EduShyster interviews two scholars (that is, grown-ups with doctorates at universities, not children in no-excuses charter schools) about their new study of the marketing and branding of schools. In the brand new world of school choice, schools have to find ways to attract both students and teachers.
Sarah Butler Jessen and Catherine DiMartino wrote a study called “Privatization, Choice, and Online Marketing” for the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Jessen and DiMartino explain to EduShyster that aggressive charter schools flood their target zones with mailings in order to produce more applicants than there are openings. This helps to brand them as “popular.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Another thing charters do for marketing is to get anyone and everyone to sign intent to enroll forms so their wait lists look huge. A charter director showed up at my kids’ school once, asking us parents to just sign, even though we weren’t leaving our school. They could show LAUSD how much their school is needed.
LikeLike
Of course!
I know someone who signed up for a charter school lottery. #100+ on the “wait list” but got offered a spot within a few weeks. Couldn’t decide so charter agreed to place the child at the end of the wait list again. By the end of summer, got a phone call again offering a spot! Which meant the wait list had been completely exhausted. There was NO demand, period.
But that certainly won’t stop the charter school from claiming wait lists of thousands and thousands.
As a parent, I do NOT want public schools wasting their time and money to “market”. I want them to use it to teach.
LikeLike
In my area, they also send as many glowing referrals to the teacher recognition program in the local newspaper, while my large public school’s referrals somehow get “lost” and never reported. Coincidence?
LikeLike
This is no different than the branding and marketing disease that has infected higher education. Attract as many applicants as humanly possible and shatter as many dreams as you can. Then you are “successful.”
LikeLike
And in this, there is no difference between public and private universities. Universities hire private firms to do rebranding, and to advise them on how to up popularity stats without doing actual footwork, like ensuring quality education. In fact, money is spent on this stuff rather than having university salaries keep up with inflation.
Weird stuff.
LikeLike
Mate, where are you getting your information from? There is no difference in regards to academic requirements and quality of education -the private institutes may offer courses and programs-major- and “different schools” e.g. law, pharmacy, library science that the public doesn’t. Plus class size differs as well as where the funds come from and the endowments . As regards the quality of education, there are accredited colleges and universities and there are those that are not accredited. I can believe what you say could be true about the unaccredited but not the accredited institutions.
LikeLike
Mary, you misunderstood me. I just said that public universities do as much rebranding as private ones. My comment was not about the general similarities between the two types of universities.
LikeLike
Very true. The amount of expensive mailings sent to high school juniors/seniors is shocking.
If I were a high school kid and got nice gifts (yes, gifts!) in the mail from colleges who said they really wanted me at their school, I would think they really wanted me at their school.
It would not occur to me that they were happy to spend any amount of money to manufacture demand.
LikeLike
True. We were inundated by advertising from one small private college on Ohio. After sitting through a dog and pony show, it became clear, other than a few token low income students, our middle class, non-athletic, hard working family need not apply. It was a gut wrenching, nauseating experience and a reminder of the vast income inequality issue driving voter anger. The wealthy are allowed to fail. The middle class, no more and you get one shot, if at all. Even “state” schools have adopted the ivy league attitude.
If Clinton was serious, she would work harder to capture that demographic of middle class voters. Trump already knows how.
LikeLike
How? How does Trump know how to capture that demographic of middle class voters?
By telling them that it’s all the fault of the minorities? The fault of immigrants?
By offering middle class voters a convenient scapegoat?
Any attempt by Hillary to offer solutions to those people — which she has over and over again — is generally called “class warfare” or “pandering to minorities” or “Hating the rich”. No matter what she does, it is characterized in the worst possible light.
The irony is that people seem to think it would not have happened to Bernie. I doubt that is true. Bernie would be doing far worse once the Rovian attack machine was done with him. The only reason Americans believe differently is because Hillary Clinton ran a campaign on the issues. So did Bernie. It wasn’t until the general election that the Republicans had the shot to paint them as dangerous.
