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Academic ChangesCompetition places pressure on schools, especially those that are low performing. This can often lead to a focus on creating a more academically focused environment. According to Jabbar (2015) in his study of New Orleans school reform, ten schools reported efforts to improve academic performance to increase student enrollment, attract parents, or compete with other schools. Another example can be found in the model of St. Louis. Here, Samuels (2012), can point to one especially bright spot in the district’s promotional efforts. Their efforts to improve the academic standing of their students involved a concerted push by the school system to expand all-day-preschool seats. The advertising around that effort lured parents who were looking for all-day, academic oriented preschool options for their children, including free transportation for 4-year-olds and free before-and-after care (Samuels, 2012).
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Operational ChangesSome schools, in their effort to maintain or increase enrollment, reported improving their operations in response to competitive pressures, which could potentially lead to a more efficient allocation of resources (Jabbar, 2015). In Grand Rapids, MI, changes for the 2013-14 school year involved closing some schools, some of which were operating at only 60 percent capacity. While this can be highly unpopular, and might even do the opposite of increasing enrollment for a district, it can help to get the district’s budget in line and balanced, preventing further catastrophe.
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DifferentiationSchools also developed niches, which might provide better opportunities and stronger matches between family wants, students’ needs, and school offerings. For example, in Grand Rapids, the district has tried to draw in parents with popular programs, such as "traditional academies" that focus on highly structured instruction; an accelerated program for middle school students based at a high school; a new academy for gifted students based at an elementary school; and a junior high school with a single-gender option for some classes (Samuels, 2012). During the past three decades, other cities across the country have developed ambitious “revitalization” plans in an effort to attract middle-class families and attract business development. Marketing public schools to middle-class parents was not typically an explicit part of these redevelopment plans, but in some cases, such as in Boston and Chicago, it was (Conner & Cucchiara, 2013).
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Marketing and Recruitment Examples
Alongside their efforts to improve academics and operations, schools also engaged in practices that were superficial, in the case of marketing. Many, many schools used marketing strategies. Although marketing may provide better information to parents, in Bagley's words (2006), it does not “represent a substantive change to school programming or operations” (as cited in Jabbar, 2015). As a painful example of this frivolity, we look to the Detroit Public Schools (DPS). In 2006, they kicked off an unprecedented and aggressive student retention campaign that promised to show students, parents, and all of Metro Detroit the exciting learning opportunities that existed behind every door in DPS… 172 standard-size blue doors, to be exact… one for each of the district’s 172 schools.
Highlights and events of the campaign included:
- Former NBA player and DPS graduate Derrick Coleman, who painted the 172 doors blue
- More than 100 DPS students in a coordinated “freeze” performance around the doors
- A back to school parade and rally, organized by the Detroit Parade Company of the legendary Thanksgiving Day Parade
- 172 blue doors moved to Belle Isle, MI over Labor Day weekend
- Radio spots featuring the “I’m In” jingle and voiceovers of DPS parents and students, and local celebrities such as TV personality Judge Greg Mathis and Mayor Dave Bing, as well as the now infamous Bill Cosby
- Active community engagement visuals and components such as DDOT bus wraps, lawn signs, and partnerships with community leaders
- A new (now non-functional) URL, www.ImInDPS.org, linked to the redesigned DPS Web site (DPS 2006).
Most often, schools turn to blogs and websites (Chen, n.d.). While this may be an easy and cheap solution for some, in 2009, the San Antonio Independent School District signed a $180,000 contract with a marketing firm that had also worked with grocery chains and hotels. According to Chen (n.d.), the marketing plan for San Antonio’s schools, as the Wall Street Journal reported, was to include “radio spots, billboards, Twitter feeds, online banner ads and promotional videos on YouTube.” If $180,000 seems like a lot of money, consider the fact that their investment didn’t end with the firm’s fee. St. Louis set aside $1 million for marketing efforts, due to a 40 percent decline in enrollment in the past decade. While this may cause an initial feeling of sticker shock, Gagne (2014), puts things into perspective quite nicely: “We have at least a half a million dollars in student revenue being used on alternatives to us. Why would we not market to bring them back? The cost of marketing to them gets paid back with just a few new students coming back.”
Faced with declining enrollment and competition from charter schools, many urban districts are undertaking similar marketing campaigns. Schools in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for example, are employing tactics such as door-to-door drives to persuade more families to enroll their children in the city's regular public schools. Educators turn to billboards and direct mailings to attract students. Apparently, Arizona holds the title of the "parent-choice capital of the country”. There, districts frequently use movie theaters as a venue to run advertisements touting the benefits of the school system (Samuels, 2012).
The research of Cox and McLeod (2014) builds upon this limited research tied directly to school marketing. Their study focused on the marketing and communication strategies established by superintendents in twelve school districts spread across the United States, and compared their findings with the significant volume of research that has been conducted in the private marketing sector to identify commonalities and make recommendations. Cox and McLeod (2014) identified six themes from their research that these superintendents felt increased communication and marketing through social media:
(1) more immediate and more frequent interactions between school superintendents and their stakeholders
(2) greater transparency regarding decision-making and budgeting processes
(3) impact on a school superintendent's personal and professional growth
(4) stronger connections to local stakeholders, to fellow educators, and to the world
(5) use is an expectation: it is no longer optional
(6) accessing information from the superintendent in a multimodal way (p. 858).
Furthermore, they were able to expand on the work of Ferriter, et al. (2011) who had found that the concept of branding was beginning “to take hold in the education world as school administrators learn from the blunders occurring in the business world (as cited in Cox and McLeod, 2014, p. 853). In this expansion of research, Cox and McLeod argued that due to the growing demand nationwide for school accountability, the increase of school choice, competition from charters, vouchers, etc. there is an increased need for transparency and communication on the part of school officials. The ability to control the message in an era of immediate sharing of information, especially when those that are not school officials can post negative or inaccurate information, is “a powerful tool for schools to proactively shape their public image, thus crafting a positive brand identity” (p. 852).
The research of Cox and McLeod (2014) builds upon this limited research tied directly to school marketing. Their study focused on the marketing and communication strategies established by superintendents in twelve school districts spread across the United States, and compared their findings with the significant volume of research that has been conducted in the private marketing sector to identify commonalities and make recommendations. Cox and McLeod (2014) identified six themes from their research that these superintendents felt increased communication and marketing through social media:
(1) more immediate and more frequent interactions between school superintendents and their stakeholders
(2) greater transparency regarding decision-making and budgeting processes
(3) impact on a school superintendent's personal and professional growth
(4) stronger connections to local stakeholders, to fellow educators, and to the world
(5) use is an expectation: it is no longer optional
(6) accessing information from the superintendent in a multimodal way (p. 858).
Furthermore, they were able to expand on the work of Ferriter, et al. (2011) who had found that the concept of branding was beginning “to take hold in the education world as school administrators learn from the blunders occurring in the business world (as cited in Cox and McLeod, 2014, p. 853). In this expansion of research, Cox and McLeod argued that due to the growing demand nationwide for school accountability, the increase of school choice, competition from charters, vouchers, etc. there is an increased need for transparency and communication on the part of school officials. The ability to control the message in an era of immediate sharing of information, especially when those that are not school officials can post negative or inaccurate information, is “a powerful tool for schools to proactively shape their public image, thus crafting a positive brand identity” (p. 852).