:

“A person with a ring light said it worked on TikTok.”

The phrase gets used loosely enough that asking, “What evidence?” is perfectly reasonable.

Best Practice

Best practice is one of education’s favorite expressions.

I would treat it cautiously.

Something may be well-supported, widely recommended, useful under particular conditions, or simply popular.

Those are not the same thing.

When somebody says something is “best practice,” a fair question is:

Best for whom, for what goal, and under what conditions?

Data-Driven Instruction

Data-driven instruction means using evidence of student learning to make instructional decisions.

It does not require turning children into spreadsheets.

An exit ticket is data.

A student’s explanation is data.

The errors you see while circulating during math are data.

The useful part is changing instruction based on what students actually know and can do.

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Education Terms That Sound Similar but Are Not the Same

This may be the most useful cheat sheet in the entire guide.

IEP vs. 504

IEP: Special education program under IDEA.

504: Disability-related protections and educational access under Section 504.

MTSS vs. RTI

MTSS: Broader framework for organizing tiered supports.

RTI: Traditionally associated especially with increasingly intensive intervention and monitoring how students respond.

Local terminology varies.

MTSS vs. PBIS

MTSS: Broad structure for tiered support.

PBIS: A tiered framework focused heavily on behavioral and schoolwide supports that may operate within an MTSS system.

EL vs. ESL

EL: Describes a student learning English.

ESL: Commonly describes a course, service, teacher, or instructional program.

Accommodation vs. Modification

Accommodation: Changes access or how learning is demonstrated.

Modification: Changes what the student is expected to learn or demonstrate.

Formative vs. Summative

Formative: Evidence used while learning is still happening.

Summative: Evidence used to evaluate learning after a period of instruction.

LMS vs. SIS

LMS: Course and learning-management platform.

SIS: Official student-information system.

PLC vs. PD

PLC: Ongoing professional collaboration with colleagues.

PD: Professional training or learning.

At least that is the theory.

Your Tuesday-afternoon calendar invitation may have other plans.

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Why Education Acronyms Change From School to School

This causes new teachers far more confusion than it should.

Imagine that your previous district used SST for Student Support Team.

You move to another district.

They call roughly the same kind of process IST.

You have not forgotten how schools work.

The acronym changed.

States and districts also create abbreviations for:

• State tests
• Teacher evaluations
• Curriculum programs
• Certification systems
• Regional agencies
• Funding programs
• Local initiatives

Trying to memorize every education acronym in America would be a terrible use of your planning period.

Learn the national terms that affect your responsibilities.

Keep a small list of the local ones.

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What Should You Do When Someone Uses an Acronym You Don’t Know?

Ask.

Seriously.

Schools have a strange habit of putting ten adults in a meeting where six people do not know what an acronym means and nobody wants to be the person who admits it.

That is how you spend fifteen minutes thinking:

“Please, somebody eventually say the whole phrase.”

You can just say:

“Can you remind me what that stands for?”

Experienced teachers do this too.

Sometimes the response will be:

“Oh, that’s just what our district calls the intervention team.”

Problem solved.

A five-second question is better than walking out of a meeting misunderstanding something important about a student.

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Do New Teachers Need to Memorize All These Education Acronyms?

No.

Know the ones connected to your actual responsibilities.

During your first year, pay particular attention to:

• IEPs and 504 plans for students you teach
• Your school’s intervention system
• Behavior-support procedures
• English learner supports
• Attendance and grading systems
• Student privacy expectations
• The acronyms your own school uses constantly

Keep a reference for the rest.

Some of the obscure terms will eventually become important.

Some will disappear and be replaced by a new acronym before you ever figure out what the old one meant.

Education is talented that way.

If the acronyms are only one piece of what feels overwhelming, the New Teacher Survival section on InstructionalStrategies.org organizes help around actual classroom problems instead of educational jargon.

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A Final Word About Teacher Jargon

Jargon itself is not automatically bad.

Specialized professions need specialized language.

Saying “IEP” is considerably easier than saying “Individualized Education Program” forty times during a meeting.

The problem starts when knowing the vocabulary gets confused with understanding the work.

Knowing that PBIS stands for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports does not mean you understand your school’s behavior system.

Knowing that UDL means Universal Design for Learning does not mean a lesson is accessible.

Knowing the letters MTSS does not tell you whether an intervention is helping a student.

The acronym is only the label.

The important question is what happens underneath it.

If you are new to teaching and half the conversations around you currently sound like alphabet soup, give yourself some time. Learn the terms that matter. Ask when you do not know one.

Keep the Teacher Jargon Decoder bookmarked for the ones that inevitably show up tomorrow.

There will always be somebody in education who can say more acronyms than you can.

I would rather work with the teacher who knows what to do next for the student sitting in front of them.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Education Acronyms

What are the most common education acronyms?

Common education acronyms include IEP, IDEA, FAPE, LRE, 504, MTSS, RTI, PBIS, PLC, PD, FERPA, EL, UDL, SEL, LMS, SIS, LEA, and SEA. Which ones a teacher encounters most often depends on role, grade level, state, and district.

What does IEP stand for in education?

IEP stands for Individualized Education Program. It is the written educational program developed for an eligible student receiving special education services under IDEA.

What does MTSS mean in education?

MTSS stands for Multi-Tiered System of Support. It is a framework for organizing different levels of academic, behavioral, social, emotional, and other support based on student need.

What does PBIS mean?

PBIS stands for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. It is a tiered framework used to organize behavioral and schoolwide supports.

What is the difference between an IEP and a 504 plan?

An IEP is part of special education under IDEA. A Section 504 plan provides disability-related protections and supports for eligible students under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

Why are there so many acronyms in education?

Schools deal with laws, student services, assessments, instructional frameworks, technology, professional roles, interventions, funding programs, and local initiatives. Acronyms make repeated terms shorter, but they become confusing when states and districts use different terminology.

Is there a quick way to look up teacher jargon?

Yes. The free Teacher Jargon Decoder on the InstructionalStrategies.org Teacher Tools page is designed for exactly that. Enter the unfamiliar term or acronym and use it as a quick reference rather than digging through a giant glossary every time.

Teacher Jargon Decoder:
https://instructionalstrategies.org/teacher-tools/