LikeLike
It really worries me. I once got a flyer for a new charter school that is 60 miles away.
I guess my 5th grader was supposed to commute. Ridiculous, and the public paid for it out of “education” dollars.
I have no idea where they got the list. That worried me too. How does this private company know I had a 5th grader in public schools?
This is exactly what happened with for-profit colleges by the way.. They targeted demographics with blizzards of ads. They pulled more and more funding out of “education” and reallocated it to marketing. That’s how it ended up as garbage.
I love the bogus stats charters in Ohio use “97% of parents are satisfied!” Okey doke. Ed reformers adore the false certainty of numbers.
LikeLike
In MA, there was an “emergency” law passed in 2010 :An Act to Relative to the Achievement Gap. It included this little gem, which because I retired before it went into force, I didn’t know about:
“To ensure that a commonwealth charter school shall fulfill its obligations under its recruitment and retention plan, the school district or districts from which the commonwealth charter school is expected to enroll students shall annually provide, at the request of a commonwealth charter school, to a third party mail house authorized by the department, the addresses for all students in the district eligible to enroll in the school, unless a student’s parent or guardian requests that the district withhold that student’s information; provided, however, that the department may require the charter school to send the mailing in the most prevalent languages of the district or districts that the charter school is authorized to serve.”
So, the public schools are required to collect information and send it to the charters who can use it to attempt to siphon off children for enrollment. Parents must opt out, not in to this data mining.
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2010/Chapter12
LikeLike
Private schools do this too. We had a Catholic school here that advertised that more of their students ended up as “top 10%” in our public high school. The idea was if you wanted your child to be “top 10%” in high school, don’t send them to the public school for the lower grades, send them to the Catholic school. Someone finally looked at it and it wasn’t close to true. They just made it up. They said it for years, at least a decade.
LikeLike
Chiara.,
I am picking up on a negative vibe. We should be on our guard against generalizing private and parochial schools- to take one isolated sample to generalize all parochial schools which is done all too often. The fact of the matter is that there are studies that have been done to verify that some parochial schools do score higher than public schools e.g.
http://www.syracuse.com/schools/index.ssf/2015/08/nys_ela_math_test_scores_for_private_parochial_schools_2015_look_up_compare_any.html
But is that all what we should be concerned about? Scores?
I taught in a public school with a phenomenal faculty- caring, dedicated, knowledgeable, creative, warm, enthusiastic, having affective and effective teaching …
Research has shown that it is the home that has the biggest influence on the students. When parents /caregivers have to pay tuition, they are going to be concerned and involved with their children’s progress. Plus a positive attitude is past on – two aspects that greatly influence academics.
According to Goodlad, one problem we have talking about the goals of education is that we just focus on academics. He said that there are four areas- major goals that we should be concerned about. Besides academics we have to pay attention to social goals, personal, and vocational goals.
We have to be careful about making a blanketed statement about one system over another. There are great schools in both systems but it depends upon what you think is important.
LikeLike
“Clarksville Community Schools developed an advertising campaign with an express purpose: drive students to their district.
The southern Indiana district paid the ad agency Bandy Carroll Hellige over $160,000. The equivalent of four teachers’ salaries.
“We’ve done billboards, we’ve done a lot of media and social media advertising,” said Kimberly Knott, Clarksville Community Schools superintendent. “We’ve done movies and video clips. We actually did video clip advertisements at the cinema.”
No one in ed reform anticipated that turning public schools into a private sector business would have a downside?
Say hello to the downside.
They’re just reckless people. They don’t think any further out than next week. One grand experiment, conducted entirely with public money.
http://indianapublicmedia.org/stateimpact/2016/07/25/school-advertising-billboards/
LikeLike
How naive do you have to be not to anticipate that turning public schools into private sector businesses comes with all the downside of private sector businesses?
