- Image courtesy of shutterstock.com
When you’re talking about kids filling out an application for a charter school, don’t call it an “application”; call it an “enrollment form.” Don’t talk about a charter school’s “staff”; instead, call them “teachers” or “school leaders.” Charters don’t have a “market share”; they have a “student share.” They don’t “experiment”; they “innovate.” Oh, and all those kids and their parents? Never, never call them “consumers”; they’re “families.”
You can learn all this and more in the 2014 Charter School Messaging Notebook put together by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. (Hat tip to the great blog EduShyster.com for the catch.)
We hope this guide will help fine-tune the messaging you use on your website and in press releases, speeches, and media interviews. The results are clear: when we use words that work, people like what they hear — and that means more support for charter schools.
The 18 page pamphlet is chock full of useful information for charter operators and their PR people about how to market their schools. Lots of it is suggestions for good, positive messaging, but my favorite parts talk about what charter salespeople should avoid, “language we use every day [that is] actually turning parents, voters, and policymakers off.”
• Don’t attack district schools too harshly. “Most still care strongly for these schools and would like to see them fixed, rather than done away with.”
• Don’t talk about closing schools. “The public . . . has a strong attachment to the idea of traditional public schools.”
• Don’t talk about getting additional funding from businesses and foundations. “These arrangements are viewed through a cynical lens because many assume it opens the door for donors to push their particular agenda in the schools. Note: Again, this doesn’t mean charters shouldn’t accept charitable contributions, it just isn’t something we should highlight in our public messaging.”
• Don’t talk about longer school days and school years. “With all the debate about children being ‘overscheduled,’ . . . this language does not resonate positively with parents and voters.”
• Don’t talk about waiting lists and lotteries. “Talking about waiting lists and school lotteries introduces negative information to voters and parents . . . making them believe it’s not really an option they would have.”
The messaging booklet is all about selling charter schools like a corporation sells a product. And an important part of that sales job, which mimics corporate sales technique, is, according to the pamphlet, “We should avoid using language that sounds corporate.”
This article appears in Jul 17-23, 2014.
You don’t understand that many parents just don’t want their kids going to TUSD. Can you give a few reasons why??
Fraser, please look up the definition of the Latin phrase “non sequitur.” If you look in a dictionary, you might find your comment above used as an example.
That was cute…… You seem to dislike Charter and private schools. That seems to be the core of your blog.
Touché, Mr. Safier, some with myopia speak with fork tongue. Oh, you can find non sequitur in the English dictionary. Better than “cute”…more like, “ouch”.
More like, “ouch”, than “cute”. Touché, Safier.
Fraser, I don’t dislike charter schools or private schools. I dislike the trashing of “traditional public” schools, meaning school district schools, and the fact-free promotion of charter and private schools. There’s a relentless PR campaign that’s been going on since the Reagan years — hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent — to make “traditional public” schools seem like failures and teachers unions seem like the spawn of Satan while charter and private schools are the successful answers to all our educational problems. Wrong, wrong and wrong. As troubled as some “traditional public schools” are, the system is not a failure. And every well designed study has concluded that “traditional public,” charter and private schools get reasonably similar results from similar students.
I have no problem with charter or private schools being part of the educational landscape. I have no problem recommending good charter or private schools to people whose children might benefit from them.
However, I will poke holes in false educational notions whenever I get the chance, especially when I think those notions are destructive and their end result could be the dismantling of our system of public education, one of this country’s great creations. Since the conservative “education reform” side of the argument has limitless resources, I, as a voice in the wilderness, will continue to try and debunk their myths, loudly, forcefully and often.
Failed charters get to keep assets paid for with public monies.
“Items of equipment with a current per-unit fair market value of
less than $5,000 may be retained, sold or otherwise disposed of with
no further obligation to the awarding agency.”
Charter School Closure procedures
http://www.azed.gov/charter-school-program…
The idea that education can be transformed by using business principles pulls back the curtain on the real transformation, which is the vast increase in profiteering off of K-12 tax dollars. In addition to charters, “reform” measures, including Common Core, have fueled the purchase of technology for the test, test prep materials, consultants and the tests themselves. Take a look at Huppenthal begging the legislature for money for the Dept. of Ed’s computer system and for the districts to update their data systems, but not for increased dollars in the classroom. Huppenthal also had to withdraw from the national organization pushing the PARCC test for the new Common Core testing because the state must have open bidding processes and cannot predetermine which vendor will receive the bid. There’s a reason why hedge fund managers have a seat at the table on education issues and it’s not necessarily an altruistic one.
But on the charter school issue, why aren’t conservatives concerned about the lack of transparency as to where tax dollars go when they are transferred to charter schools? I understand that charter schools are given more flexibility in spending than are school districts. But they can have that flexibility with transparency, too. Those are not mutually exclusive concepts.
Now that the Hupe has come out of the closet with his true identity on education issues, I wonder what other privatizing ersatz pro-public education officials are hiding behind “swaydonims” here. As a person who happens to have knocked on hundreds of doors in the last 4 weeks, I can count the number of people on the fingers of one hand that “just don’t want their kids going to TUSD”. I am not claiming a truly statistical argument, but given the amount of HEAT (or, turning the letters around HATE) that TUSD supposedly engenders, one might think more people would be saying “ugh!” but thats not what I hear. I am beginning to think that the union-demonizing, teacher blaming perspective just has a huge echo chamber (probably built by some of those billionaires that stand to benefit, but thats conjecture!) instead of huge popular support, at least here in TUSD.
Sounds like the for-profit school community got caught word bending like Republicans — and supporters of profit schools aren’t happy about it.
And one of the ironies is that useful information about messaging which could benefit the magnet schools and local public schools is contained in the directions to charters for selling their product.
Incidentally, Betts is correct about people preferring their TUSD schools. When you shake out the numbers, the vast majority are still there, even with all the chorus in the echo chamber. It’s a lot like hospital food must be definition be bad, even if people eat in the hospital cafeterias every day and consume great quantities of it. It’s a popular, but not necessarily accurate thing to say.
Our graduations each year are filled with incredibly proud and happy students and families. Must be doing something right somewhere! Keep up the good work, David.
Ok so I’m a product of public schools. I have no real opinion on private/charter/public to be honest, but now I have a 3 year old and will have to start making decisions. I go to school rating websites and look at my area Speedway/Camino Seco and I’ve got a bunch of schools rated 5 of 10. I think well geez that doesn’t sound good maybe there is quite challenging criteria lets look at a few more but as I scroll out I see that Vail and Tanque Verde districts have 8s and 10s where as TUSD has 4s through 7s? Why would I send my child to a 4 when a 9 or 10 is available? Full disclosure I own a few rentals so the wife and I have chosen to move to Continental Ranch where we have a rental that is almost paid off anyway. I’m a city guy. I hate the clean suburbia that is Rancho Sahuarita, Rancho Del Lago, Continental Ranch etc. but I’m not sending my child to poorly rated school when I have options. We thought about basis but we like the idea of sports programs and extracurricular activities that may not be available even on a pay to play basis with charters.