I mean, really. They’re delusional if they didn’t see this coming. That echo chamber must be surrounded by a brick wall. Nothing gets in.
LikeLike
Interesting to think of the original use of the term “branding” when referring to so-called education reform: an impression made on the body of cattle, signifying ownership, by means of searing with a red hot iron.
LikeLike
Here in Ohio many public school budgets now include costs for advertising. Cincinnati has a director of marketing. See some examples of these costs here. http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/education/2016/05/12/selling-our-schools-competition-rise-s-fight-students/83923032/
LikeLike
$22 mil. from Gates to New Schools Venture Fund, to finance the development of “diverse charter school organizations to produce different brands on a large scale” (Philanthropy Roundtable-Kim Smith interview).
Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown got his wish for the privatization of public schools, this week. The $71 mil. from the US Dept. of Ed. was delivered, earmarked for that purpose. Now, the state’s taxpayers are on the hook for the monitoring costs for a duplicated service that the Republican party donors want and the citizens, don’t want.
LikeLike
Eva from Success Academy has the audacity to send her winged monkey recruiters to lurk outside traditional public schools — some of them upscale, well-regarded schools with top-notch faculty — and accost parents bringing their kids to school. They then tell them every lie, scare tactic, and phony promise they can, to get contact info, so they can poach these students.
There’s a great video of public school parents and students at a more upscale part of New York City confronting one of Eva’s Shill-meisters. The recruiter appears to be losing an argument to what looks like a 4th or 5th grader (which I guess is a credit to the school that it produces such brilliant students who can debate off-the-cuff with adults like that.) A renown teacher, Jamie Fidler, is in this debate as well.
I finally got around to making a transcript of this… riveting stuff:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
( 00:29 – 1:22 )
( 00:29 – 1:22 )
PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILD: ‘So you don’t have to prove it when you say that it (Success Academy) is ‘the best elementary school in New York State’ ?”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “No, I don’t have to prove it. I have- ”
PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILD: “So you just rely on somebody’s word?”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “Someone else rated it. I can’t … I can’t re-run every experiment that’s done. I can’t re-run every rating system.“
TEACHER/PARENT JAMIE FIDLER: “No, but- “
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “I have to accept- ”
PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILD: “Can you each time just research people who says who your quoting pro-noy(?) ?”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “Boy, everything I say -?”
TEACHER/PARENT JAMIE FIDLER: (to the CHILD) “Yeah… That is SUCH a GOOD point.”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “So everything I run into. .. I can’t… I have to … I can’t just accept an outside expert’s … conclusion?”
TEACHER/PARENT JAMIE FIDLER: “Well, if you make a statement like it (Success Academy) is ‘the best school in the state’, you kinda need to be able to back it up with SOMETHING.”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “I’m repeating… Yes, and they-“
PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILD: “You can’t even tell us WHO is saying this (i.e. Success Academy is “the best school in New York State.) You can’t even tell us WHERE YOU GOT THAT, or where it can be found?!”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “I assume if you went to the web, and googled what I just said, you can come up with the report, which you could criticize yourself.”
PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILD: “But you DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO DID that report.“
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “I have NOT read that report.”
TEACHER/PARENT JAMIE FIDLER: “I mean I could say that Rick Santorum is best candidate for president, but that doesn’t mean it’s true. Right? So, you know -”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “But, but you’re saying that an opinion -“
TEACHER/PARENT JAMIE FIDLER: “ “If you’re making an assertion, you need to have SOMETHING – You need to be able just- “
VIDEO CUTS OUT
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
Here’s an earlier post about this:
This is how you handle those SUCCESS ACADEMY (or other charter school) recruiters.
A couple years back, Eva’s winged monkey recruiters had been lurking outside traditional public schools in a more upscale New York City neighborhood where Eva was about to open a school, accosting parents with a sales pitch to ditch their public school for one of Eva’s test prep factories.
Unlike the uninformed lower income immigrant community folks and were duped, these folks knew what these recruiters were all about.
The parents and teachers then got in the face of one of them, with the confrontation captured on video: (is he wearing one of Success Academy’s L.L. Bean’s backpacks?)
I’m urging parent leaders Karen Wolfe and other acttivists, and teacher union leaders to like UTLA President Alex C-P to play this video to every parent and teacher, respectively
that each of them can get to watch it.
The Broad Plan will unleash hundreds of these
paid recruiters to accost parent and student at
our traditional public schools., in an effort to
poach the students attending public schools.
Get lost, you money-motivated charter shills!!!!
One of the teachers / parents here was Jamie Fidler, a nationally
renown teacher who came into prominence in the documentary
AMERICAN TEACHER (a mixed bag of a film, but that’s
another story).
They kept protesting, and Eva’s winged monkeys were
never seen again.
HAPPY ENDING
Oh and again, here’s Jamie Fidler — a career teacher, like her father, who’s in it for decades— refuting the propaganda vilifying career unionized teachers:
LikeLike
Oh, and don’t forget the end of the “mic check” that sent Eva’s Shill-meister running for the warm comforting bosom of Lady Eva:
(was he a “fireman” moonlighting as a SUCCESS ACADEMY recruiter? The mic check reference him as a ” charter school fireman”)
x x x x x x x x x x x x
( 2:11 – 2:46 )
( 2:11 – 2:46 )
Mic Check Leader: “.. told this charter school fireman. .. ”
CROWD: ” … TOLD THIS CHARTER SCHOOL FIREMAN … ”
..
Mic Check Leader: “.. that he should NOT be soliciting … ”
CROWD: “THAT HE SHOULD NOT BE SOLICITING … ”
Mic Check Leader: ” … in front of OUR public school.’
CROWD: ” … IN FRONT OF OUR PUBLIC SCHOOL!”
Mic Check Leader: “Our students …
CROWD: “OUR STUDENTS …
Mic Check Leader: ” … have told you that also!”
CROWD: ” … HAVE TOLD YOU THAT ALSO!”
Mic Check Leader: ” … and now these cameras.. ”
CROWD: ” AND NOW THESE CAMERAS … ”
Mic Check Leader: ” … are here to help us tell our story.”
CROWD: ” … ARE HERE TO HELP US TELL OUR STORY.”
Mic Check Leader: “.. mic check!”
CROWD: ” MIC CHECK!”
LikeLike
“There’s a great video of public school parents and students at a more upscale part of New York City confronting one of Eva’s Shill-meisters.”
Where is the video?
LikeLike
Ignore. WordPress email cuts out links.
LikeLike
WordPress does not cut out links. Keep trying.
LikeLike
WordPress email which sends a daily digest of the posts or replies to a post often cuts out the weblinks from the digest.
Here is the beginning of Jack’s post as it appears in the blog
and here is the email notification of the same (sent by WordPress)
But I’ll now look for it and look at the original post before commenting.
LikeLike
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “What’s wrong with solicitation?”
ANOTHER PARENT: “Children are NOT commodities!”
— public school PARENT telling off one of Eva Moskowitz’ shills who stands outsidide accosting parents as they pick up and/or drop off their students ad P.S. 261
That two-line exchange sums up the market-based school reform.
Here’s PART 2 of the parents, teachers, and kids confronting Eva’s Shill-Meister.
First, here’s the title card, which I have transcribed here:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
( 2:46 – 2:57 )
( 2:46 – 2:57 )
TITLE CRAWL:
“Teachers at P.S. 261 said that they first tried asking the man handing out fliers to leave, but to no effect. Then on Thursday, parents, teachers, and students gathered in front of the school to confront him and ask why the Success Acadeny school was superior to their own.
“The conversation did not go well — he was hired to hand out fliers, not to defend the school’s existence — but it energized the parents and teachers.
” ‘We can still fight in our little ways.,’ Ms. Fidler said.”
( 2:58 – 3:51 )
( 2:58 – 3:51 )
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “I didn’t make the rating (that he claims says that Success Academy is ‘the best elementary school in the state.’) Someone ELSE did.”
ASIAN PARENT: “You don’t even know his name (the name of the guy who made the rating).”
TEACHER/PARENT JAMIE FIDLER: Look, the point is .. is that we have no reason to believe you.”
OTHER PARENT: ‘You’re passing out fliers for something you don’t know about. That’s kind of embarrassing.”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “Well then it would be my expert (?).”
OTHER PARENT: ‘Would I ever stand out on a corner and hand out fliers with something that I know NOTHING about? ‘That’s kind of like despic- That’s like DECEIVING to the people to whom you’re handing out literature.””
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “I don’t know NOTHING about it. I know that the students do well in (Success Academy) schools.”
ASIAN PARENT: “I’m sorry, but the students to well in OUR school as well. “
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: (sarcastic) “That’s terrific.”
ASIAN PARENT: “So there is NO REASON why you should be POACHING OUR STUDENTS! ”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: (sarcastic) “I’m, I’m… totally in favor of GOOD SCHOOLS.”
ASIAN PARENT: “This is solicitation! It’s like anybody who’s trying to SELL A CAR!”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “What’s wrong with solicitation?”
ASIAN PARENT: “This is solicitation.”
OTHER PARENT: “”Children are NOT commodities!”
ASIAN PARENT: “This is solicitation!”
— (mimicking EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER)
” ‘Would you like to apply to our school?’ as you have a flier in your hand.
It’s a solicitation!”
OFF-CAMERA PARENT: “When we can’t even afford copy paper!”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: “I don’t see anything wrong with solicitation.”
PARENT: “Exactly!”
EVA’S SHILL-MEISTER: (to ASIAN PARENT) “I don’t see anything wrong with solicitation.”
TEACHER: “We don’t have any of that paper (for solicitation fliers) in our school, and you want to know WHY? Because we don’t have the budget for it. But if we had a multi-million-dollar (advertising) budget that was funded by Wall Street and hedgefunds as they (Success Academy) are, then maybe we can have them (public school’s version shill-meisters) out there (at charter schools.) You’re talking about here’s like competition, like your best choice in a playing field that is not really even.”
VIDEO CUTS OFF
I think every voter in Massachusetts needs to see this video.
Do the parents in Massachusetts REALLY want creeps like Shill-meister descending on the traditional public schools, lurking and annoying the sh#% out of parents and students.
LikeLike
I just finished a day of teaching, and this video I transcribed last night …
… I find so disturbing on so many levels.
I know Eva’s shills have a Constitutional right to be there and talk to people… you know… the whole concept of freedom of speech in a public space, and all o’ that, but shouldn’t the space outside a school — where parents escort their children on the way to and from school — be off-limits to this bullsh#%? Shouldn’t parents and students be free from this type of high-pressure sales and marketing? Has Eva no freakin’ shame?
It should be like the area where people traverse to and from a church, synagogue, mosque, or whatever place of worship. For example, do Christians — the ones who aren’t psycho, that is — hang outside a synagogue or mosque, and harass people as they enter or exit,:
“Your place of worship sucks. Your religion is all a total lie. Come on over to our place of worship, and find out all about Jesus, and how he died for your sins”?
Or perhaps religious competition within Christianity — of within the same denomination of Christianity — would be a better comparison. Would Baptists hang out and bother Catholics as they enter or leave a Catholic church, in an attempt to lure them away from their current place of worship?
Or do Catholics representing one parish annoy those entering the church of a neighboring parish.
“Hey, our church Blessed Sacrament Church is so much better, or more true to Catholicism than your lousy, mediocre church, St. John’s. Our priests are so much holier, and that leads to our parishioners lead more Godly and holy lives. Here, take this flier, then come on over and hear what we have to offer.”
The other thing that hit me:
Could you imagine of parents or representatives of P.S. 261 fought fire with fire, and then showed up outside Success Academy Cobble Hill (or whatever Success Academy hired Eva’s Shill-meister to bother parents outside P.S. 261), and then engaged in the same high-pressure proselytizing?”
Imagine them passing out fliers and saying stuff like:
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
“Almost all of your kids’ teachers at Success Academy are totally unlicensed and uncredentialed. Come over to P.S. 261, and your children will not only be taught by fully credentialed teachers, but many of those teachers are National Board Certified, and are highly acclaimed.”
OR
“Don’t let those claims of high test scores mislead you.
“Your students are being turned into ‘little test-taking machines’, as one Success Academy executive bragged to NEW YORK MAGAZINE, because Eva and her untrained staff are giving children the educational equivalent of steroids, in the form of massive, toxic test prep — hours each day as the days for testing approaches — which, in turn, results in a narrowed curriculum devoid of anything creative — the arts, P.E., music, dance, critical thinking, creative thinking … again, all to achieve these worthless high test scores, scores that in the long run don’t mean a damn thing in terms of a child’s long-term success in school, or in life.”
OR
“Check out this video … (projecting the Charlotte Dial “rip-and-redo” video on a portable laptop, then showing it to the parents)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzfjKYOj7GQ
“This callous b-word of a ateacher, Charlotte Dial — and almost all Success Academy teachers — have never been licensed or credentialed in any state. She’s following Eva’s bogus, untested, and abusive teaching techniques that involve abuse and humiliation of children as young as four… as, incredibly, this is what Eva & Co. believe is the proper way to educate children, the same stuff that educational experts have studied and universally condemned.
“Come over to our school P.S. 281, and spare your child from such despicable educational malpractice!?
OR
“Also, come over to P.S. 261, and your children won’t have to wear those godawful orange and navy blue Success Academy uniforms, those ugly duds that Eva makes you pay L.L. Bean through the nose for, and which Eva gets a taste of the sales. Your kids can wear whatever he or she wants, expressing their individuality through their wardrobe — among other avenues of self-expression — … just like Success Academy Board of Director Campbell Brown’s kids get to do at the rich kids’ private school, Heschel, that her own kids attend. This school’s run by hypocrites. Leave it, and come over to P.S. 261”
x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x
First of all, unlike Eva and her minions, the folks at P.S. 261 — BOTH the parents or those who work there — have too much class and too much concern for the harmful impact such outrageous shilling would have on the SUCCESS ACADEMY children to ever go and lower themselves into the same goopy, gunky slime that Eva and her Shill-Meisters inhabit, and thus engage in this type of activity, with a total disregard for the well-being of the children involved.
But just for sake of argument, what if this did happen?
Eva would use her pull in NYC city government, and those parents or school representatives would end up in handcuffs, with Eva and her connections within government and the police working out beforehand some underhanded way to trump up some bogus charges for which to arrest them.
Yet, Eva sees no problem with Success Academy folks doing the same thing at traditional public schools.
LikeLike
So, Jack . . . How do you really feel about it? What a great post. Love it!
LikeLike
My mother, now retired, was a 50-year career teacher 35 years full-time, then another 15 subbing until she couldn’t do it anymore.
I told her about this situation captured in the video — high-pressure salesmen accosting parents, attempting to get them to switch to a privately managed school — and she absolutely cannot believe what I’m saying.
Now, in her 80’s, she started teaching when Harry Truman was still President — Fall 1952 — and she can’t believe that what Eva’s Shill-meister in the above video is permitted, or that Eva and he doing it believe that they are “the good guys” in this situation. She thinks the whole competition between schools over children — like Burger King trying to steal away McDonald’s customers — is crazy as a soup sandwich, and will lead to a disaster of epic proportions.
“What’s wrong with solicitation?” Shill-meister asks.
Sweet Jesus!
LikeLike